Steam is Secretly Applying Ban Hammer to Games with AI Assist on Them

AI is now a part of our lives, even if we like it or not. Just like how mobile phones or smartphones got into our lives, artificial intelligence is now around everyone and gets mixed into every single action we take. While some people take the assistance of AI to a good degree, most of the users are trying to fill in the gaps that they cannot fill by themselves. Such as creating music, writing articles, finishing up the rest of the image and the list goes on. The usage of AI was okay to some extent but its excessive usage nowadays is driving people mad, like the people at Steam.

The appearance of AI does not only stop on arts though, in many games, we can see some touch of AI “magic” too, with recent examples being included in Grand Theft Auto: Trilogy - The Remaster. The team behind the remaster knew how to properly port the assets from the old games to the new engine, however, they opted for the help of AI and were faced with a huge backlash. Another example included the creator of the legendary point-and-click adventure game, Myst, to use AI tools to help him settle the assets. The team gained a huge sum of donations through Kickstarter, but fans backed off when the creator forwarded the information about using AI to cut down the rough edges.

While this problem of abusing AI still persists, would there be a way to completely stop this movement? It seems like the game giant, Valve, has come up with a solution that suits the best current situation. Well-known game streaming service Steam has brought up this topic to their in-house developers and now they are clearly scanning through all games that are published and submitted to see if they include any form of AI usage. If the developer happens to use any AI advancement within copyright infringement, they will be given the green light to keep on their work. However, there is some bad news if the developer does not own the rights for modifying the content. The result of using AI on music, text, or graphical altering, will result in a ban and the content will be removed from Steam’s shelves.

 

Of course, this had positive feedback from players and users who clearly want to see developers putting real effort into their titles instead of rushing to finish their projects. Steam does not only punish the developers who wanted to get fame or recognition the short way around, but by taking these actions, they also encourage people to keep the ban factor in their mind before committing to breaking the rules. But how exactly they are planning to take care of the matter? It is very simple, just fighting fire with fire. By developing its own AI tool, it will detect faulty edits or AI usage in a very short time and report it to the authorities. Considering this measure taken by Valve to counter AI-based work efforts, other game streaming services also should follow the same path.

In reality, nobody wants to sit through a fake game with a made-up storyline and cliché characters pulled from a neural network. Most people are terrified about the names once considered quality becoming very drab with the inclusion of AI. Despite the outcries, companies still push the idea of implementing artificial intelligence's so-called advancements and create a very stressful atmosphere between consumers and their will to actually support the dev team. To calm the whole storm down, both developers and publishers need to take a step down and think thoroughly about their actions.

Atilla Turan
Editor, NoobFeed