The NEW Surprising Number of Steam Games that Use GenAI — Totally Human Media
www.totallyhuman.io
external-link
A year ago, I poked around Steam to see how many game developers were disclosing usage of Generative AI . It was around 1,000, which seemed like a lot to me at the time. If memory serves, that was about 1.1% of the entire Steam library, which has since seen 20,000+ more titles appear. I've been fol
Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
222M

The way that valves AI tag works is kind of a problem.

There is no subtlety to it at all, if you use AI in any capacity during the development of the game you need to declare it via that tag yet all the tag then does is say “AI in this game”, but there’s a big difference between having the AI develop the entire story or produce all of the artwork, and having AI write boilerplate camera controls for a farming simulator.

exu
link
fedilink
English
132M

I agree that having more degrees of usage would be useful, but erring on the side of caution and declaring any AI use as a first step is better than doing nothing.

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
-42M

Okay so there is this whole arguement going on about The Altars how apparently a tiny piece of background art has AI generated text in it. Personally I feel that’s absolutely fine, as otherwise it would have just been Lorem Ipsum, and really doesn’t need to be declared but technically, under the strictest interpretation of that tag, it should be declared even though you can’t even see it unless you zoom in.

I would very much like valved actually come up with a concrete policy rather than a vague one-line statement.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

With how many games are released on Steam, how can AI be quantified and enforced?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

E.g. Does using Intellisense need to be declared?

The_Decryptor
link
fedilink
English
22M

Would syntax highlighting?

KubeRoot
link
fedilink
English
22M

What? It shows up as a footer under the description, and inside is the game developer’s description of how they used AI. Look at Stellaris for example, I remember they claim to use it minimally (in very vague words), but they certainly get to say their piece.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

Does using copilot to code count as “made with AI” too?

qevlarr
link
fedilink
English
52M

Of course, that’s why we need better guidelines. It’s like beauty ads that have to declare they used Photoshop. Every photo is edited if you don’t make it clear what you mean

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
102M

Why should something not be disclosed just because its common?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

It builds indifference to the disclaimer when it’s too general. The California cancer label is a good example.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

But its not too general. Steam allows you to give a description of the use of AI

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
-12M

The problem is you end up with the tag nonetheless.

The description doesn’t apply to the label, no matter how much explanation you provide you’re still going to devalue your game with the AI label so why would any developer admit to that?

The whole thing is just mind numbingly stupid.

Whoever thought this up needs to get out more and actually experience the human condition.

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
-32M

Because I don’t think anybody actually cares that much if you use small pieces of AI code. What people don’t want is everything being AI produced.

Right now though the AI tag is been applied to both scenarios with no distinction.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

But there is a difference

Steam allows you to describe how you used AI

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
12M

Does it as far as I can tell if you have the tag you have the tag. There’s no description next to it that says this guy used AI but only for irrelevant background stuff

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-1
edit-2
2M

Because it becomes meaningless noise instead of useful information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

Even if it is ignored by a lot of people, its better than not knowing at all

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
0
edit-2
2M

Okay great so I’ll use AI to develop every aspect of my game and then just not declare it. After all, there’s no enforcement so why wouldn’t I do that?

The problem is the tag has literally no reason to exist, no one would admit to using AI even if they did so what the bloody hell was the point?

It’s like you didn’t even bother to read the Wikipedia article because it explains exactly why this sort of thing doesn’t work

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

Wouldnt the thing described in the wikipedia article not apply because of the description steam allows you to give and because 20% is not that high of a percentage?

Wouldnt the article linked on the post contradict your argument that there is no reason to add a way to disclose AI use because nobody is going to do that? There are a lot of games that admit to the use of AI

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a disclosure, but an uncertain threshold that might be as low as “a developer accepted a copilot completion suggestion one time” isn’t useful. You just end up with a prop65 situation where it’s slapped on everything and basically meaningless.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

Steam allows you to describe the use of AI

Also, if you know you are making a game for steam, why not just ignore the copilot suggestion? I dont think it will increase the time to make a game by that much time

qevlarr
link
fedilink
English
12M

I didn’t say that. It should be more specific to have any meaning to the consumer.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

But it has meaning to some consumers. Not everyone can tell that an image has been majorly edited or created using a program created to replicate pictures

qevlarr
link
fedilink
English
-12M

You mean the idea that if wasn’t created completely by people? It matters to you that some unpaid intern wasn’t forced to work overtime writing the most boring bullshit scaffolding code?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

That kind of behavior should be disclosed too

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

Yeah, I suspect the AI tag should apply to even more games then.

