A major new survey by GamesIndustry.biz has found, among many other things, that almost nine out of ten workers in the games industry (88.4%) believe Valve should force developers to declare any generative AI usage. This comes shortly after Valve updated Steam’s AI disclosure policy in January to specify a focus on AI-generated content that is “consumed by players,” rather than “efficiency gains” from AI use behind-the-scenes.
The GIBiz survey found that almost half of respondents disagreed with this policy change. The question asked was “Do you agree with Valve’s approach of requiring developers to declare AI use only for content ‘consumed by players’, rather than for efficiency tools?” 48.7% of respondents said “no”, 32.1% said “yes”, and 19.2% responded “maybe or don’t know.”
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The things that tend to attract a lot of attention and concern from players are among the things AI is apparently least-used for: voice generation (2.3%), text generation (1.8%), and generating music and audio (1.3%). This goes hand-in-hand with the majority of respondents, around 85% in each case, saying AI should never be used for such things.
The one exception here is that 82.9% believed it was fine to use AI to generate placeholder audio early in development, with the understanding it will be replaced with real actors later in development. Which seems reasonable enough.
There was room in the survey for developers to add their own comments. One particularly notable example: “The only reason we are declaring the usage is because currently players care. For the time being, we should be specific and clear about its use. In the near future, players will no longer care and then we won’t disclose it anymore.”
But the take-home message is clear. Developers clearly believe AI use should be disclosed on storefronts, and with stricter guardrails than Steam is currently employing. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that most players would agree: after all, we surely deserve to know what we’re paying for.
