The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-sc...t-violation-is-the-developers-responsibility/

Valve is scrutinizing games with AI assets on Steam, says avoiding copyright violation 'is the developer's responsibility'​

There's no full, formal policy as of yet, but Steam's boundaries are starting to materialize.

The controversy around AI-generated content for videogames is starting to impact the biggest digital distribution platform on PC: an anonymous developer recently made a post on reddit (first spotted by Simon Carless) about the rejection of their game, claiming that "Valve is not willing to publish AI-generated content anymore." In a statement to PC Gamer and other publications, Valve elaborated that it is not opposed to generative tools as a concept, but instead takes the copyright concerns around them extremely seriously.

The developer says they tried to get a game approved on Steam about a month ago "with a few assets that were fairly obviously AI generated" and received the following response:

"While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, we cannot ship games for which the developer does not have all of the necessary rights.

"After reviewing, we have identified intellectual property in [Game Name Here] which appears to belong to one or more third parties. In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties. As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game."

The developer says Valve failed the build and offered an opportunity to re-submit with all AI-generated content removed. "I improved those pieces by hand," says the dev. "So there were no longer any obvious signs of AI, but my app was probably already flagged for AI generated content, so even after resubmitting it, my app was rejected."

Valve's response was another rejection, saying "we are declining to distribute your game since it’s unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data." Valve did, at least, offer the dev a refund of their submission fee.

"It seems like Valve doesn’t really have a standard approach to AI generated games yet," said the developer, "and I’ve seen several games up that even explicitly mention the use of AI."

In its statement to PC Gamer, Valve said that "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."

Valve did not directly confirm or deny that the story of the anonymous developer on Reddit was legitimate, but the content of Valve's statements to us and the rejection emails are pretty much in sync.

The fact that AI models are trained on datasets containing copyrighted material remains a legal grey area, and it doesn't help that many of the companies involved don't want to be upfront about just what exactly they're using for their datasets. A prompt-generated "science fiction cityscape" will be crafted from a slurry of untold thousands of human-drawn science fiction cityscapes, not parsed and reinterpreted by a human being, but scraped and frankensteined together by pattern-recognizing software. Those artists are often understandably none too happy about having their work used in this way.

Big rights holders are understandably not happy as well, and one of the test cases that may set a precedent will be Getty's lawsuit against Stability AI, which Getty alleges used over 12 million images "without permission [...] or compensation" to train AI software. But where the courts will land, in the US at least, remains a massive (and potentially very expensive) unknown.

Why might this worry Valve especially? The scale and size of Steam, and the simple fact it's a distribution platform, mean the potential liabilities for getting this wrong are incalculable. There are games that incorporate AI on Steam right now, but it may be that these are early exceptions and as the tech achieves more widespread adoption and begins running into more barriers and scrutiny.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-sc...t-violation-is-the-developers-responsibility/

Valve is scrutinizing games with AI assets on Steam, says avoiding copyright violation 'is the developer's responsibility'​

There's no full, formal policy as of yet, but Steam's boundaries are starting to materialize.

The controversy around AI-generated content for videogames is starting to impact the biggest digital distribution platform on PC: an anonymous developer recently made a post on reddit (first spotted by Simon Carless) about the rejection of their game, claiming that "Valve is not willing to publish AI-generated content anymore." In a statement to PC Gamer and other publications, Valve elaborated that it is not opposed to generative tools as a concept, but instead takes the copyright concerns around them extremely seriously.

The developer says they tried to get a game approved on Steam about a month ago "with a few assets that were fairly obviously AI generated" and received the following response:

"While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, we cannot ship games for which the developer does not have all of the necessary rights.

"After reviewing, we have identified intellectual property in [Game Name Here] which appears to belong to one or more third parties. In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties. As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game."

The developer says Valve failed the build and offered an opportunity to re-submit with all AI-generated content removed. "I improved those pieces by hand," says the dev. "So there were no longer any obvious signs of AI, but my app was probably already flagged for AI generated content, so even after resubmitting it, my app was rejected."

Valve's response was another rejection, saying "we are declining to distribute your game since it’s unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data." Valve did, at least, offer the dev a refund of their submission fee.

