Steam AI disclosure
Steam AI disclosure is the system Valve uses to have developers report generative AI use in games sold on Steam. Developers fill in a generative AI section of the Steamworks Content Survey before release. Valve uses the answers in its pre-release review and shows much of the developer's text to buyers in an "AI Generated Content Disclosure" section on the store page [5][7]. The system started on 9 January 2024, about six months after press reports that Valve was rejecting games containing AI-generated art over copyright doubts [2][3][5]. In January 2026 Valve reworded the survey so that AI tools used only for development efficiency, such as code helpers, fall outside it; the focus is now content that ships with the game and is consumed by players [7][9][10].
The label has become common. Independent counts put AI disclosures on roughly 8% of the whole Steam catalog by November 2025, and on about 30% of games released in the first half of 2026 [15][17]. It is also contested: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has argued since November 2025 that such labels make no sense for game stores and, in October 2026, called the requirement "abhorrent" [20][23].
Background: the 2023 rejections
On 6 June 2023 a developer posting as u/potterharry97 in the r/aigamedev subreddit wrote that Valve had rejected a game containing "2-3 assets/sprites" that were "admittedly obviously AI generated" [1]. The developer posted the text of two Valve review messages. The first said Valve could not ship the game while it contained the 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." The second, sent after the developer reworked the art, declined to distribute the game "since it's unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data" and offered to refund the app-submission fee [1].
The post drew wide coverage at the end of June 2023 [2][4]. In a statement given to Eurogamer and other outlets, Valve said it was "continuing to learn about AI" and that "there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models." It added: "Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion. As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process" [2][3]. Valve said developers could use AI technologies "with appropriate commercial licenses" but "can not infringe on existing copyrights," and that it would refund normally non-refundable submission credits in these cases [2][3]. TechCrunch wrote at the time that the policy as stated "basically amounts to a blanket ban on AI-generated assets in games" [4].
The legal question Valve pointed to concerns copyright in AI output and in training data. The US Copyright Office issued registration guidance for works containing AI-generated material in 2023, published Part 2 of its AI report (on the copyrightability of generative AI outputs) on 29 January 2025, and released a pre-publication version of Part 3 on 9 May 2025 [30]. The Copyright and AI article covers that law in detail.
The January 2024 policy
Valve announced the system in a Steamworks Development post titled "AI Content on Steam," published on 9 January 2024 Pacific time (10 January UTC) [5]. The post said that after "spending the last few months learning more about this space and talking with game developers," Valve was changing how it handled games using AI and that the change "will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use it" [5].
The post set out the following elements:
| Element | What Valve announced |
|---|---|
| Content Survey section | A new AI disclosure section in which developers "describe how you are using AI in the development and execution of your game" [5] |
| Pre-Generated content | "Any kind of content (art/code/sound/etc) created with the help of AI tools during development," reviewed like non-AI content against the Steam Distribution Agreement promise that a game has no illegal or infringing content and matches its marketing [5] |
| Live-Generated content | Content "created with the help of AI tools while the game is running"; developers must also tell Valve "what kind of guardrails" they use so the AI does not generate illegal content [5] |
| Store page | Valve said it would "include much of your disclosure on the Steam store page for your game, so customers can also understand how the game uses AI" [5] |
| Player reports | A new system, used through the in-game Steam overlay, for players to report illegal content in games with Live-Generated AI content [5] |
| Exclusion | "Adult Only Sexual Content that is created with Live-Generated AI," which Valve said it was "unable to release" at that time [5] |
Valve said it would "continue to learn from the games being submitted to Steam, and the legal progress around AI, and will revisit this decision when necessary" [5]. GamingOnLinux reported the change the same day and noted it gave players "a clear way to spot" AI games [6].
The January 2026 rewording
On 16 January 2026 GameDiscoverCo posted on Bluesky that "Steam just rewrote - but did NOT remove - its 'does your game have AI in it?' dev disclosure form," and that Valve was "making it clearer the 'AI powered tools' (like code helpers) don't need citing" [9]. GamingOnLinux, Notebookcheck and Dexerto reported the change between 17 and 19 January 2026 [10][11][12].
