Valve has responded to the worrying trend of games being cloned using generative AI and sold on Steam, but rather than admonishing those games or promising to do something about it, it appears to have put the onus on developers to make their games less copyable. Valve business team members Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson were reportedly asked at a Steam Indie Connect developer conference in Korea, reported by InvenGlobal, if Steam had any safeguards in place to prevent AI from cloning games. The asker, a developer, cited an example where people threatening to clone a game demanded a ransom from the developers. The viral game Needle in a Haystack Simulator.Watch on YouTube It was in response to that example that Giardino, after saying that it was the first time he had heard of the ransom, and that it was probably a problem for the authorities, although Valve would “help in any way we could,” described not what Valve was doing to clamp down on this, but what developers could do to protect against it. In fact, Giardino began by underscoring Valve’s hands-off stance on the use of AI, reportedly stating, “We don’t want to be gatekeepers telling developers what tools they should or shouldn’t use.” Instead, developers can protect themselves against imitators by building active communities and establishing trust and making a legitimate version of a game the reportedly best version available, Giardino said. Then there’s the game itself: a more complex game will be harder to copy. “Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you should continue to grow your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that come from your own perspective,” Giardino reportedly said. It’s worth remembering that Valve’s comments here are secondhand and through machine translation that InvenGlobal has separately verified with a native Korean speaker; We are asking Valve for clarification. But they also come after the publicized case of Needle in a Haystack Simulator, a simple indie game that has not yet been released, but that has been copied so many times that it is difficult to know which is the original. The game’s developer has resorted to joking that they are implementing a new game mode in which you will have to find the original game among a bunch of imitators. Without Valve’s intervention, it’s hard to see what a developer can do to protect against this. How can you build community and trust, and ensure your game is the best version available, if you don’t have a chance to find an audience to begin with? Additionally, the sheer number of imitators makes this a difficult situation for containment, something that, without Valve’s help, would likely require expensive legal recourse anyway, which in turn would likely be out of reach for many independent developers. Additionally, legal reprimands typically do not occur until long after the damage has occurred. This wouldn’t be the first time Valve has distanced itself from moderating what is sold on its PC platform. In fact, in 2018, amid growing concern about the types of games available on Steam, Valve seemed to back away from taking responsibility entirely. “We’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything into the Steam Store,” Valve’s Erik Johnson said at the time, “except things that we decide are illegal or outright trolling.” It’s a stance that former Eurogamer editor Oli called “arrogant and cowardly.” More recently, the pendulum swung in the other direction when Valve cast a net over an entire “adult” gaming sector, ensnaring in it a number of well-intentioned and artistically mature games, as well as those of a more crass nature. And with Steam growing every year and more games released on the platform than ever, the ever-present issue of moderation certainly isn’t going away.
