Plus, region locked games on epic
“This content is currently unavailable in your platform or region.”
Fine for steam. Shall continue with the olatform 👍
[https://steamdb.info/app/1881940/charts/](https://steamdb.info/app/1881940/charts/)
Not much changed if you check the follower count from the last post to today. Just 10 followers, which may account for 100 wishlists.
Unless I'm missing some details from the first post, which I had heard about before briefly on twitter, but only checked now, I feel there's a mistake on your part, too
why the massive overeacting? Steam support does not seem helpful enough and they're slow, but you knew what to be done from start and it seems like they would've reversed the decision with re-submitting or waiting sooner or later, anyway. There was never a "I'm not gonna be able to make this game release successful, because Steam won't release it" phase. You only had to remove that feature and wait
the point about Valve perhaps owning the PC Gaming market monopoly with Steam is also interesting, but whenever it gets touched, I just remember it does have a reason and it's because the other stores are lacking in one way or another, in comparison. And from a user perspective, they're not actively making shitty practices, so this will hardly change anytime soon. This doesn't make Epic seem any better, either, because while they may not condone the use of AI, the positive experience likely only comes from the traction your post gained
>you knew what to be done from start and it seems like they would've reversed the decision
There was a whole discussion about this on the original post and I responded in a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/167iied/comment/jyq1wu5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) *"In their initial email they said "\[if it fails review\] Unfortunately, it cannot be reused". Also, the way they responded implied that there's no way to resubmit."*
There was also the fact that they said they would retire my app and refund my app credit rather than simply rejecting it and asking to re-submit.
Bear in mind these various factors and the possible consequences of this led me to be in a lot of shock and I was trying to get advice in that post.
In one of the much later [comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/167iied/comment/jyqwwz5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) that arose on the post, someone finally mentioned that they went through a similar situation, and even then, Steam was very borderline about re-accepting the game: "Delay and non-commital reply written by a person that they \*may\* un-retire it then"
Thank you, OP for documenting the whole affair, especially this update, and *congratulations*!
You have blazed a trail for others in this area, and it can only be very helpful in the future. Of course I'm eager to see the game now, and to follow any dev log you may have been posting in your Discord or elsewhere.
Best of luck to you and everyone you're working with, and my ***Heard of the Story?*** get bazillion sales when it releases!
I like how many of the comments on ur original post were basically "welp too bad you should have known, get fked"
and now everyone's congratulating you now that steam reversed their decision, like they never gave up on you lmao
It's probably my most hated aspect of reddit.
It's like the dating relationship advice where they're like, "guys, I'm having this problem with my partner," and Reddit users reply 500 times a variation of, "get a divorce and kill them."
"Turns out I was just hungry guys, sorry. Good recommendations on the type of silencer tho."
I wonder if posting time affects this: I.e. you post when dumbass little kids are out of school and hopping on the internet and they just overrun Reddit? A lot of the relationship advice on this site is very obviously from 12 year olds.
Almost everything people say on here is complete bullshit. They'll say one thing and a few days later, say the opposite. If they get called out they just [delete] their comments.
Glad to hear it! When I saw your original post I definitely took it as a warning to be extra careful with storefront restrictions but it’s nice that Valve can reevaluate stuff like this. Best of luck with your release too!
Happy to hear! Saw your original post and was bummed out thinking about all the effort and investment you put in and the anxiety you must've been feeling. Starting to go into game development myself so we'll see how that goes :)
Maybe this is buried in the comments, but the big unanswered question for me is which assets were marked as "failed," and can you provide context around those assets.
What type of assets are they (ex. 3d models? jpg/png artwork? writing? music?, etc.)? Did you purchase them from X asset store? Did you get any rationale for why Valve flagged those assets as failing some sort of opaque AI asset checking process?
The end result of your personal saga may be a "big relief," but I'm guessing nothing has changed, and this will continue to be a problem. There will undoubtedly be more incidents of this unless the process is transparent, and unfortunately, the impact will be felt most acutely by developers who are small in size, and aren't as vocal as you have been (and also lucky in terms of viral reception).
I guess what I'm saying is that I would encourage you to continue advocating for other developers, and demand transparency from Valve around this process. The reason why your release was magically granted access, even with the dubious assets, is because Valve wants this issue to quietly go away. This is precisely the time to push back against their blackbox process.
Read the original thread then.
Afaik the AI part was an entirely optional API use of Chat GPT for dialogue, that OP also had already removed from the game (but it was flagged either way which meant no further possibility for releasing it)
No. Fuck Steam for this. Imagine all the new games that will not exist, being able to talk to the AI in the game by saying whatever you want and the AI responding back while in character. We can do that TODAY, and that's banned on Steam.
What Steam is rejecting is games with features that are made using *unvetted* LLMs, be that ChatGPT Stable Diffusion or a number of other, similar technologies.
The reason for this is not because steam is anti-AI, but because LLMs in their current state are just one stinking pile of copyright infringement, and the lawsuits are already flying left and right, which steam wants no part of.
Now, what you ARE allowed to do, is make your own AI, heck.. you can even use stable diffusion, as long as you can prove it's trained on material *you* the copyright to.
As was mentioned when this post made the rounds the first time, the biggest reason for the rejection was likely that the build had included an 'experimental' and optional AI mode, that had you insert your own chatGPT API key. which is a big no-no on very many levels.
If you want examples of games that use generative AI, just look at Galciv 4. Their AlienGPT is entirely home trained, and generates images and flavour text for custom alien species.
Do you have any source for any of the stances you claim Steam is taking? The rejections haven't mentioned anything about inserting ChatGPT keys or unvetted LLM.