The new text, which the public Steamworks documentation page carries as of 30 October 2026, reads in part [7]:
"We are aware that many modern game development environments have AI powered tools built into them. Efficiency gains through the use of these tools is not the focus of this section. Instead, it is concerned with the use of AI in creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players. This includes content such as artwork, sound, narrative, localization, etc."
The definition of Pre-Generated content also changed. The 2024 wording covered "Any kind of content (art/code/sound/etc) created with the help of AI tools during development" [5]. The current wording covers "Any kind of content that ships with your game and is consumed by players that is created with the help of AI tools during development" [7]. The Live-Generated definition and the guardrail requirement are unchanged [7]. Archived copies of the public documentation page still showed the 2024 wording in late April 2026, so the documentation was updated some time after the form itself [8].
According to Notebookcheck and Dexerto, the revised form still asks developers to disclose AI used for content that ships with the game, including store page text and marketing materials, and to write a description that appears on the store page; games that generate content during play are flagged separately [11][12]. A commenter on the GamingOnLinux report pointed out that "code" no longer appears in Valve's list of example content types [10].
The current documentation also has an FAQ entry on Live-Generated AI services that incur per-use costs, suggesting developers fold the cost into the game price or charge for it through microtransactions, a subscription or a DLC, and an entry explaining that Valve does not "want to ship Live-Generated AI Adult Only Sexual Content at this time" because of "legal and customer risks" [7].
How the disclosure appears
A disclosed game's store page has a section headed "AI Generated Content Disclosure," introduced by the line "The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:" followed by the developer's own text [13][31]. Because the text is free-form, disclosures vary widely in length and detail [13][19].
One example is Just Farm, a farming game from Dasi Games listed on Steam (app 5341880) with a planned November 2026 release. Its disclosure, as of 30 October 2026, reads: "Generative AI tools were used during development to assist in the production of pre-generated visual and audio content. All content was reviewed and integrated by the developer before inclusion in the game. No generative AI is used during gameplay" [31]. On 27 October 2026 a Reddit user posting as u/SirKnighty, who linked the game's Steam page as their own, wrote that Claude (Claude Opus 5.5) in Claude Code "wrote basically all of the C#," and that they used other AI tools for concept art, textures and 3D models [32]. The disclosure does not mention code. Valve's 2026 wording says efficiency gains from AI-powered development tools are "not the focus" of the survey, and the How To Market A Game blog read this as meaning Valve "does not require code disclosures" [7][19]. In the same thread the developer said Steam's label "at this point makes no sense" because AI tools will become standard [32].
Scale
The figures below come from third parties who scraped Steam store pages or databases, and each counts only what developers chose to disclose.
| Date | Source | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| April 2024 | Ichiro Lambe, Totally Human Media | Lambe's first scripted count of disclosures; Lambe later recalled it as "around 1,000" titles, about 1.1% of Steam [13][14] |
| 13 July 2025 | Totally Human Media | 7,818 titles, 7% of about 114,126; "a little under 20%" of 2025 releases to date [14] |
| 6 November 2025 | Totally Human Media | 10,258 titles, 8% of all Steam games; an estimated combined gross of about $660 million by the Boxleiter review-count method [15] |
| June 2026 | Eurogamer via SteamDB, reported by Engadget | 1,704 of 8,700 Steam Next Fest participants tagged as using generative AI (19.5%) [18] |
| 13 July 2026 | Sulka Haro, census of 53,597 games released July 2023 to July 2026 | Roughly one in three new games carries a disclosure by mid-2026 [16]; PC Gamer reported Haro's yearly shares as 10.9% (2024), 19.9% (2025) and 30.8% (2026 to July) [17] |
| 21 October 2026 | How To Market A Game blog, October 2026 Steam Next Fest | Of 7,240 games, 2 of the top 25 demos by concurrent players disclosed AI, against 35% of the 6,942 games ranked outside the top 100 [19] |
Lambe, a former Valve employee who helped set up Steam Labs, wrote that most disclosures describe "small, peripheral tasks" such as store page images, backgrounds, icons or placeholder voice lines [15]. His July 2025 analysis grouped uses into visual asset generation (in about 60% of disclosures), audio, text and narrative, marketing materials and code [14]. Haro, a co-founder of the studio behind Pax Dei, estimated that AI-flagged launches rose from about 13 a month before the requirement to about 530 a month, while other launches grew from about 1,030 to about 1,320 a month [16][17]. He also found that 22% of significant-revenue AI games added the flag after release, and that these additions "cluster tightly around Valve's January 2026 policy rewrite" [16]. All of these revenue figures rest on review-count estimates, which the authors describe as rough [15][16].