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
22M

Hence the problem

qevlarr
link
fedilink
English
212M

Steam should combat shovelware whether it’s AI slop or human slop

Gerowen
link
fedilink
English
322M

Honestly, maybe I’m an old fart, but I refuse to knowingly buy games if they use AI instead of paying talented people to create works of art.

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
72M

Well that’s the problem isn’t it it depends entirely on what the AI is being used for. The truth is we don’t know because Steam doesn’t tell us.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

deleted by creator

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
02M

That’s their fault. They decided on ambiguous definition of AI.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

What if talented artists use AI to enhance their original work?

lastweakness
link
fedilink
English
82M

An interesting use case for me in programming has been prototyping. Stuff I otherwise wouldn’t have the time to experiment with suddenly becomes something feasible. And then, based on what I learnt while having the AI build the prototype, I can build the actual thing I want to build. So far, it has worked out pretty nicely for me.

Gerowen
link
fedilink
English
32M

If you’re AI upscaling a low resolution texture or something I can see that. But if I want a computer to rip off somebody else’s work and regurgitate a story based on some amalgamation of its questionably sourced training data, I can do that on my own for free.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
572M

How many of the ~6,818 titles now disclosing generative AI use were already on Steam in 2024?

I.E. are a lot of these just games that had already been released, updating their disclosure statements based on Valve’s new rules?

The article says 1/5 games released this year use it. I’m not sure if ~34,000 games have released on Steam in the last year

🍉 Albert 🍉
link
fedilink
English
202M

what I want with AI games: Free conversations with NPCs who react to your actions.

what I don’t want, endless slop

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-12M

Same, so used as a tool to help textures load better, to make the game function better, great.

If you pay an actor for their voice, why not ai infinite dialogue? Nobody is losing work because a human literally cannot do that job.

🍉 Albert 🍉
link
fedilink
English
22M

without that tech they would have hired a voice actor anyways, or what would be better, get a voice actor, create a character, have him voice a shit ton of lines with different emotions, timber, whispers… fine tune a model in that character, that would make every character sound unique and much less robotic.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-12M

How is it possible to hire a voice actor to make up infinite lines based on my specific questions? For every player? It isn’t

🍉 Albert 🍉
link
fedilink
English
22M

not infinite lines, just enough to find tune a model for a specific character.

also, i mean proper voice actors, the ones that can make countless distinct characters with different voices and accents.

i don’t mean buying someone’s voice, i mean hiring a voice actor to make up a specific character and have ownership of that character.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

I don’t know if you have heard about the game AI2U: With You 'Til The End that’s basically a Escape the room game where a Girl kidnapped you and you need to escape. You can talk to the AI girl about any bullshit, interact and show them items in your inventory etc. If you make them upset they will maybe kill you, or they can like you so much that they will help you escape. I had a lot of fun with this game.

🍉 Albert 🍉
link
fedilink
English
22M

thanks, looks like a cool concept

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
4
edit-2
1M

deleted by creator

🍉 Albert 🍉
link
fedilink
English
52M

instead of writing pages of dialogue, write a lot of back story, personality, interests, knowledge, info they have, quests they have to share, sample of how they talk…

fine tune models… this way each character would sound unique, rather than standard chat gpt.

a good prototype would be about a village with about a dozen of NPCs.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
5
edit-2
1M

deleted by creator

JackbyDev
link
fedilink
English
12M

I feel you, but imagine if a game dev trained their own LLM exclusively on their own content. Only their own dialogue and lore. Could be fascinating then. Not something I wanna see a lot of work out into at the expense of other things, but could be interesting.

And to reiterate, I genuinely mean only trained on data the studio has a copyright on already.

kat
link
fedilink
English
12M

Yes pls

🍉 Albert 🍉
link
fedilink
English
42M

another use, draw assets for a age of empires like game. then generate a diffusion model on them. now you can make rows of houses and non of them will be identical and all will fit in the art style.

same things with textures, no more repeating textures.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
452M

I read a story recently about how a graphic designer realized they couldn’t compete anymore unless they used generative AI, because everybody else was. What they described wasn’t generating an image and then using that directly. They said that they used it during the time when they’re mocking up their idea.