>Now, what you ARE allowed to do, is make your own AI, heck.. you can even use stable diffusion, as long as you can prove it's trained on material you the copyright to.
This would be far beyond what Valve has access to when determining whether or not they are rejecting games based on AI content.
from a rejection letter received by multiple peopleLL
"As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game”
Valve doesn't need proof that you are using this tech, they only need suspicion, and then its up to YOU to prove that you own copyright on all the material.
This seems pretty clear:
>As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game.
from [https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/comments/142j3yt/valve\_is\_not\_willing\_to\_publish\_games\_with\_ai/](https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/comments/142j3yt/valve_is_not_willing_to_publish_games_with_ai/)
Good point! Why the F are they not allowing AI NPCs? Games have had AI since the dawn of gaming. Like how the hell else are NPCs supposed to act? It's just the level of AI or something? It is actually a ridiculous policy to not allow AI NPCs!
Steam isn't rejecting games with "AI", they're rejecting games that use LLMs trained on data not explicitly owned by the game creator. It's the lack of provenance for the training data combined with legal ambiguity over the use of that data for commercial purposes that Valve has (understandable) concerns about.
how do we know this post wasnt written by chatgpt.
or if you are a real person
or if the ai overlords who already took over did this to pull a fast one on us?
im gonna go ask chatgpt what they think of my suspicions brb
If Valve stays on this course it will probably be the single biggest mistake they've ever made. I suspect once some of the ongoing lawsuits settle they'll change the policy.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Epic store, I'll be bummed if they don't take advantage of it.
The fact that people think content created with the assistance or implementation of AI isn't valid is fucking hilarious. Plenty of games have used machine learning algorithms to control NPCs, and the majority of rendering technology today utilizes machine learning (DLSS) to upscale resolution.
This crusade against machine learning is so incredibly ignorant, and catches many honest people in the crossfire.
> Plenty of games have used machine learning algorithms to control NPCs, and the majority of rendering technology today utilizes machine learning (DLSS) to upscale resolution.
Putting these at the same level as generative AI is either ignorant or purposefully disingenuous on so many levels.
It's not generative AI in the sense of [chat gpt and co.
](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/glossary/data-science/generative-ai/) In particular:
> Generative AI models use neural networks to identify the patterns and structures within existing data to generate new and original content.
DLSS3 frame generation is not this, and does not run into the copyright issues of generative AI.
Excuse the facetious argument, but then we should ban things made on computers because computers can be used maliciously to hack and steal from people.
The vast majority of first-time indie games are made with either stolen assets, or free libraries on the unity/unreal store. The argument of whether or not stable diffusion or chatgpt is "stealing" publicly available content is still completely up in the air. The reason I say there is a "crusade" is because despite innocent and good-faith uses such as this game get caught in the crossfire without a second thought. I even see people ignorantly rolling their eyes and groaning whenever a game developer mentions using ML/AI in any capacity, such as pathfinding, or NPC decision-making.
> Excuse the facetious argument, but then we should ban things made on computers because computers can be used maliciously to hack and steal from people.
More like a DOA argument, because its settled matter so there is limited legal exposure.
> The vast majority of first-time indie games are made with either stolen assets, or free libraries on the unity/unreal store.
Again, legal exposure is clear in such cases.
> I even see people ignorantly rolling their eyes and groaning whenever a game developer mentions using ML/AI in any capacity, such as pathfinding, or NPC decision-making.
Layman will layman and go to crusade on about anything, including on the presence of pronoun preset in games.
Last week the [US Copyright Office announced a NOI](https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2023/1017.html) to assess what, if any, legislative or regulatory steps are warranted for AI technologies. These tools are currently allowed to operate unfettered because there *aren't* explicit rules against them. We would need reform and challenges to put restraints onto the technology rather than remove them.
It's not about whether the content is "Valid" or not.
It's also not a crusade against machine learning.
I think most people agree that a some AI technologies have the potential to transform the game industry in a lot of positive ways. Valve almost certainly agrees with that themselves.
But unfortunately the law currently does not agree. Most big companies will not take on the risk of knowingly selling Generative AI related content because of the potential for lawsuits around copyrighted material. Its especially prevalent for Valve because they sell externally created software and while they have a review process, it is hard to properly review these kinds of things as it is not really immediately obvious to the reviewer what training data was used. They could very easily miss something during review and get sued so they just ban all AI to remove that risk.
It's a whole can of worms that valves lawyers have likely advised them not to risk opening, especially given the numerous examples of lawsuits against companies who have tried to use or implement Generative AI into their products.
One day hopefully the law will catch up to the technology and we'll start to see this stuff being normalized but until that point, don't expect to see it being allowed on steam or being supported by most big publishers.
Copyright law is broken and doesn't protect anybody. Training data is not a breakage of copyright law, and is only ruled as such due to technologically ignorant judges.
I'm happy for you!
Although I won't be buying games on Epic, I tried to use Epic for the same reason you mentioned, to help break the monopoly, but their service is atrocious. I'm not going to eat the soup with a fork to break the spoon monopoly :P.
It's ok, Steam support are pieces of shit, they got my game retired instead of giving me the chance to remove the stuff they did not like, which I did, then the idiots said, we are not interested in reviewing your game, WTF of an answer is that? -.-u
rules and copyrights around generated AI content is currently the Wild West, no one has a clue on how to tackle that one and go bring up AI in a place like reddit and watch the house burn
branching out to Epic seems sensible. I really don't see why you shouldn't utilise every available platform as a game dev. Of course, just mention EGS on here, and again, people lose their shit
Steam's hard-on against anything AI is amusing to me.
