4 ms·

Valve now allows the "vast majority" of AI-powered games on Steam

54 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

idle_zealot 3y ago
I'm glad to see sanity prevailing here. I only hope this doesn't result in a deluge of automated asset flips making it onto the store.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  We're one "how to get greenlit on steam using AI" Youtube guide away from that, but I suppose we already were. I doubt Steam could've caught all of those games in the first place.
PeterStuer 3y ago
The original announcement from Valve is here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/3862463747997849619 https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/d...
autoexec 3y ago
Valve only cares about AI in games that output illegal or infringing content. I'm much more worried that steam is going to be flooded with massive amounts of games that are nothing more than AI generated trash. Now that costs and barriers to creating what might at first glance pass as a "game" is nearing zero there's a lot of money to be made if you can trick a enough gamers into buying your low-priced trash titles because you can bet that some percentage of those players won't bother requesting a refund and may not even play the game. I myself have a huge amount of cheap games I've paid for, but haven't gotten around to. Even developers that won't just be spamming out as many garbage-tier games as possible will probably be using AI extensively. Maybe one day, in the distant future, AI will be good enough that it won't matter and AI could even become a good thing, but in the meantime we should expect steam to become a minefield where every other game on the platform is filled with terrible AI generated graphics, terrible AI writing, and "live" AI features shoehorned in because it's easier than creating actual content and allows for new kinds of data collection.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Well I for one am waiting for someone to do proper LLM integration with some dialogue driven game, as unreliable as it currently is. How much more hilarious would Fallout be with the option to just say anything to anyone with genuinely matching in game consequences instead of picking one of four lame options.
  - moomin 3y ago
    For that to be actually good, you don't just need AGI, you need an LLM with the writing quality of a New Vegas writer. The difficulty there is that the training corpus is too small to create one.
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      Eh not really, you just need a good way to RAG the existing story so it only mildly adapts it to your actions. No need to make up the whole thing on the fly, baby steps. A prompt along the lines of character card, available actions, story so far, what player said, response text, response action. Actions still limited to what the game can actually do of course, but it would already be far more varied than strictly defined trees. Shame that local llms are so crap at function calling for the actions part, but it might stil work with an ad hoc model and extensive grammar restrictions.
    - vintermann 3y ago
      No. I think people will come to understand and accept that what you get out is commensurate to what you put in. If you stick close to the script (there will still be a scripted main story in such games, because people want shared experiences) and say and do reasonable things in the setting, the LLM game master should be able to deliver reasonably, and improvise around the edges. But if you go wildly off the rails, then no LLM is going to turn that into an award-winning story.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "How much more hilarious would Fallout be with the option to just say anything to anyone instead of picking one of four lame options." Only if those dialogues lead to something real. Just doing small talk with NPCs is easy to accomplish, but integrating it into the world, where depending on the dialoge you get new quest relevant information - or have to fight the NPC if you insult them too much or say the wrong thing - is way harder.
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
Do any of these low quality, asset flip or AI everything games make any money? I suppose it's not the largest effort to make them, but scoring a few bucks here and there from them also doesn't sound like it's worth the time.
- cybrox 3y ago
  The most notorious accounts usually have several hundred of these, so if only a few people accidentally buy each game every month, it should accumulate to a pretty nice passive income. - Especially if you live in a region where $1 buys you a more than here.
  - TheCapeGreek 3y ago
    Hmm true, I wasn't accounting for doing for immense volume. Makes sense.
tiniuclx 3y ago
As a solo game dev, I'm quite happy with this change. I'm a programmer & musician by trade, art is definitely my weak point. I don't think paying artists for their work is gonna go away any time soon, there's just so much that can't be done well by AI right now (UI, rigging, animation, particle effects). However I think allowing AI assets will enable many new types of games to be financially viable. Yes, that will include low effort asset flips, but I think it will also include unique games made by developers with a powerful, singular vision.
- guitarlimeo 3y ago
  How do you justify using AI for your game art? I have thought about this, and couldn't justify it. I also know that I hold on to morals almost to a stubborn degree. So instead I recently started learning Blender, texturing, drawing and while it takes time to get to where I want, I'm passionate enough to learn the craft instead of "cheating", as I unfortunately see it. EDIT: To add, I don't put games which revolve around AI as a mechanic to this same category. They're a new thing and they're cool for exploring the frontiers.
  - smabie 3y ago
    Using tools is cheating? Why would I need to justify it at all?
    - guitarlimeo 3y ago
      I see games as an art form, and I see that the creative decisions are in game design, like levels, puzzles, and mechanics but also in the art style. Using AI to skip over the creative process of creating a distinguished art style and assets doesn't appeal to me. It comes down to the question of how much you value the amount of human work in an art piece. When something is easy to do automagically, it loses some part of its value - to me at least, and I know I'm not alone in this. Think how easy it is to create renaissance style paintings now with AI. Do you value those as much as the original ones? It's also part of the reason why traditional film photography has started to trend again, because there are people who value the amount of human work that goes into framing and compositing when they can't be easily fixed in post process. You might think different and it's ok, just wanted to understand your reasoning.
umactually1 3y ago
> Those disclosures will be shared on the Steam store pages for these games, which should help players who want to avoid certain types of AI content. But disclosure will not be sufficient for games that use live-generated AI for "Adult Only Sexual Content," which Valve says it is "unable to release... right now." Considering it was just yesterday we learned how trivial it can be to "jailbreak" most of the models we have today [1], I can't imagine any possible path forward to allowing AI live-generated sexual content ... pretty much ever. It'll be literally hours or days from the moment they allow such a thing that we'll learn about the ingenious ways folks are "jailbreaking" game models to enable all manner of rape fantasy, child abuse, and everything in between by simply punching in the LLM equivalent of the Konami code when they're prompted to name their rival Gary (or ... their Charmander ... oh god....) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38934513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38934513
- prepend 3y ago
  Yes, and? Are you saying we shouldn’t allow these tools because they will be abused? Automobiles are used to transport kidnapped kids. Kidnapping kids is bad. But that doesn’t mean we have to restrict autos because of their very rare use for illegal and immoral things.
LarsDu88 3y ago
Well now I can release my VR game on steam. I used elevenlabs.io for text to speech and stable diffusion for unit portraits.