They used to go out and take photographs to use as a basis for their sketches, especially for backgrounds. So it would be a real thing that they either found or set up, then take pictures. Then, the pictures would be used as a template for the art.

But with generative AI, all of that preliminary work can be done in seconds by feeding it a prompt.

When you think about it in these terms, it’s unlikely that many non-indie games going forward will be made without the use of any generative AI.

Similarly, it’s likely that it will be used extensively for quality checking text.

When you add in the crazy pressure that game developers are under, it’s likely that they’ll use generative AI much more extensively, even if their company forbids it. But the companies just want to make money. They’ll use it as much as they think they can get away with, because it’s cheaper.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
172M

What I dread is a game lengthening dialog using AI. Some folks mistake quantity for quality, and make their games unbeatingly tedious. Just like games that lean heavily on procedurally generated content.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

Funnily enough, I’m excited for new dialog in video games using generative AI. It would be nice for random NPCs to not have the same 3 recorded voicelines, but to actually change what they say based on what’s happening around them.

But that’s obviously a limited use for AI. It should definitely not be used to lengthen the game and clutter up storylines as you’re kinda describing.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

For background NPC, sure nothing lost, at least nothing lost that isn’t already being lost in the “put big exclamations/question marks over NPCs with something actually important to say”. Once upon a time there was a nice experience of evaluating NPC text to determine if there’s an interesting side quest or at least an interesting side story playing out in the dialog. But with the push for more credible ambient NPC instead of big cities with like 25 people living in them that has been significantly lost anyway.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

My personal issue with the idea of “infinite NPC dialogue” is that it defeats the purpose of minor NPCs. They’re just there to give you a nudge in the right direction or give flavor text (“Bandit activity sure has been picking up!” or “The king? He’s probably in his castle to the west.”). Turning them into a chatbot just means a player potentially spending all their time there with nothing to gain that they couldn’t get from Character.AI instead of playing the game.

I’m also curious about the implementation. AI API use isn’t free so you’d likely be requiring players to pay if they don’t meet the hardware requirements to host locally.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

Yeah, already things were getting harder to follow as people went to address the “strangely sparse cities” problem by flooding the environment with way more stuff aiming for more plausible, but it’s more than you can ever consume and it’s generally hard to know when you are actually supposed to pay attention or not. Finding interesting side quests among the flavor text used to be a thing, but now the flavor text is just overwhelmingly too much for that.

Of course, there’s recognition of that and games start putting indications of “THIS RANDOM NPC HAS SOMETHING TO SAY” bright over anyone vaguely important. So I suppose in that context NPC flavor text vomit might as well be AI since it’s been clearly indicated as stuff to ignore as background noise. Still disappointed in the decline of “is this important or not” determination being organic.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
202M

I think the biggest problem is that steam is like 80+% shovelware and it’s no surprise that a lot of those are using a bunch of AI generated “artwork.” IMO it’s no worse than a shitty asset flip and as others have pointed out, there are a lot of really cool things you could do with generative AI in game dev that aren’t just slapping shitty pictures all over your product, and this doesn’t capture the nuance. I would also assume that this number is lower than reality since it relies on tagging, and nobody is accurately tagging shitty scam games with less than a hundred downloads.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
172M

I figure if people can’t be bothered to develop the games then I can’t be bothered to play them either.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

I always wondered if I could play Skyrim but with an option to say or ask custom things to NPCs

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

I think someone made a mod for that because of course they did.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

They absolutely did, awhile ago too. It’s the Mantella mod. Used to be a nightmare to set up but now it’s good. Pretty fun talking to characters.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

Is it bad that I know what the Mantella is in Elder Scrolls lore?

JackbyDev
link
fedilink
English
22M

There was a question about Daedric Princes in a trivia game I went to recently. They gave four of them and you had to match what they were the prince of. I felt confident about two but only got one right. Of course I got Shegorath right.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
2
edit-2
2M

What was the one you messed up? I’m gonna guess either mephala or meridia since they are kinda weird, either that or the answer was Magnus who is technically a daedra though not usually lumped in with the rest.