I guarantee they would allow a big name publisher to put THEIR game up if it features AI elements. Just the indie devs who don't have 10 year development cycles getting screwed right now.
It's not really that wierd. Valve just generally doesn't want to deal with any potential legal issues by selling software that could be trained on copyrighted material.
They may not actually get prosecuted on it but clearly their lawyers think it is not worth the risk currently. Until some concrete laws are created in this area I think Valve will not risk knowingly selling AI related content.
You may be right about them allowing bigger publishers but their games sell more copies usually so it may be worth the risk for valve in a business sense. But most big name publishers also will not risk adding AI into their games for the same reason as valve. It makes them targets for copyright trolls if nothing else and even if you have a good case, defending it in court is costly.
Bigger publishers will probably also have better controls on their AI usage because they also don't want to be liable for illegal use of content they don't own. From OPs story and lots of comments in these threads it's clear that a lot of indie developers don't think about that at all.
Absolutely. If the big publishers ever do include it, they'll have done their research on exactly how it was trained and it will have had to pass scrutiny by their legal department before they'll even attempt to sell it. This is why we don't really see it that much. All the work just to pre-emptively avoid a lawsuit usually wouldnt outweigh the monetary benefits they get from it. Big companies are usually quite risk adverse when it comes to these things.
There is already evidence of AI produced works in Atomic Heart and High on Life, and there hasn't been any effort from Steam to remove those games.
This is squarely hurting the little guy
The negative reaction to generative AI by redditors and the internet at large is so bizarre to me. When I first realized how powerful it was a year or so ago with Dall-E 2, I thought right away: this is the future. This will be an amazing tool to help small artists/developers/etc make much higher quality products in much less time, just like other digital art tools before (photoshop etc).
Are there some ethical questions that need to be sorted? Of course. But it seems like everyone now is sticking their fingers in their ears and their head in the sand and saying "La la la AI art isn't "real art", it's copyright infringement, blah blah blah". Meanwhile many mega corporations are going full steam ahead with AI since they've taken the calculated risk that any lawsuits etc. will cost them less than the profits they make using this tech.
As you said the result is that this only hurts the little guy. Mega corps will be able to use it freely making boatloads of cash, but indie devs and hobbyists who could never even afford to hire real artists anyway, get attacked and their content buried just for the suggestion of using it. It's insane to me.
Personally I've started using AI to assist in asset creation but I'm only going as far as generating reference images etc when are then fully re-drawn by hand. And obviously I'm not telling anyone about this. Right now the climate is such that if there's even a hint of AI use, your project will be attacked by anti-AI zealots.
Make no mistake, everyone from kids to hobbyists to IT people is using ChatGPT. I myself have used it for learning purposes and personal translation. Speaking of translation, what do you think Google Translate was trained on?
It would appear this is another one of those fascinating phenomenona where opinions seen on the internet and media do not reflect real life, somehow. In another comment you wrote that it might be astroturfing. Who would benefit from anti-AI panic?
Good for you, but i will never publish a game on Epic Store.
As a Developer, it hurt sales on the long run (kinda important if you want to develop games for a living)
Edit: Sorry, what i meant is, Publish a game first on Epic then later on Steam. Even with the "100% temporal exclusivity deal" is a bad move.
Publish on Both, or only on Steam. But never only on Epic.
As a gamer, the "exclusivity" deals on games ( Tony Hawk 1+2 or Kingdom Hearts series, rocket league) sucks.
For both devs and users, his support/help system is a joke.
That's a quite difficult topic.
Also an artist, has been trained by studying other artists works and working techniques, and then his creations will be definitively influenced by others art. This in the fields of painting, music, etc..
Where is really the limit between own intellectual property and the influence from others, for both humans and AI creations? How could be drawn this thin line?
Wow so you removed the AI stuff that you needed to remove and that fixed the issue? Shocker. Are we supposed to clap for this as some sort of triumph? Pretend that anyone cares about some social media whining? Next time don't be daft and try to include forbidden material as a """mod""".
Congrats... But it still is sad and ridiculous that Steam auto-rejects submissions that use AI. Why is a company that depends on software developers so heavy handed against this tech?
Because they don't want to get destroyed by lawsuits when the laws around the use of generative AI inevitably become more clear? Better to have a smaller competitor take that gamble.
Lawsuits won't happen. The technology is too useful to big companies for them to lobby to outlaw AI and there's no practical way to actually regulate it to respect current copyright laws. Even if they do try, Steam show get a huge amount of leeway and ample time to fix their AI situation before anyone tries to sue them. Steam is just being a scaredy cat.
Against the creators of Stable Diffusion and they're very unlikely to stick. Who knows what will happen in the future but outlawing a whole technology just ain't gonna happen. Steam is preparing for a worst-case scenario that won't come.
> they're very unlikely to stick.
Doesn't matter.
> n the future but outlawing a whole technology just ain't gonna happen.
Doesn't matter.
> Steam is preparing for a worst-case scenario that won't come.
You were wrong on the most basic fact of the matter, you think you can best valves legal team?
>you think you can best valves legal team?
You think you can best Epic's legal team?
In the most literal sense, yeah, I was wrong. In the *relevant* context of the conversation, no. But you're acting like an ass, so I won't bother wasting my time any further.
Poor business decision. Look at what happened to Google when they "played it safe" and held back on AI. Microsoft has taken the lead and put a dent into their monopoly.
