At an event for indie game developers in Korea, Valve representatives gave advice on how to cope with the deluge of AI slop pouring onto Steam, and especially a new spate of threatening communications sent to indie developers telling them their games will be cloned unless they pay a ransom. The responses, while useful for a few, were perhaps more than a little tone deaf to the realities of independent development.
As reported by Inven Global, Valve’s Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson attended Steam Indie Connect on October 27 to speak to developers about the current state of Steam. And their key message was that “Launch feels like the finish line, but it’s actually the starting line.” In other words, the way to beat those trying to rip you off is to continually work on your game, adding new content and features, such that the knock-offs can’t keep up.
Giardino said he’d not heard of the examples of extortion, where developers receive threatening messages demanding money to prevent AI clones of their games from being released alongside the original, actual game, and suggests this is a matter for law enforcement rather than a gaming store. He then, according to Inven Global, went to some lengths to try to suggest AI is not the core problem. Pointing out that clone games existed before genAI (which, sure, but not like this), and saying that “we don’t want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn’t use,” Giardino’s two suggestions are to build community and to pursue “continuous improvement” of their games.
Both are clearly valuable techniques for developers, but “continuous improvement” is a luxury that’s often only afforded to those who already have finances in place and aren’t, for instance, having their sales cut into by AI clones of their games. Many indies will have been working for little or no money in the build-up to release, with the hope of recouping costs through sales. Giardino instead suggests, “Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality and creativity that stem from your own perspective.” Again, this assumes devs have the resources to be able to do this, and simultaneously dismisses the swathes of indie games that are very deliberately and carefully built around a single, unique mechanic.
Public demonstration
Regarding the influx of AI guff during last week’s Next Fest, which had twice the number of demos as the previous event, Marc Wilkinson shared equally interesting but ultimately unhelpful comments. It seems that Next Fest deliberately shows demos at random to Steam users for the first couple of days of the week-long event, and then on the third day begins curating the suggestions based on the player’s preferences. Referencing media coverage of how this Next Fest was drowning in AI garbage, Inven Global says Wilkinson pointed out “many articles complaining about a flood of low-quality games were written based solely on those first two days.” Well, yes, that would be the case, given the press will report on the event when it begins, and not halfway through. Thankfully he added, “We are fully aware of the situation, and a significant number of people are thinking about how to solve this problem.”
It remains very frustrating how out of touch Valve appears to be with the indie developers from which it so heavily profits, as always suggesting the solutions to the problems its store creates lie with the developers and not with Valve itself. “Just keep developing your game forever” is not a practical suggestion for most when we’re currently seeing AI knock-offs launching before the games they’re ripping off are even out.
