Well shit…
I mean it doesn’t matter how a game gets made to me if it’s great. If there are a huge pile of shitty games, I just won’t engage. Same as it ever was.
As much as I don’t like it (I think art should be something hand crafted by humans) nothing Valve can do. It would take an insane amount of resources to vet all these AI games coming.
I would love to have NPCs have conversational AI.
That isn’t the same as “made with AI tools”
Such AI integration will be separated into categories of “pre-generated” content that is “created with the help of AI tools during development” (e.g., using DALL-E for in-game images) and “live-generated” content that is “created with the help of AI tools while the game is running” (e.g., using Nvidia’s AI-powered NPC technology).
Both are covered by the policies the article talks about, and both were arguably against the rules previously
Reading the entire article, it seems that they still want to tread very carefully with this whole AI ordeal. Valve isn’t just opening the floodgates, as the title would make it seem.
While yes, a healthy dose of skepticism is good to have, I think if I had to trust someone to navigate AI in gaming in the gamers’ favour, I would pick Valve. Or maybe I’m overestimating Gabe’s involvement in the happenings of the legal department’s section that is currently responsible for AI stuff.
EDIT: Shame on me, @princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone , I think I had already seen the PMG video about the Steam Marketplace and its lootboxes and the gambling sites. But because I neither play these titles nor participate in the marketplace, I forgot that these serious issues exist. And the documentary concerning actually working at Valve rocked my stance back and forth. On one hand, I love the concept, but there are big problems here as well.
Once more, a genuine thank you for pointing me at these two video documentaries, even if I had already seen one of them.
I understand the statement is about in-game stuff, but I’m guessing a lot of game developers have been using GitHub Copilot and this kind of “AI tools” for months.
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Those disclosures will be shared on the Steam store pages for these games, which should help players who want to avoid certain types of AI content.
But disclosure will not be sufficient for games that use live-generated AI for “Adult Only Sexual Content,” which Valve says it is “unable to release… right now.”
The status of those training models was a primary concern for Valve last summer when the company cited the “legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models,” but such concerns don’t even merit a mention in today’s new policies.
Over the last year or so, many game developers have started to embrace a variety of AI tools in the creation of everything from background art and NPC dialogue to motion capture and voice generation.
But some developers have taken a hardline stance against anything that could supplant the role of humans in game making.
“We don’t ban games for using new technologies,” Sweeney wrote on social media.
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Given how many companies have been embracing AI tools it was really only a matter of time until they were allowed on Steam. At least you’ll know before hand if you’re going into a game with AI-generated content.