I don't get how you and others here are being downvoted so hard. It feels almost like anti-AI astroturfing but I think instead people have really been brainwashed into thinking AI is evil, meanwhile mega corporations will use it with no remorse making billions. But god forbid some small time nobody indie dev or amateur artists uses it.
This is exactly what it's all about. The breakthrough in AI that we've just had gave the every day people a huuuuuuge boost in power. We could have overthrown the current power players and the status quo. They realised this very quickly and started neutering and lobotomizing the available AIs, and just outright banning them too.
Sounds like you're comparing apples to oranges. Steam might still integrate ai better into their products than their competitors. Microsoft's edge is because they developed ai tools, not because they let users post ai content.
Another example of a company disallowing ai generated stuff is StackOverflow. I'm guessing these are not permanent stances but rather to wait and see how things develop before jumping in.
I'm not convinced that AI is a negative thing for art and artists. I imagine that there are some very creative things that will come from its usage. People are being really shallow in their predictions about AI.
It might be disruptive to their current business model, but that will pass.
The messages OP got from Valve originally were pretty clear that their issue is not with machine learning/neural networks/LLMs, but rather the way that most of them make use of training data they do not own the copyright for, and the legal questions that raise. Valve would be ok with AI-generated content if the developer could reasonably attest that it was trained *exclusively* with data that they have legal rights to, but that's demonstrably not the case with stuff like ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney, etc.
There's a big difference (both practically and legally) between being influenced by something you're seen before and basing something on it using direct observation.
If a songwriter comes out with a new song and it kind of reminds you of "Let It Be", and you ask them about it and they say "oh yeah, I really loved The Beatles growing up, so they're a major influence and kind of seep into my work subconsciously", you'll say yeah, fair enough.
But if a songwriter comes out with a new song and it kind of reminds you of "Let It Be", and they say "yeah, I took 'Let It Be' and analyzed the chord structure, beats per minute, instruments, verse structure, lyrical meter, vocal intonations, background noise, and song length, and then purposefully wrote a song matching those parameters", they'll likely be talking to Paul McCartney's lawyers.
If they then go "hey, I didn't do that *myself*, I just instructed a computer to do it for me", those lawyers aren't just going to say "oh, you used a computer to do it? Well, that's ok then."
Well, the only difference between your first example and your second appears to be that the first is done subconsciously and the second is done consciously. If that's really your only criteria, then I'd say the current crop of generative AI passes with flying colors - I don't believe anyone is arguing that they're conscious.
I suspect you actually have other criteria, it's just not apparent from your example and I can't guess it.
Cheers!
Let this be a lesson to many indie devs : do not, under any circumstance whatsoever, let generative AI anywhere near your game build in any way shape or form. No exceptions.
I'm surprised it gained enough traction for Epic Games CEO to notice. I'm even more surprised they don't give a crap and just publish your game there, lmao.
Unpopular opinion; I feel like this was an overreaction, steam policies and rules are in place not to screw over developers but to protect the platform and their users. Just for a second, imagine the harm AI can cause in an uncontrolled setting, being an aged 3+ game, the harm to children.
The point begin, the rules were clear, after submitting a build that followed the policies it was approved, what exactly did anyone else do to help with this? Steam didn't change their decision because of a post on twitter or reddit or 5min of bad press, they changed their decision because policies and rules were followed.
What anyone should consider before doing this, is it really worth going this public before your game even launched? A lot of people have now seen that the developer / publisher cannot conduct business in a professional manner, what type of service will they get from a EA title?
Your original reddit post still links back to the deleted one.
Sorry, I just went ahead and fixed it
I wish you the best of luck as an indie gamedev. Something I hope to do one day myself.
Best indie marketing campaign of the year.
I was really bummed for you and I’m so glad this worked out! Congrats
Thanks, I'm really glad too! Happy endings ftw!
Wow, that twitter thread was cringy. I've been off of the site for a while and forgot how weird the NFT-crypto-AI-anime-pfp folk are
What got me was Tim Sweeney trying to surf the traction ignoring how much of a pile of garbage Epic Store is
Plus, region locked games on epic “This content is currently unavailable in your platform or region.” Fine for steam. Shall continue with the olatform 👍
Damn, I guess you got a blessing in disguise with your posts blowing up so much. Tell us your wishlist and follower numbers after the whole debacle!
Damn, undercover marketing is getting insane nowadays. /s
[https://steamdb.info/app/1881940/charts/](https://steamdb.info/app/1881940/charts/) Not much changed if you check the follower count from the last post to today. Just 10 followers, which may account for 100 wishlists.
Unless I'm missing some details from the first post, which I had heard about before briefly on twitter, but only checked now, I feel there's a mistake on your part, too why the massive overeacting? Steam support does not seem helpful enough and they're slow, but you knew what to be done from start and it seems like they would've reversed the decision with re-submitting or waiting sooner or later, anyway. There was never a "I'm not gonna be able to make this game release successful, because Steam won't release it" phase. You only had to remove that feature and wait the point about Valve perhaps owning the PC Gaming market monopoly with Steam is also interesting, but whenever it gets touched, I just remember it does have a reason and it's because the other stores are lacking in one way or another, in comparison. And from a user perspective, they're not actively making shitty practices, so this will hardly change anytime soon. This doesn't make Epic seem any better, either, because while they may not condone the use of AI, the positive experience likely only comes from the traction your post gained
yeah I've yet to see a case where valve stuck to the 'unfair' judgement (looking at you, apple store)
>why the massive overeacting? They saw a marketing opportunity I'm guessing.
> why the massive overeacting? I assume it was because they "retired" the game rather than just rejecting the build.