54 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

I'm glad to see sanity prevailing here. I only hope this doesn't result in a deluge of automated asset flips making it onto the store.

jeroenhd 3y ago
We're one "how to get greenlit on steam using AI" Youtube guide away from that, but I suppose we already were. I doubt Steam could've caught all of those games in the first place.

PeterStuer 3y ago

The original announcement from Valve is here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/3862463747997849619 https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/d...

autoexec 3y ago

Valve only cares about AI in games that output illegal or infringing content. I'm much more worried that steam is going to be flooded with massive amounts of games that are nothing more than AI generated trash. Now that costs and barriers to creating what might at first glance pass as a "game" is nearing zero there's a lot of money to be made if you can trick a enough gamers into buying your low-priced trash titles because you can bet that some percentage of those players won't bother requesting a refund and may not even play the game. I myself have a huge amount of cheap games I've paid for, but haven't gotten around to. Even developers that won't just be spamming out as many garbage-tier games as possible will probably be using AI extensively. Maybe one day, in the distant future, AI will be good enough that it won't matter and AI could even become a good thing, but in the meantime we should expect steam to become a minefield where every other game on the platform is filled with terrible AI generated graphics, terrible AI writing, and "live" AI features shoehorned in because it's easier than creating actual content and allows for new kinds of data collection.

