Valve Removes Games Using AI-Generated Art from Steam Due to Potential Copyright Issues

Developers have recently reported having their games that make use of AI-generated art removed from Steam and being blocked from releasing new games with AI-generated art on the platform (via Reddit). In a response to IGN, Valve has revealed its reasoning for removing these games and blocking future releases that make use of the technology.

In its statement, Valve essentially says that, rather than removing these games for their use of a technology, it was instead more concerned about issues related to copyright and. While the company doesn’t want to discourage the use of AI-generation, it wants to ensure that developers have the rights to art being used to train the AI.

“We are continuing to learn about AI, the ways it can be used in game development, and how to factor it in to our process for reviewing games submitted for distribution on Steam,” Valve said in its statement.

“Our priority, as always, is to try to ship as many of the titles we receive as we can. The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music. In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer’s responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game.

“We know it is a constantly evolving tech, and our goal is not to discourage the use of it on Steam; instead, we’re working through how to integrate it into our already-existing review policies. 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.

“We welcome and encourage innovation, and AI technology is bound to create new and exciting experiences in gaming. While developers can use these AI technologies in their work with appropriate commercial licenses, they can not infringe on existing copyrights.”

Valve’s decision comes in light of several developers noticing that their games that make use of AI-generated art were being removed from Steam. While Valve doesn’t outright ban the use of AI technologies like it does games based on the blockchain, the company has taken these steps seemingly to prevent headaches related to copyright and ownership of the art that was being used to train the AI as a preemptive move.