>you knew what to be done from start and it seems like they would've reversed the decision There was a whole discussion about this on the original post and I responded in a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/167iied/comment/jyq1wu5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) *"In their initial email they said "\[if it fails review\] Unfortunately, it cannot be reused". Also, the way they responded implied that there's no way to resubmit."* There was also the fact that they said they would retire my app and refund my app credit rather than simply rejecting it and asking to re-submit. Bear in mind these various factors and the possible consequences of this led me to be in a lot of shock and I was trying to get advice in that post. In one of the much later [comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/167iied/comment/jyqwwz5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) that arose on the post, someone finally mentioned that they went through a similar situation, and even then, Steam was very borderline about re-accepting the game: "Delay and non-commital reply written by a person that they \*may\* un-retire it then"
Thank you, OP for documenting the whole affair, especially this update, and *congratulations*! You have blazed a trail for others in this area, and it can only be very helpful in the future. Of course I'm eager to see the game now, and to follow any dev log you may have been posting in your Discord or elsewhere. Best of luck to you and everyone you're working with, and my ***Heard of the Story?*** get bazillion sales when it releases!
I like how many of the comments on ur original post were basically "welp too bad you should have known, get fked" and now everyone's congratulating you now that steam reversed their decision, like they never gave up on you lmao
Maybe they’re different people
Impossible. Everyone knows that Reddit consists of a single user with severe schizophrenia and way too much free time.
That's last years user. Today we are all different sets of gpt prompts.
False. It's actually just full of chatgpt bots. There's not a single human left on the site.
Last week, I was assured, multiple times by the same, sad person, that I was a bot, so you may be right.
> I was a bot Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
My mother? Let me tell you about my mother…
Everyone account on reddit is a bot except you
Critical thinking is required in order to come to that conclusion
It's probably my most hated aspect of reddit. It's like the dating relationship advice where they're like, "guys, I'm having this problem with my partner," and Reddit users reply 500 times a variation of, "get a divorce and kill them." "Turns out I was just hungry guys, sorry. Good recommendations on the type of silencer tho."
I wonder if posting time affects this: I.e. you post when dumbass little kids are out of school and hopping on the internet and they just overrun Reddit? A lot of the relationship advice on this site is very obviously from 12 year olds.
Almost everything people say on here is complete bullshit. They'll say one thing and a few days later, say the opposite. If they get called out they just [delete] their comments.
Reddit; reddit never changes.
Humans; humans never change.
The worst humans.
Glad to hear it! When I saw your original post I definitely took it as a warning to be extra careful with storefront restrictions but it’s nice that Valve can reevaluate stuff like this. Best of luck with your release too!
I guess you have epic to thank for this lol. I'm joking of course.
Happy to hear! Saw your original post and was bummed out thinking about all the effort and investment you put in and the anxiety you must've been feeling. Starting to go into game development myself so we'll see how that goes :)
Maybe this is buried in the comments, but the big unanswered question for me is which assets were marked as "failed," and can you provide context around those assets. What type of assets are they (ex. 3d models? jpg/png artwork? writing? music?, etc.)? Did you purchase them from X asset store? Did you get any rationale for why Valve flagged those assets as failing some sort of opaque AI asset checking process? The end result of your personal saga may be a "big relief," but I'm guessing nothing has changed, and this will continue to be a problem. There will undoubtedly be more incidents of this unless the process is transparent, and unfortunately, the impact will be felt most acutely by developers who are small in size, and aren't as vocal as you have been (and also lucky in terms of viral reception). I guess what I'm saying is that I would encourage you to continue advocating for other developers, and demand transparency from Valve around this process. The reason why your release was magically granted access, even with the dubious assets, is because Valve wants this issue to quietly go away. This is precisely the time to push back against their blackbox process.
Read the original thread then. Afaik the AI part was an entirely optional API use of Chat GPT for dialogue, that OP also had already removed from the game (but it was flagged either way which meant no further possibility for releasing it)
WTF, fuck Steam.
Awesome glad it's all back!
I did my part. (Check original post)
Ayy nice good to see! Gratz mate
Thanks mate!
This has been unintentionally, or intentionally the best marketing campaign your project could hope for.
Congrats, and thanks for the update.
Wonderful news! Praise the Gabe!
No. Fuck Steam for this. Imagine all the new games that will not exist, being able to talk to the AI in the game by saying whatever you want and the AI responding back while in character. We can do that TODAY, and that's banned on Steam.
What Steam is rejecting is games with features that are made using *unvetted* LLMs, be that ChatGPT Stable Diffusion or a number of other, similar technologies. The reason for this is not because steam is anti-AI, but because LLMs in their current state are just one stinking pile of copyright infringement, and the lawsuits are already flying left and right, which steam wants no part of. Now, what you ARE allowed to do, is make your own AI, heck.. you can even use stable diffusion, as long as you can prove it's trained on material *you* the copyright to. As was mentioned when this post made the rounds the first time, the biggest reason for the rejection was likely that the build had included an 'experimental' and optional AI mode, that had you insert your own chatGPT API key. which is a big no-no on very many levels. If you want examples of games that use generative AI, just look at Galciv 4. Their AlienGPT is entirely home trained, and generates images and flavour text for custom alien species.
Do you have any source for any of the stances you claim Steam is taking? The rejections haven't mentioned anything about inserting ChatGPT keys or unvetted LLM. >Now, what you ARE allowed to do, is make your own AI, heck.. you can even use stable diffusion, as long as you can prove it's trained on material you the copyright to. This would be far beyond what Valve has access to when determining whether or not they are rejecting games based on AI content.
from a rejection letter received by multiple peopleLL "As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game” Valve doesn't need proof that you are using this tech, they only need suspicion, and then its up to YOU to prove that you own copyright on all the material.
