Tim Sweeney Reckons Steam’s AI Label Is a ‘Scarlet Letter’. Steam’s Slop-Clogged Queue Begs to Differ

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has had another crack at Steam’s AI disclosure label, and this time he’s calling it a “scarlet letter”. In an interview with GamesBeat, he said the label is being “used toxically” to attack games over how they were made rather than whether they’re any good.

He also reckons big studios that don’t go all-in on AI will be “left behind and rendered uneconomical”. Timing is everything, because Steam is currently so swamped with new submissions that indie devs are missing their own launch dates.

What Sweeney said

• On the label: “the AI disclosure has become a scarlet letter, which drives attacks on games not because of their quality, but simply because of the choices of how they were developed.”
• On who uses it: he says it is “absolutely being used by anti-AI advocates to undermine the reputations of developers and the viability of their projects.”
• On transparency: when GamesBeat suggested the label is there to inform players, Sweeney said he doesn’t “buy it in the slightest” and pointed to Steam’s user reviews instead.
• On adoption: large-scale teams that don’t adopt AI “will absolutely be left behind”, and he reckons AI is already giving four times the productivity in many areas, maybe ten times soon.
• On the backlash: he describes a “resistance movement” that tries to “bully developers” by attacking individuals and review-bombing games, and says studios have to “power through this”.

None of this is new for Sweeney. He’s been going after Valve’s AI rules on X for weeks, calling them “abhorrent” and politically motivated, according to GamesRadar.

What Steam’s label actually asks for

Valve’s rules live in the Steamworks content survey that every game fills in before release. It’s narrower than Sweeney makes it sound.

• Not covered: AI tools used just to work faster, like coding assistants. Valve says “efficiency gains” from AI built into dev tools are “not the focus”.
• Pre-generated content: art, sound, writing, localisation and anything else made with AI that ships in the game and that players actually see or hear.
• Live-generated content: anything AI makes while the game is running. Devs also have to explain the guardrails stopping it from spitting out illegal content.
• What the label isn’t: a quality rating. Valve still reviews AI content against the same rules as everything else.

Meanwhile, Steam is drowning

The bit Sweeney didn’t dwell on is that Steam has a slop problem right now. Valve admitted on 4 November NZ time that it is “running a little behind” on build reviews, taking up to 12 business days instead of the usual three to five.

• Why it’s slow: Valve blames “a significant increase in submissions” and having to re-review games that fail. It hasn’t blamed AI directly.
• What devs reckon: several indie studios blame a flood of AI slop that keeps failing review and getting resubmitted, according to The Verge, Kotaku and GameSpot.
• Next Fest: October’s Steam Next Fest had 7,240 games, up 65.2% on June, according to How to Market a Game data cited by The Verge.
• The AI share: a Reddit user’s count found 49.9% of games released since Valve started asking for disclosures carry one, The Verge reports. That’s a single unofficial tally, not Valve data.
• The fallout: games like Food Devils and Australia Did It have missed launch dates while stuck in the queue, per The Verge and GameSpot.

Not everyone’s buying it

Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek hit back at Sweeney in a YouTube video, according to GamesRadar. He reportedly told him to “act as a player yourself for a moment and go, ‘What would I want to know about a game?'”

Developers aren’t sold either. GamesBeat notes a GDC survey of 2,600 game industry workers landed the day before the interview, and GamesRadar says 55% of respondents reckoned AI is having a negative impact on the industry.

Our take

The bloke who runs Steam’s biggest rival store reckons Steam’s consumer label is the real problem. Shocking stuff. Telling players what’s in the thing they’re paying for isn’t a hate campaign, it’s an ingredients list, and if your game’s good the label won’t sink it.

And if AI is the four-times productivity miracle Sweeney says it is, someone should tell the poor buggers waiting two weeks in Valve’s queue behind a mountain of prompted garbage. We’ve watched Big Walk get dragged over a sliver of AI code and Pearl Abyss go all-in anyway, so this fight isn’t going anywhere.

Keep up with Valve’s latest on our Steam page, and tell us whether that AI label actually changes what you buy in the GetRekt Discord.

Sources

• GamesBeat: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney predicts AI revolution in gaming (exclusive interview)
• GamesRadar+: Tim Sweeney says Steam’s AI disclosure is “unfair to developers who use AI to make good games”
• Steamworks Documentation: Content Survey (official)
• Game Developer: Valve warns of slower Steam approvals
• The Verge: Indie games are missing launch dates because Steam is backed up
• GameSpot: Steam’s growing review backlog has cost another game its launch date