JackbyDev
link
fedilink
English
2
edit-2
2M

I thought Sanguine or whatever was the murder one but I remembered wrong. They gave the four categories and we had to match them. I thought Malacath might be based on Malakith from War Hammer and that seemed pretty hedonistic but it was a 50/50. (Well, I thought it was a 50/50 lol.) The last was Mephala who I thought might be lies. And if you know the lore well you probably already knew Mephala was the fourth they mentioned lol.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
262M

That thumbnail’s got some hand body horror going on.

dolphin
link
fedilink
English
32M

I would charge extra to do her manicure.

ThrowawayOnLemmy
link
fedilink
English
52M

That’s a pretty big jump in a very short amount of time.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
132M

I think it’s mostly garbage shovelware

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

What exactly does this mean?

If you use an LLM to help with the code does that count? Or is this just about writing and art assets?

I’m also wondering if using AI to make concept art / placeholder text and then replacing it later counts?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

Yes

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
72M

I have an acquaintance who is a lead Dev at an Indie studio where he is developing and training an NPC behaviour engine with thousands of responses and actions. Think fallout or mass effect response wheel, where 2-4 dialogue choices have 2-4 outcomes, but instead you can tell the NPC anything and it will have a different response. Or it will do different things whether you hand it a book, give it book, throw a potion at it or cast a healing spell on it or hug it. It could also change tactics if you tried to snipe it vs if you went at it melee. All of these are trained and accounted for and made in a way where it can be built into any game using a certain engine. And this is just aimed at generic npcs, not companions.

So if this is what disclosure of the use of generative AI means, I’m not against it. I think there is nuance to what can be done with it. Using final art assets? It’s theft. Writing? Theft. NPC behaviour? Definitely not.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

Strange to not qualify the last one as theft. If it’s out putting code, it’s from the same kind of training set. If it’s out putting character responses, they’re from that same literary training data.

Kay Ohtie
link
fedilink
English
12M

Open-source training texts intended for pairing with your intended style of output have been around for far longer than OpenAI has been grifting data from the entire Internet and collected book works. It came across like that’s what they’re using, not some shit off HuffingFarce that was built off of AO3 and Harry Potter.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

Procedural generation of content in games is by no means a new thing. Even if the end state isn’t completely procedurally generated, odds are a version of the asset was initially and a human touched it up as necessary. When you’re talking about large asset sets (open world and/or large maps, tons of textures, lots of weapons, etc) odds are they weren’t all 100% hand made. Could you imagine making the topology map and placing things like trees in something like RDR2?

That’s not to say all this automation is necessary a good thing. It almost feels like we’re slowly chugging through a second industrial revolution, but this time for white collar workers. I know that I tell myself that I would rather spend my time solving problems vs doing “menial” work and have written a ton of automation to remove menial work from my job. I do wonder if problem solving will become at least somewhat menial in the future.

Is procedural generation part of what they must disclose as being AI generated, tho? The assets used usually are still made by hand, even if all the tree and rock (and whatever else) assets were placed procedurally using RNG or some sort of algorithm.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
02M

Procedural generation is just an earlier form of AI that’s been demystified and commercialized as a positive thing. The current generative tools aren’t at that level of adoption yet.

The_Decryptor
link
fedilink
English
12M

Procedural generation is just an earlier form of AI that’s been demystified and commercialized as a positive thing.

That is such a broad generalisation that it makes the term useless.

Is Minesweeper AI then? It uses procedural generation to generate the play area. Is Minecraft chunk generation AI?

Is perlin noise AI?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

AI is a meaningless term as weli. It generally has meant cutting edge computer research subjects.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

Not sure, but I would suspect that AI output would likely be very similar to procedural generation output in that it will need some massaging before it can be used as a final asset.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

If I see some AI Slop thumbnail for your shit ass ripoff game then you can bet your ass I’ll never play it let alone ever pay money for it.

paraphrand
link
fedilink
English
42M

I wonder if games with UGC report they have AI content. (Games that allow for outside assets and code)

Echo Dot
link
fedilink
English
22M

Are algorithms the same as AI?

Create a post

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform
By type
By games
Language specific
  • 1 user online
  • 313 users / day
  • 759 users / week
  • 2.17K users / month
  • 7.18K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 7.25K Posts
  • 148K Comments
  • Modlog