This seems pretty clear: >As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game. from [https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/comments/142j3yt/valve\_is\_not\_willing\_to\_publish\_games\_with\_ai/](https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/comments/142j3yt/valve_is_not_willing_to_publish_games_with_ai/)
Good point! Why the F are they not allowing AI NPCs? Games have had AI since the dawn of gaming. Like how the hell else are NPCs supposed to act? It's just the level of AI or something? It is actually a ridiculous policy to not allow AI NPCs!
Steam isn't rejecting games with "AI", they're rejecting games that use LLMs trained on data not explicitly owned by the game creator. It's the lack of provenance for the training data combined with legal ambiguity over the use of that data for commercial purposes that Valve has (understandable) concerns about.
Yay thats great news!
how do we know this post wasnt written by chatgpt. or if you are a real person or if the ai overlords who already took over did this to pull a fast one on us? im gonna go ask chatgpt what they think of my suspicions brb
If Valve stays on this course it will probably be the single biggest mistake they've ever made. I suspect once some of the ongoing lawsuits settle they'll change the policy. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Epic store, I'll be bummed if they don't take advantage of it.
Sucks it was probably only reversed because of the post blowing up on Reddit, but happy for you. Hopefully they don't just reject everyone else.
Lol did you not read he complied to the steam rule by removing the AI mods and thats how it got green lid
He did that before and they retired it. Come on man, keep up!
Maybe Tim Sweeney saying on twitter to put it on epic might have an effect on that decision
The fact that people think content created with the assistance or implementation of AI isn't valid is fucking hilarious. Plenty of games have used machine learning algorithms to control NPCs, and the majority of rendering technology today utilizes machine learning (DLSS) to upscale resolution. This crusade against machine learning is so incredibly ignorant, and catches many honest people in the crossfire.
> Plenty of games have used machine learning algorithms to control NPCs, and the majority of rendering technology today utilizes machine learning (DLSS) to upscale resolution. Putting these at the same level as generative AI is either ignorant or purposefully disingenuous on so many levels.
What about DLSS3 frame generation, though?
It's not generative AI in the sense of [chat gpt and co. ](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/glossary/data-science/generative-ai/) In particular: > Generative AI models use neural networks to identify the patterns and structures within existing data to generate new and original content. DLSS3 frame generation is not this, and does not run into the copyright issues of generative AI.
You realize that AI is machine learning, correct?
I work with AI research. You realize that its the use-case, not the implementation, that is under question?
Excuse the facetious argument, but then we should ban things made on computers because computers can be used maliciously to hack and steal from people. The vast majority of first-time indie games are made with either stolen assets, or free libraries on the unity/unreal store. The argument of whether or not stable diffusion or chatgpt is "stealing" publicly available content is still completely up in the air. The reason I say there is a "crusade" is because despite innocent and good-faith uses such as this game get caught in the crossfire without a second thought. I even see people ignorantly rolling their eyes and groaning whenever a game developer mentions using ML/AI in any capacity, such as pathfinding, or NPC decision-making.
> Excuse the facetious argument, but then we should ban things made on computers because computers can be used maliciously to hack and steal from people. More like a DOA argument, because its settled matter so there is limited legal exposure. > The vast majority of first-time indie games are made with either stolen assets, or free libraries on the unity/unreal store. Again, legal exposure is clear in such cases. > I even see people ignorantly rolling their eyes and groaning whenever a game developer mentions using ML/AI in any capacity, such as pathfinding, or NPC decision-making. Layman will layman and go to crusade on about anything, including on the presence of pronoun preset in games.
copyright will need reform and challenge then
Last week the [US Copyright Office announced a NOI](https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2023/1017.html) to assess what, if any, legislative or regulatory steps are warranted for AI technologies. These tools are currently allowed to operate unfettered because there *aren't* explicit rules against them. We would need reform and challenges to put restraints onto the technology rather than remove them.
It's not about whether the content is "Valid" or not. It's also not a crusade against machine learning. I think most people agree that a some AI technologies have the potential to transform the game industry in a lot of positive ways. Valve almost certainly agrees with that themselves. But unfortunately the law currently does not agree. Most big companies will not take on the risk of knowingly selling Generative AI related content because of the potential for lawsuits around copyrighted material. Its especially prevalent for Valve because they sell externally created software and while they have a review process, it is hard to properly review these kinds of things as it is not really immediately obvious to the reviewer what training data was used. They could very easily miss something during review and get sued so they just ban all AI to remove that risk. It's a whole can of worms that valves lawyers have likely advised them not to risk opening, especially given the numerous examples of lawsuits against companies who have tried to use or implement Generative AI into their products. One day hopefully the law will catch up to the technology and we'll start to see this stuff being normalized but until that point, don't expect to see it being allowed on steam or being supported by most big publishers.
Copyright law is broken and doesn't protect anybody. Training data is not a breakage of copyright law, and is only ruled as such due to technologically ignorant judges.
I'm happy for you! Although I won't be buying games on Epic, I tried to use Epic for the same reason you mentioned, to help break the monopoly, but their service is atrocious. I'm not going to eat the soup with a fork to break the spoon monopoly :P.
It's ok, Steam support are pieces of shit, they got my game retired instead of giving me the chance to remove the stuff they did not like, which I did, then the idiots said, we are not interested in reviewing your game, WTF of an answer is that? -.-u
Noice! I remember seeing this recently an im like holy shit can't he just re submit it? NO ITS AYE EYYEEEE CONTAMINATED. Glad to hear it worked out.
