I love how Valve's strategy is basically just 'don't piss off the customers and occasionally do something super fucking cool', while everyone else in the space seems to be cutting off their nose to spite their face
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Benefits of not beinp publicly traded.
Exactly, just what I wanted to say
Valve also gutted their LGBTQIA+ content a few months back. And they have had a MASSIVE nazi infestation basically since they set up message boards because Gabe Newell is infamously libertarian.
So... chill a bit with the glazing. They are better in a lot of ways but they are not our friends.
You are aware the game removals are due to MasterCard and Visa right?
At best you can argue that Valve will not protect you. Hence, not your friend.
Epic Games CEO and Fortnite boss Tim Sweeney:
everyone will have to 'fess up to using it eventually as AI will become "involved in nearly all future production."
Once again Epic games act like the moronic villains they are.
It's sad how huge companies are basically their CEO. CEO makes decisions and talks - that's the company. Even if the hundreds and thousands of workers below them [largely] disagree and would do differently.
This is especially bad in USA, but usually a bit better in European countries that have representation of the unions on the board.
everyone will have to 'fess up to using it eventually as AI will become "involved in nearly all future production.
True enough! No reason not to say it up front, right?
Look y'all, not 1-in-20 people give a flying fuck about AI like we do on here.
It’s literally a plagiarism machine, so I completely agree with them.
I want to know if AI was used or not to make a game; it's a deciding factor for me, as I will not buy anything built with AI. No matter if it's a placeholder or not, as "AI" is an ethical and environmental concern for me, every prompt, and usage makes things worse. For me, I don't want to send a message that using "AI" is okay for a dev studio by buying the product. I'll exclude them my purchasing choices to send the right message.
I want to know if AI was used or not to make a game; it’s a deciding factor for me, as I will not buy anything built with AI. No matter if it’s a placeholder or not
Same. Once they dipped into the convenience, I can't believe they wouldn't use it again when they're in a rush, crunching, etc.
I don't even touch games with AI-generated store assets, they just feel so cringeworthy. If you can't afford an artist, just use assets from the game ffs.
Based
"Calls."
There's only one call, and it's coming from Tim Sweeny at Epic. It's just more of his usual yelling at clouds, because he's got a pathological hate-on for anyone else who runs a storefont, including Apple and Google but especially Valve. He hasn't made any positive contribution to the world since about 1998, and at this point we can all safely discard his opinion with nothing of value being lost. He wants to allow AI slime on his own platform because he thinks it'll make him free money, but maybe he ought to worry about the smell coming from his own house before he goes around trying to dictate at others how they should run theirs.
It's so unfunny that the only one to contest Valve on PC monopoly is Tim Fortnite, who seemingly does the worst job everywhere yet still can still afford it. It's almost like Gaben himself created a perfect villain for his company, so it'd never be criticized.
Gog (and to an extent, itch) are also competing with steam but while they might not be coming close to their market share they don’t draw anywhere near the ire that epic does and just similarly just rely on their strengths.
Your comment just made me realize I did a kind of GOG holiday sale shopping spree this year after having not done a steam holiday sale purchase in like a decade.
And the majority of it was having cheap easy drm-free access to some very good and very old games. Like yeah I know I have my ISO of the TIE Fighter collector's cd-rom somewhere around here, but if I can permanently have legit drm-free access to all versions of the game for just a few dollars, then supporting the business enabling that is a no brainer.
He wants to allow AI slime on his own platform
Don't forget the ~~blatant scams called~~ crypto games! He proudly announced Epic Games Store would happily sell games centered around NFTs and crypto after Valve said they wouldn't allow it.
How many reasons to overthrow and kill the CEOs do we need
I think what's important in this drama is that, despite their evil monopoly shit they're guilty of, Valve really does do the right thing sometimes to win consumers. Gamers want AI disclosures, even if devs don't.
That's why it's not surprising to see that statement from Sweeny, and why it's not surprising that people still hate the Epic Games Store.
There's nothing evil in Steam monopoly. Their evil thing is gambling.
Disclosure is good, but it would be useful to be granular and clear.
Games could use ai for interactive dialogue or content generation and it would be really cool.
Games could run models like olmo 3 which are completely open source, and that wouldn’t be bad in my opinion.
Ai textures probably make sense too depending on context.
It would be funny if a game used the base tier OpenAI api and your wizard started slipping some ads into his dialogue.
It's like hard to draw a line as well. If I take a picture with my phone today of the city I live in and use it in a game, the phone applies some AI filters automatically.
Agree 100%. It is just Disclosure, if you use AI for voice lines on a robot character but the game is good then disclosing that "this game used ai during creation" isnt a bad thing, you used a tool for a tool to help make your game. I dont think disclosure hurts you.
If your game is a simple asset swap of a unity demo and you used 10 prompts to generate all the story, dialogue and sky boxes then disclousing you used ai is simple a branding iron on a pile of shit. The branding iron aint changing the smell of your pile.
There is a lot of inbetween these 2 extreams, but the consumer havung more information in the buying process is not a bad thing.
That needs just two words:
Thank you.
Slopification
LOL This is gonna catch on. I've seen things that this describes.
Gabe wins the internet once again.
Wasn’t Gabe, but it was an artist for Valve.

A king's victory is won by his soldiers
(/j they're not monolithic or synonymous)
It's a pity other platforms, especially social media / video platforms don't require full disclosure of use of AI. It might allow a lot of AI slop and misinformation to be eradicated, downvoted, or at least call itself out.
All the nuance is lost in these discussions. It's something else when you're pushing slop made 100% with AI, and something else if you're using AI for mundane stuff like secondary voice lines in ARC Raiders for example