AI-generated content on Steam blocked by copyright law, Valve says

As the game industry has begun to grapple with the advent of AI tools and AI-generated content, one question has risen to the fore in recent weeks: would Valve, which operates Steam — the largest, and most liberal, online game store — publish games made with AI?

A post from the aigamedev Subreddit a few weeks back, that has since been reported and widely viewed on by many people, seemed to answer this question. The reddit user said they had submitted a game to Steam with some “obviously AI-generated” placeholder art, and it was rejected. “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,” Valve reportedly said in an email to the developer, after they had improved (but not replaced) the art in question.

Valve is against AI being used in game creation. No, not exactly — as you might expect from a company that often takes a neutral, not to say libertarian, stance on the content it distributes via Steam.

Valve’s spokesperson said in a Polygon statement that it does not wish to discourage AI from being used in the development of games and believes AI has great potential. But it has concerns about the legal status of AI-generated art assets — considering the AI that made them may have been trained on data, including copyrighted art works, that doesn’t belong to the creator of the game. “Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion,” Valve said. “As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process.”

Here’s Valve’s statement in full:

AI continues to be a topic of interest to us as we learn more about its applications in games and the way it is used. We also want to know how AI can help in our review process when reviewing titles for Steam distribution. Priority is always to get as many games as we can out there. AI makes it more difficult to prove that a developer is entitled to use AI for assets such as images, texts, or music. There is particular legal uncertainty in relation to the data used to create AI models. It is the developer’s responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game.

We know it is a constantly evolving tech, and our goal is not to discourage the use of it on Steam; instead, we’re working through how to integrate it into our already-existing review policies. Our review policy is not an opinion, but reflects current laws and policies on copyright. Our process will evolve as these policies and laws change over time.

AI is a technology that will bring new, exciting gaming experiences. Developers can incorporate AI technology into their games with the appropriate licenses but cannot violate existing copyrights.

Lastly, while App-submission credits are usually non-refundable, we’re more than happy to offer them in these cases as we continue to work on our review process.

While Valve sounds encouraging about the future of AI-generated content in the long term, this response — from probably the most open-minded distributor in games — shows just how difficult it’s going to be to use AI tools to make commercial art. Valve claims that it may be difficult for developers to prove they own rights to assets within their games if AI software has generated these assets from countless works. And while Valve says “it’s the developer’s responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights,” in reality this burden will pass from developers to the companies making the AI tools they use. If the AI companies are going to supply developers with the “appropriate commercial licences” Valve requires, they’re going to have to prove the ownership of the datasets behind the AI themselves. It could be nearly impossible.

Another way to put it: until new legislation is passed to clarify the legal status for AI-generated contents, neither publishers nor distributors will be interested in distributing them. Not even Valve.