Steam is starting to give in. Valve has rewritten its rules and is now significantly more tolerant of games that rely on AI.

Generative artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly embedded in the video game business. More and more studios are turning to these tools to speed up production, create art assets, write dialogue, or even build systems the player is meant to interact with. But that progress has also dragged in legal uncertainty, ethical friction, and copyright exposure – issues the world’s biggest storefronts can’t simply ignore.

Steam‘s New AI Rules

With adoption rising and anxiety spreading, Valve has moved to update Steam’s policies so the store can keep pace with a technology that’s proving extremely hard to contain. Up to now, Valve’s position on generative AI has been notably murky. On the one hand, Steam’s operators rejected certain games because they couldn’t be confident the AI tools used by studios weren’t trained on copyrighted material. That made shipping on Steam feel like a gamble, with some projects approved and others stopped cold.

Valve has acknowledged the inconsistency and wants a single, unified approach to generative AI, so it has rolled out a major policy revision – something Simon Carless at GameDiscoverCo highlighted. Where AI-powered releases once felt like a minefield on Steam, Valve is now pushing the door open, cautiously but clearly. Gabe Newell’s platform will permit AI use in development as long as studios disclose, in detail, how those tools were used, via a mandatory statement displayed on every product page. That transparency notice is split into two sections.

First comes pre-generated content, where the studio must affirm that AI was not used to produce anything illegal or infringing on copyright.

A Dedicated Reporting Tool for AI Content

Then there’s real-time generated content, and that’s where things get more complicated. Valve wants to know whether a game can generate material while we play, and it will require studios to add technical guardrails so the AI cannot produce anything illegal or that violates the store’s code of conduct. To keep enforcement from being purely theoretical, Steam has also introduced a new reporting channel specifically aimed at AI-generated content.

Players will be able to use this tool to flag suspected misuse of AI. That means if a game’s AI system outputs something inappropriate, illegal, or that infringes third-party rights, users can report it directly to Valve through a dedicated menu option. In effect, Steam is handing part of the oversight burden to a community that isn’t exactly comfortable with generative AI becoming standard practice.

Still, there’s one line Valve says it won’t cross: adult sexual content generated by AI in real time. Games built around that will remain banned on the platform, largely to avoid legal loopholes and moderation headaches. Put simply, Steam is becoming more permissive, but it’s doing so carefully, with an emphasis on honest, transparent disclosure of AI use.

Steam has also pointed to just how quickly generative AI has spread across games. In 2024, only 1% of titles used AI, but by 2025 that figure had jumped to 20% across areas like UI, audio, text, mechanics, and content generation, with more than 7,000 games acknowledging its use. That surge has convinced many that Valve is allowing these tools too early and with too light a touch. 2026 could be the year generative AI truly consolidates, and it’s starting to look unavoidable.

Source: 3djuegos