Image: Valve
Valve has started banning games on Steam that feature AI generated art.
It looks like Valve has started banning games on Steam that use AI generated content, according to a recent post on Reddit. In the post, a game developer explains that they had submitted a game to be published on Steam, only to have it rejected by Valve due to copyright issues surrounding the AI generated art used in their game.
The developer notes that their game featured, “fairly obviously AI generated,” art upon submission to Steam, and Valve took an unusually long time to review the game. When the publisher finally got back to the developer, it stated that it, “cannot ship games for which the developer does not have all of the necessary rights.”
It then went on to note that their game contains AI generated art assets based on copyrighted material and unless the developer could prove that they owned the rights to that material, they would not be able to publish the game. Valve then gave the developer a single opportunity to remove all AI generated content from the game, or the game would be banned from the platform.
The developer elected to improve the problematic assets by hand, “so there were no longer any obvious signs of AI,” rather than remove them totally, but found that their game was rejected again upon resubmission to Valve. Valve once again flagged the game for use of AI generated content, saying, “At this time, we are declining to distribute your game since it’s unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data.” Fortunately, the developer’s app credits were refunded.
What’s interesting is that Valve’s statement not only singles out AI generated art as problematic to the platform, but text as well, as noted by a Naughty Dog developer on Twitter. In the Reddit post, the developer notes that they had previously published games with AI generated assets without issue, going on to say that, “it seems like Valve doesn't really have a standard approach to AI generated games yet.”
However, the post makes it clear that Valve isn’t cracking down on AI generated assets in videogames - only those that make use of copyrighted material, seeing as that could cause legal headaches later on for the publisher to deal with. Basically: don’t rip off artists and you’ll be fine.