The How To Market A Game analysis added a note, quoting the revised Steamworks text, that Valve "does not require code disclosures," so the share of disclosures mentioning code reflects developers volunteering it [19].
Criticism from Tim Sweeney
On 13 November 2025 Matt Workman posted on X that "Steam and all digital marketplaces need to drop the 'Made with AI' label" [26]. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, replied on 26 November 2025: "Agreed. 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" [20].
In a PC Gamer interview published on 24 June 2026, Sweeney said developers who list on Steam "have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game," and added: "I think it's really irresponsible of Valve" [22].
On 23 October 2026, quoting another user's complaint about the AI disclosure on a Steam Next Fest demo, Workman posted that "the premise of an AI Generated Content Disclosure is ABSURD in 2026" [27]. Sweeney replied: "Forcing developers to write a political statement to be used against them by the hate mob they're helping organize is abhorrent" [23]. Later that day, answering a comparison with age ratings, he wrote that "these AI statements are just as partisan as mandatory political essays" [24]. On 25 October he wrote that "the primary use of both categories of disclosures" (AI disclosures and the political-opinion disclosures he said some users wanted) "is to drive cancel campaigns against games" and that "blocking free choice to adopt productive technology is a political act" [25]. Notebookcheck reported on 25 October 2026 that Valve had yet to respond to Sweeney's repeated criticism [34].
Defenders and the player view
Supporters of the label frame it as consumer information. Destructoid wrote that the disclosures let buyers "know for sure before spending their money on something they might not support" [28]. PC Gamer argued that potentially infringing content "alone justifies the existence of AI labelling" [21]. When the system launched, GamingOnLinux welcomed it as a way for players who want to avoid AI games to identify them [6].
Some developers who use AI object to the label. The Just Farm developer called it pointless now that AI tools are becoming standard and wrote that many developers "have to hide it, minimize it or lie about not using it" [32]; Sweeney called it a "Scarlet Letter" [22]. The How To Market A Game blog cited a GameDiscoverCo survey in which code helper tools such as Claude Code were by far the most often named "acceptable" use of AI [19].
Other storefronts
itch.io added an AI Disclosure section to project edit pages in November 2024 [29]. Its quality guidelines ask creators to "accurately tag your project if it contains materials produced by generative AI," say that projects declaring generative AI appear on an "AI Assisted" browse page, and state that disclosure is "strictly" enforced for game asset pages "due to legal ambiguity around rights associated with Generative AI content," with possible delisting for untagged asset pages [33]. Traditional game AI such as pathfinding or procedural level generation does not need tagging [33]. PC Gamer noted in November 2025 that the Epic Games Store displayed no AI label [21].
