Exploring Steam Next Fest With An AI-Blocking Extension Is Very Depressing

I usually have a good time digging through the demos in Valve’s recurring Steam Next Fest event. I enjoy finding hidden gems and wild games that I often end up wishlisting. But this time around, now that I have a tool installed that warns me if a game or demo includes generative AI content, Steam Next Fest has become a very depressing experience, one in which more than half the games I checked out featured an AI content disclaimer.

When I opened the main hub page for Steam Next Fest earlier today, right after my email inbox was flooded by PR messages reminding me that the event had started, I was excited to go exploring. But as I did, I started running into numerous games that feature disclaimers from the devs confirming the use of generative AI tools for various parts of the game or its marketing.

It happened so many times that I became curious about the event’s hub page, filled with game demos being advertised to me algorithmically based on past things I had played and liked in the past. How much of that main page, I wondered, would contain AI-generated warnings? Turns out a lot.

I clicked on 16 different games featured on the Steam Next Fest main hub page, and 10 of them triggered my extension and warned me of generative AI disclaimers. Of course, this will vary from user to user, as many of the hub’s slots are algorithmically driven. Still, my reaction is: Yikes. And scanning the most popular demos, I continued to run into AI warnings, so it’s not just my algo serving up slop.

Reading some of these disclaimers, it’s clear that some smaller teams and solo devs are trying to claim that their lack of resources is a viable excuse for using generative AI. I almost get the sense from some of these warnings that they want me to feel bad for them and look the other way, just this once, and not mind the AI slop cover art, visuals, or textures. Other warnings try very hard to insist that genAI tools are only being used for very small, specific parts of development, and all content is reviewed and edited by a human before the game (or demo) reaches the player. But as we’ve seen time and time again, so often genAI content that’s allegedly created with the intention of being replaced later still finds its way into games, leading to apologies and updates replacing the slop.

I sympathize with indie devs trying to create something cool and then having to dedicate even more of their limited time and resources to making a demo that might not even get seen because Steam is flooded with new games every hour. It sucks. The allure of genAI in that situation is proving harder and harder for some devs to resist. And even if you get a job at a big studio, the odds are increasingly high that you’ll also be forced to use or at least stomach genAI tools while you watch co-workers get laid off.

The whole situation just makes me sad. I don’t want devs to suffer for their art, yet I am dreading a future in which it’s practically impossible to play a game, big or small, that was made only by humans. If the flood of AI warnings popping up as I browse Steam Next Fest are an indication of what’s to come, I guess I’m happy I have a massive backlog.