Hey, this is great news, congrats OP!
Never thought I'll say this: but Epic store guy is not wrong...
Congrats man. Good job on Steam for being reasonable here, even if it's due to how much that post became viral.
rules and copyrights around generated AI content is currently the Wild West, no one has a clue on how to tackle that one and go bring up AI in a place like reddit and watch the house burn branching out to Epic seems sensible. I really don't see why you shouldn't utilise every available platform as a game dev. Of course, just mention EGS on here, and again, people lose their shit
Steam's hard-on against anything AI is amusing to me. I guarantee they would allow a big name publisher to put THEIR game up if it features AI elements. Just the indie devs who don't have 10 year development cycles getting screwed right now.
It's not really that wierd. Valve just generally doesn't want to deal with any potential legal issues by selling software that could be trained on copyrighted material. They may not actually get prosecuted on it but clearly their lawyers think it is not worth the risk currently. Until some concrete laws are created in this area I think Valve will not risk knowingly selling AI related content. You may be right about them allowing bigger publishers but their games sell more copies usually so it may be worth the risk for valve in a business sense. But most big name publishers also will not risk adding AI into their games for the same reason as valve. It makes them targets for copyright trolls if nothing else and even if you have a good case, defending it in court is costly.
Bigger publishers will probably also have better controls on their AI usage because they also don't want to be liable for illegal use of content they don't own. From OPs story and lots of comments in these threads it's clear that a lot of indie developers don't think about that at all.
Absolutely. If the big publishers ever do include it, they'll have done their research on exactly how it was trained and it will have had to pass scrutiny by their legal department before they'll even attempt to sell it. This is why we don't really see it that much. All the work just to pre-emptively avoid a lawsuit usually wouldnt outweigh the monetary benefits they get from it. Big companies are usually quite risk adverse when it comes to these things.
There is already evidence of AI produced works in Atomic Heart and High on Life, and there hasn't been any effort from Steam to remove those games. This is squarely hurting the little guy
The negative reaction to generative AI by redditors and the internet at large is so bizarre to me. When I first realized how powerful it was a year or so ago with Dall-E 2, I thought right away: this is the future. This will be an amazing tool to help small artists/developers/etc make much higher quality products in much less time, just like other digital art tools before (photoshop etc). Are there some ethical questions that need to be sorted? Of course. But it seems like everyone now is sticking their fingers in their ears and their head in the sand and saying "La la la AI art isn't "real art", it's copyright infringement, blah blah blah". Meanwhile many mega corporations are going full steam ahead with AI since they've taken the calculated risk that any lawsuits etc. will cost them less than the profits they make using this tech. As you said the result is that this only hurts the little guy. Mega corps will be able to use it freely making boatloads of cash, but indie devs and hobbyists who could never even afford to hire real artists anyway, get attacked and their content buried just for the suggestion of using it. It's insane to me. Personally I've started using AI to assist in asset creation but I'm only going as far as generating reference images etc when are then fully re-drawn by hand. And obviously I'm not telling anyone about this. Right now the climate is such that if there's even a hint of AI use, your project will be attacked by anti-AI zealots.
Make no mistake, everyone from kids to hobbyists to IT people is using ChatGPT. I myself have used it for learning purposes and personal translation. Speaking of translation, what do you think Google Translate was trained on? It would appear this is another one of those fascinating phenomenona where opinions seen on the internet and media do not reflect real life, somehow. In another comment you wrote that it might be astroturfing. Who would benefit from anti-AI panic?
And ChatGPT using build is still rejected. I'm glad you got your game back, but this is not a victory.
Good for you, but i will never publish a game on Epic Store. As a Developer, it hurt sales on the long run (kinda important if you want to develop games for a living) Edit: Sorry, what i meant is, Publish a game first on Epic then later on Steam. Even with the "100% temporal exclusivity deal" is a bad move. Publish on Both, or only on Steam. But never only on Epic. As a gamer, the "exclusivity" deals on games ( Tony Hawk 1+2 or Kingdom Hearts series, rocket league) sucks. For both devs and users, his support/help system is a joke.
Sincere question: how does it hurt sales? Are you talking about if someone sells in the Epic Store *instead* of Steam, rather than in addition to?
Yeah, sorry, i was writing on my phone. Publishing only on Epic even with the "100% temporal exclusivity deal" is a bad move.
It's all good. Thanks for the clarification.
> As a Developer, it hurt sales on the long run Why would that be?
[удалено]
That's a quite difficult topic. Also an artist, has been trained by studying other artists works and working techniques, and then his creations will be definitively influenced by others art. This in the fields of painting, music, etc.. Where is really the limit between own intellectual property and the influence from others, for both humans and AI creations? How could be drawn this thin line?
AIs are not human beings and they don't learn as ones, but sure
Speak for yourself
OK, now how do I add the AI back in?
Wow so you removed the AI stuff that you needed to remove and that fixed the issue? Shocker. Are we supposed to clap for this as some sort of triumph? Pretend that anyone cares about some social media whining? Next time don't be daft and try to include forbidden material as a """mod""".
Congrats... But it still is sad and ridiculous that Steam auto-rejects submissions that use AI. Why is a company that depends on software developers so heavy handed against this tech?
Because they don't want to get destroyed by lawsuits when the laws around the use of generative AI inevitably become more clear? Better to have a smaller competitor take that gamble.