moffkalast 3y ago
Well I for one am waiting for someone to do proper LLM integration with some dialogue driven game, as unreliable as it currently is. How much more hilarious would Fallout be with the option to just say anything to anyone with genuinely matching in game consequences instead of picking one of four lame options.
- moomin 3y ago
  For that to be actually good, you don't just need AGI, you need an LLM with the writing quality of a New Vegas writer. The difficulty there is that the training corpus is too small to create one.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Eh not really, you just need a good way to RAG the existing story so it only mildly adapts it to your actions. No need to make up the whole thing on the fly, baby steps. A prompt along the lines of character card, available actions, story so far, what player said, response text, response action. Actions still limited to what the game can actually do of course, but it would already be far more varied than strictly defined trees. Shame that local llms are so crap at function calling for the actions part, but it might stil work with an ad hoc model and extensive grammar restrictions.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    No. I think people will come to understand and accept that what you get out is commensurate to what you put in. If you stick close to the script (there will still be a scripted main story in such games, because people want shared experiences) and say and do reasonable things in the setting, the LLM game master should be able to deliver reasonably, and improvise around the edges. But if you go wildly off the rails, then no LLM is going to turn that into an award-winning story.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "How much more hilarious would Fallout be with the option to just say anything to anyone instead of picking one of four lame options." Only if those dialogues lead to something real. Just doing small talk with NPCs is easy to accomplish, but integrating it into the world, where depending on the dialoge you get new quest relevant information - or have to fight the NPC if you insult them too much or say the wrong thing - is way harder.

TheCapeGreek 3y ago

Do any of these low quality, asset flip or AI everything games make any money? I suppose it's not the largest effort to make them, but scoring a few bucks here and there from them also doesn't sound like it's worth the time.

cybrox 3y ago
The most notorious accounts usually have several hundred of these, so if only a few people accidentally buy each game every month, it should accumulate to a pretty nice passive income. - Especially if you live in a region where $1 buys you a more than here.
- TheCapeGreek 3y ago
  Hmm true, I wasn't accounting for doing for immense volume. Makes sense.

tiniuclx 3y ago

As a solo game dev, I'm quite happy with this change. I'm a programmer & musician by trade, art is definitely my weak point. I don't think paying artists for their work is gonna go away any time soon, there's just so much that can't be done well by AI right now (UI, rigging, animation, particle effects). However I think allowing AI assets will enable many new types of games to be financially viable. Yes, that will include low effort asset flips, but I think it will also include unique games made by developers with a powerful, singular vision.

guitarlimeo 3y ago
How do you justify using AI for your game art? I have thought about this, and couldn't justify it. I also know that I hold on to morals almost to a stubborn degree. So instead I recently started learning Blender, texturing, drawing and while it takes time to get to where I want, I'm passionate enough to learn the craft instead of "cheating", as I unfortunately see it. EDIT: To add, I don't put games which revolve around AI as a mechanic to this same category. They're a new thing and they're cool for exploring the frontiers.
- smabie 3y ago
  Using tools is cheating? Why would I need to justify it at all?
  - guitarlimeo 3y ago
    I see games as an art form, and I see that the creative decisions are in game design, like levels, puzzles, and mechanics but also in the art style. Using AI to skip over the creative process of creating a distinguished art style and assets doesn't appeal to me. It comes down to the question of how much you value the amount of human work in an art piece. When something is easy to do automagically, it loses some part of its value - to me at least, and I know I'm not alone in this. Think how easy it is to create renaissance style paintings now with AI. Do you value those as much as the original ones? It's also part of the reason why traditional film photography has started to trend again, because there are people who value the amount of human work that goes into framing and compositing when they can't be easily fixed in post process. You might think different and it's ok, just wanted to understand your reasoning.

umactually1 3y ago

> Those disclosures will be shared on the Steam store pages for these games, which should help players who want to avoid certain types of AI content. But disclosure will not be sufficient for games that use live-generated AI for "Adult Only Sexual Content," which Valve says it is "unable to release... right now." Considering it was just yesterday we learned how trivial it can be to "jailbreak" most of the models we have today [1], I can't imagine any possible path forward to allowing AI live-generated sexual content ... pretty much ever. It'll be literally hours or days from the moment they allow such a thing that we'll learn about the ingenious ways folks are "jailbreaking" game models to enable all manner of rape fantasy, child abuse, and everything in between by simply punching in the LLM equivalent of the Konami code when they're prompted to name their rival Gary (or ... their Charmander ... oh god....) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38934513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38934513

prepend 3y ago
Yes, and? Are you saying we shouldn’t allow these tools because they will be abused? Automobiles are used to transport kidnapped kids. Kidnapping kids is bad. But that doesn’t mean we have to restrict autos because of their very rare use for illegal and immoral things.

LarsDu88 3y ago

Well now I can release my VR game on steam. I used elevenlabs.io for text to speech and stable diffusion for unit portraits.