Valve has confirmed that it will not impose a blanket ban on AI-generated games from entering Steam. In response to dissatisfaction caused by a large number of suspicious or low-quality AI titles, the company believes that restricting developer access to the platform is not an appropriate solution. Instead, it plans to improve its recommendation system to help users discover content that matches their interests among the vast array of new releases.
Valve representatives Mark Wilkinson and Tom Giardino addressed these issues during the Steam Indie Connect event in South Korea. They explained that during the first two days of the Steam Next Fest, featured game slots are allocated nearly at random to provide relatively equal initial exposure and reduce opportunities for developers to manipulate promotion. Afterward, personalized recommendations gradually play a larger role.
As the scale of Next Fest has expanded from dozens or hundreds of titles in its early years to thousands today, Valve acknowledges that the current mechanisms are still imperfect. The company will not decide for creators whether to use AI, but instead encourages development teams to continue refining their original projects, engaging with their communities, and consistently adding new features.
The event also addressed cases where individuals use AI to rapidly clone indie games and then threaten to release these clones early unless the original creators pay them. Giardino stated that imitating popular ideas is not a new phenomenon, but AI has accelerated the speed of replication; if developers encounter extortion, they should contact both Valve and the police.