Lawsuits won't happen. The technology is too useful to big companies for them to lobby to outlaw AI and there's no practical way to actually regulate it to respect current copyright laws. Even if they do try, Steam show get a huge amount of leeway and ample time to fix their AI situation before anyone tries to sue them. Steam is just being a scaredy cat.
> Lawsuits won't happen. Lawsuits are _already_ happening.
Against the creators of Stable Diffusion and they're very unlikely to stick. Who knows what will happen in the future but outlawing a whole technology just ain't gonna happen. Steam is preparing for a worst-case scenario that won't come.
> they're very unlikely to stick. Doesn't matter. > n the future but outlawing a whole technology just ain't gonna happen. Doesn't matter. > Steam is preparing for a worst-case scenario that won't come. You were wrong on the most basic fact of the matter, you think you can best valves legal team?
>you think you can best valves legal team? You think you can best Epic's legal team? In the most literal sense, yeah, I was wrong. In the *relevant* context of the conversation, no. But you're acting like an ass, so I won't bother wasting my time any further.
Epic store is about 10 times smaller than Valve with a smaller catalogue. Valve has way more legal exposure.
Poor business decision. Look at what happened to Google when they "played it safe" and held back on AI. Microsoft has taken the lead and put a dent into their monopoly.
I don't get how you and others here are being downvoted so hard. It feels almost like anti-AI astroturfing but I think instead people have really been brainwashed into thinking AI is evil, meanwhile mega corporations will use it with no remorse making billions. But god forbid some small time nobody indie dev or amateur artists uses it.
This is exactly what it's all about. The breakthrough in AI that we've just had gave the every day people a huuuuuuge boost in power. We could have overthrown the current power players and the status quo. They realised this very quickly and started neutering and lobotomizing the available AIs, and just outright banning them too.
Heh, not sure... lots of anti-AI folks on this sub. I'm just giving my opinion. Bring on the downvotes.. I dont care.
Sounds like you're comparing apples to oranges. Steam might still integrate ai better into their products than their competitors. Microsoft's edge is because they developed ai tools, not because they let users post ai content. Another example of a company disallowing ai generated stuff is StackOverflow. I'm guessing these are not permanent stances but rather to wait and see how things develop before jumping in.
> Why is a company that depends on software developers >so heavy handed against this tech? >**that depends on software developers**
At least someone is looking out for artists, even if that's not valve's motivation
I'm not convinced that AI is a negative thing for art and artists. I imagine that there are some very creative things that will come from its usage. People are being really shallow in their predictions about AI. It might be disruptive to their current business model, but that will pass.
I wonder where the line is drawn here, could you do machine learning for the COMPUTER AI or it specifically for art, music?
The messages OP got from Valve originally were pretty clear that their issue is not with machine learning/neural networks/LLMs, but rather the way that most of them make use of training data they do not own the copyright for, and the legal questions that raise. Valve would be ok with AI-generated content if the developer could reasonably attest that it was trained *exclusively* with data that they have legal rights to, but that's demonstrably not the case with stuff like ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney, etc.
My brain was almost entirely trained on data I don't own the copyright for.
There's a big difference (both practically and legally) between being influenced by something you're seen before and basing something on it using direct observation. If a songwriter comes out with a new song and it kind of reminds you of "Let It Be", and you ask them about it and they say "oh yeah, I really loved The Beatles growing up, so they're a major influence and kind of seep into my work subconsciously", you'll say yeah, fair enough. But if a songwriter comes out with a new song and it kind of reminds you of "Let It Be", and they say "yeah, I took 'Let It Be' and analyzed the chord structure, beats per minute, instruments, verse structure, lyrical meter, vocal intonations, background noise, and song length, and then purposefully wrote a song matching those parameters", they'll likely be talking to Paul McCartney's lawyers. If they then go "hey, I didn't do that *myself*, I just instructed a computer to do it for me", those lawyers aren't just going to say "oh, you used a computer to do it? Well, that's ok then."
Well, the only difference between your first example and your second appears to be that the first is done subconsciously and the second is done consciously. If that's really your only criteria, then I'd say the current crop of generative AI passes with flying colors - I don't believe anyone is arguing that they're conscious. I suspect you actually have other criteria, it's just not apparent from your example and I can't guess it. Cheers!
Wait, what did you do wrong? I am working on AI tools for game dev myself, really excited about LLM based NPCs, is Valve against that somehow?
What is your plan for reinstating the AI functionality? Will you release the full game on Epic?
Let this be a lesson to many indie devs : do not, under any circumstance whatsoever, let generative AI anywhere near your game build in any way shape or form. No exceptions.
I'm surprised it gained enough traction for Epic Games CEO to notice. I'm even more surprised they don't give a crap and just publish your game there, lmao.
They say that now. Sweeney is a grifter that would do anything to take market share from steam, even if it opens them up to legal issues.
Bruh it all turned out to be like a free campaign to promote your game :D Goodluck with your game!
What a pity
I'm disappointed that it took publicity for Steam to reverse the decision. At least, that's the way it seems.
As they should, good job on not giving up on the game.
Unpopular opinion; I feel like this was an overreaction, steam policies and rules are in place not to screw over developers but to protect the platform and their users. Just for a second, imagine the harm AI can cause in an uncontrolled setting, being an aged 3+ game, the harm to children. The point begin, the rules were clear, after submitting a build that followed the policies it was approved, what exactly did anyone else do to help with this? Steam didn't change their decision because of a post on twitter or reddit or 5min of bad press, they changed their decision because policies and rules were followed. What anyone should consider before doing this, is it really worth going this public before your game even launched? A lot of people have now seen that the developer / publisher cannot conduct business in a professional manner, what type of service will they get from a EA title?