Epic CEO Weighs-in on Tagging AI Use in Games: “It Makes No Sense for Game Stores.”
- Sweeney says AI tags on Steam are pointless since most games will use AI.
- Valve requires AI disclosure for both development and in-game generation.
- Critics warn AI “vibe coding” causes low-quality, poorly planned games.
- Developers argue AI labels help customers understand effort and quality.
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Everybody’s Doing It
The arguments for AI use in video game development got an extra boost recently with Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, weighing in on X with his thoughts. He agreed to a call for Valve to remove the AI disclosure tag on Steam as it’s starting to become meaningless, since most games – especially big budget titles – use it.
While the general gaming public, and even apparent games journalists, appear to be turning their noses up at AI use, many of those actively involved in game development have started speaking out in its defense – typically by pointing out that “AI use” is an extremely broad term. Sweeney referenced this in his post as he noted that it’s going to be used in a lot of games more often going forward.
“The AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation. It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production.”
Different Types of AI
Valve implemented its AI disclosure policy in January 2024, so it’s still quite a new idea. Anyone who uploads a game to Steam has to fill in a Content Survey, with the AI section broken into, by Valve’s own admission, “two broad categories” – Pre-Generated and Live-Generated.
Pre-Generated is the easiest to understand, as it involves any assets “created with the help of AI tools during development.” This could be music made using something like Suno through to a 3D model generator by NVIDIA, or even LLM-assisted code.
Live-Generated is a little murkier, and encompasses “Any kind of content created with the help of AI tools while the game is running.” Perhaps the best example of this kind of thing can be found in inZOI, the Sims-like simulator from KRAFTON, that uses a small language model for character behavior, as well as AI-assisted content generation.
Understand the Fundamentals
Understandably, the discussion thread for this policy is still active with people routinely weighing in on the pros and cons of AI use in games, as well as debating the specifics of Valve’s policy (which hasn’t been updated since its release).
The main argument against AI as a tool is a compelling one, however, in that it is increasingly being used by would-be developers and so-called “vibe coders” to churn out working but poorly-optimized games: the creator of the PICO-8 game engine, Russell Ashby, told Eneba back in June that “Vibe coding is the process of describing the vibe of software to an LLM and seeing what you get.”
“You then keep prompting until you get what you were looking for. Good for prototypes and websites because it will fall apart after a number of edits,” he added, before noting that, like any tool, a person should know how to use it properly before they wield it.
“The problem with ‘vibing’ something is that there are many questions that an engineer would benefit from knowing the answer to before putting hands on a keyboard. If you vibe something the AI is going to make a decision for you that may screw you over for later.”
Be Quiet, Tim
It’s also understandable that Tim Sweeney is all-for AI use in game development as Epic used an AI version of James Earl Jones’ voice for Darth Vader in Fortnite earlier this year. Sweeney has also had an unusual stance on AI in the past; when Epic acquired ArtStation in 2023, he said he sees his company as being a neutral force.
“At Epic, we see ourselves as being on both sides. We’re creatives ourselves. We have a lot of artists in the family. We’re a tool company, too. We support a lot of game developers. Some of them will use AI, some of them will hate AI, and we want to be a trustable neutral intermediary that doesn’t get in the way of industry development, but also isn’t going off and hoovering up everybody’s art data.”
Epic subsequently added a “NoAI” tag on ArtStation that means artists can explicitly disallow AI models from using their work to train data. Somewhat ironically, ArtStation also requires anyone who uploads assets to tag it if it was created with AI. Plus, the NoAI tag is not added by default, meaning an artist may well upload something and people will automatically think AI was used to make it.
As for Sweeney’s opinion on Valve’s AI disclosure policy, it’s drawn plenty of ire from others within the industry. Noted asset-maker Kenney replied to Sweeney’s X post with “I disagree. It’s a clear sign of how much effort went into the game, especially the art. It matters for customers to know, and it often hints at what they can expect from the rest of the game.”
Gaming YouTuber Legendary Drops also replied to Sweeney, with “Tim, I want to let you know this right here is why you’ll never beat Steam. ‘Makes no sense for game stores’ but it does make sense for CUSTOMERS. We don’t need a cash register, we need transparency and a voice.”
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