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References
- ^1 ^2u/potterharry97, "Valve is not willing to publish games with AI generated content anymore" - Reddit r/aigamedev, June 6, 2023
- ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4Valve appear to be banning games with AI art on Steam (updated) - GamingOnLinux, June 30, 2023
- ^1 ^2 ^3Victoria Phillips Kennedy, "Valve says AI-generated content policy goal is 'not to discourage the use of it on Steam'" - Eurogamer, July 3, 2023
- ^1 ^2Devin Coldewey, "Valve responds to claims it has banned AI-generated games from Steam" - TechCrunch, July 3, 2023
- ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^7 ^8 ^9 ^10 ^11 ^12AI Content on Steam - Steamworks Development, Steam News, January 9, 2024
- ^1 ^2Valve announces new rules for games with AI Content on Steam - GamingOnLinux, January 10, 2024
- ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^7Content Survey - Steamworks Documentation, Valve (accessed October 30, 2026)
- ^Content Survey - Steamworks Documentation, archived copy of April 29, 2026 - Internet Archive
- ^1 ^2GameDiscoverCo, post on Steam's revised AI disclosure form - Bluesky, January 16, 2026
- ^1 ^2 ^3Valve tweak Steam AI disclosure form for developers to clarify it's for content consumed by players - GamingOnLinux, January 17, 2026
- ^1 ^2Steam updates AI disclosure form, requiring developers to report visible and in-game AI but not background tools - Notebookcheck, January 17, 2026
- ^1 ^2Joe Pring, "Steam makes major change to AI rules for games" - Dexerto, January 19, 2026
- ^1 ^2 ^3Ichiro Lambe, "The Surprising Number of Steam Games that Use GenAI" - Totally Human Media, April 24, 2024
- ^1 ^2 ^3Ichiro Lambe, "The NEW Surprising Number of Steam Games that Use GenAI" - Totally Human Media, July 13, 2025
- ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4Ichiro Lambe, "Games With AI Disclosures Have Grossed an Estimated $660M on Steam" - Totally Human Media, November 6, 2025
- ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4Sulka Haro, "Three years of AI on Steam" - Substack, July 13, 2026
- ^1 ^2 ^3Shaun Prescott, "Steam Week in Review: Take cover, because it looks like more than half of new Steam games will have an AI-disclosure by 2027-2028" - PC Gamer, July 20, 2026
- ^Anna Washenko, "Around a fifth of Steam Next Fest demos have a generative AI disclosure" - Engadget, June 16, 2026
- ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5How sloppy is the October 2026 Steam Next Fest? - How To Market A Game, October 21, 2026
- ^1 ^2Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic), reply on AI tags for game stores - X, November 26, 2025
- ^1 ^2Andy Chalk, "Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI" - PC Gamer, November 26, 2025
- ^1 ^2Tim Clark, "Tim Sweeney on the future of games, AI, and whether Valve will ever join forces with Epic" - PC Gamer, June 24, 2026
- ^1 ^2Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic), reply calling the disclosure "abhorrent" - X, October 23, 2026
- ^Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic), reply comparing AI statements with age ratings - X, October 23, 2026
- ^Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic), reply saying "blocking free choice to adopt productive technology is a political act" - X, October 25, 2026
- ^Matt Workman (@mattworkman), post on "Made with AI" labels - X, November 13, 2025
- ^Matt Workman (@mattworkman), post on AI Generated Content Disclosures - X, October 23, 2026
- ^Pedro Peres, "Vibe-coding final boss Tim Sweeney attacks Steam's AI disclosure: 'abhorrent'" - Destructoid, October 24, 2026
- ^itch.io store now requires AI generated content disclosures for assets - GamingOnLinux, November 21, 2024
- ^Copyright and Artificial Intelligence - U.S. Copyright Office (accessed October 30, 2026)
- ^1 ^2Just Farm - Steam store page, Dasi Games (accessed October 30, 2026)
- ^1 ^2 ^3u/SirKnighty, "My game got removed from gamedev subs for using AI, so here's exactly how I made it" - Reddit r/accelerate, October 27, 2026
- ^1 ^2Quality guidelines: Accurately tag your use of generative AI - itch.io Creator Documentation (accessed October 30, 2026)
- ^Epic CEO Tim Sweeney lambasts "abhorrent" Steam AI Disclosure Policy claiming labels double as "political statement" - Notebookcheck, October 25, 2026
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Cite this page: AI Wiki. "Steam AI disclosure." aiwiki.ai, updated 30 Oct 2026, fact-checked 30 Oct 2026. CC BY 4.0. https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/steam_ai_disclosure