Valve has responded to the worrying trend of games being cloned using generative AI and sold on Steam, but instead of chastising these games or promising to do something about them, it appears to have put the onus on developers to make their games less copyable.
Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson, members of Valve’s sales team, were reportedly asked at a Steam Indie Connect developer conference in Korea, reported by InvenGlobal, whether Steam had any safeguards in place to prevent AI cloning of games. The questioner, a developer, cited an example in which developers were held to ransom by people threatening to clone a game.
It was in response to this example that Giardino – after stating that this was the first time he had heard of ransom, and that it was likely a problem for law enforcement, although Valve would “help in any way possible” – explained not what Valve was doing to crack down on this, but what developers could do to guard against it. Indeed, Giardino began by emphasizing Valve’s hands-off stance toward the use of AI, saying, “We don’t want to be gatekeepers telling developers what tools they should or shouldn’t use.”
Instead, developers can guard against copycats by creating active communities, building trust and making a legitimate version of a game the best version available, Giardino reportedly 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 develop your game by adding features, personality and creativity that arise from your own perspective,” Giardino was quoted as saying.
It’s worth remembering that Valve’s comments here come second-hand and via machine translation that InvenGlobal verified separately with a native Korean speaker; we request clarification from Valve. But they also follow the high-profile case of Needle in a Haystack Simulator, a simple indie game that hasn’t even been released yet, but has been copied so many times that it’s hard to know which game is the original. The game developer joked that he was implementing a new game mode where you have to find the original game in the middle of a pile of copycats.
Without Valve’s intervention, it’s hard to see what a developer can do to guard against this. How can you build community and trust, and ensure your game is the best version available, if you’re not lucky enough to find an audience from the start?
Additionally, the sheer number of copiers makes this a difficult situation for containment, which – without Valve’s help – likely requires expensive legal resources anyway, which in turn is likely out of reach for many independent developers. Additionally, legal reprimands usually don’t come until long after the damage has been done.
This wouldn’t be the first time Valve has distanced itself from moderating what’s sold on its PC platform. Indeed, in 2018, amid growing concerns about the types of games available on Steam, Valve seemed to abandon taking responsibility altogether.
“We decided the right approach was to allow everything on the Steam Store,” Valve’s Erik Johnson said at the time, “except for things we deem illegal or downright trolling.” It’s a stance that former Eurogamer editor-in-chief Oli called “arrogant and cowardly.”
More recently, the pendulum swung the other way as Valve cast an indiscriminate net over an entire sector of “adult” games, catching a multitude of well-intentioned and artistically mature games, as well as those of a cruder nature. And with Steam growing every year and more games being released on the platform than ever before, the ever-present problem of moderation certainly isn’t going away.
Gn tech