"It seems like Valve doesn’t really have a standard approach to AI generated games yet," said the developer, "and I’ve seen several games up that even explicitly mention the use of AI."

In its statement to PC Gamer, Valve said that "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."

Valve did not directly confirm or deny that the story of the anonymous developer on Reddit was legitimate, but the content of Valve's statements to us and the rejection emails are pretty much in sync.

The fact that AI models are trained on datasets containing copyrighted material remains a legal grey area, and it doesn't help that many of the companies involved don't want to be upfront about just what exactly they're using for their datasets. A prompt-generated "science fiction cityscape" will be crafted from a slurry of untold thousands of human-drawn science fiction cityscapes, not parsed and reinterpreted by a human being, but scraped and frankensteined together by pattern-recognizing software. Those artists are often understandably none too happy about having their work used in this way.

Big rights holders are understandably not happy as well, and one of the test cases that may set a precedent will be Getty's lawsuit against Stability AI, which Getty alleges used over 12 million images "without permission [...] or compensation" to train AI software. But where the courts will land, in the US at least, remains a massive (and potentially very expensive) unknown.

Why might this worry Valve especially? The scale and size of Steam, and the simple fact it's a distribution platform, mean the potential liabilities for getting this wrong are incalculable. There are games that incorporate AI on Steam right now, but it may be that these are early exceptions and as the tech achieves more widespread adoption and begins running into more barriers and scrutiny.

Nah. Preempted moral excuse when something happen. Valve will never be check games under that angle, it's too expensive.

 

[tritosine2k]

Good rug pull from Valve to coax people into "spatial computing". Now I tend to believe in their wearable display initiative & thank fuck Palmer isn't around.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-sends...es-off-to-the-great-trashcan-fire-in-the-sky/

Steam sends 90 low-effort asset-flips and bootleg games off to the great trashcan fire in the sky​

Valve giveth, and Valve taketh away.

Steam has removed a large clutch of games of various genres which all seem to have one thing in common: they were low effort shovelware. That might seem a slightly mean designation, but we've all seen the type of thing that this ban wave targeted. Extremely basic asset-flipped titles with popular words in the name, such as Zombie Defense TD or Play Football, out there just to try and make a few bucks from the unwary.

Ever since Valve opened up Steam this has and will continue to be a problem, the inevitable downside of what is inarguably an otherwise good policy. Steam's biggest issue these days, for both developers and players, is discoverability, and the sheer mass of shovelware on there is a big part of that. While this ban wave appears to have removed 90 games total (per SteamDb's tracking of removed apps, available via Discord), that's still a drop in the ocean.

Not all of these titles were removed for the same reason. I doubt 3D Pacman was an official Bandai Namco title (kind of amazing it got on there in the first place) and Dong Nguyen would no doubt be surprised that Flappy Bird was apparently available too.

As well as the games themselves, most of the developer accounts involved also seem to have been banned. Which is unambiguously good for the wider ecosystem. Obviously everyone has to start somewhere, and developers learning their trade often make games using easily available assets and in an established style. Most developers don't then go on to try and flog their juvenilia though, and the veneer of legitimacy Steam adds to even the dodgiest looking title means that no doubt players have been suckered into buying titles like these in the past.

There's clearly something going on behind-the-scenes at Steam right now. It had been a while since the last ban wave like this, and it follows hot on the heels of Valve beginning to pay a much closer eye to games with AI-created assets on Steam (this is not, as widely reported, an outright ban). There was a big front-facing change recently, too, with lots of new functionality (some of which was exploited by ingenious Counter-Strike players for ez wins).

 

[Maxie]

damn pretty based. if only they banned disco elysium too and sent assassins after those who bought it

 

[Modron]

So I finally updated my steam to the newest ui was there some way to change it back to the previous one?

 

[Tacgnol]

So I finally updated my steam to the newest ui was there some way to change it back to the previous one?

Nope, they've switched to a new rendering engine. Also removed the ability to use themes/skins annoyingly.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

they just went chromium.

 

[Tacgnol]

they just went chromium.

I thought they were already chromium-based, just using an old version of the rendering engine.

 

[Harthwain]

They fixed the issue of not being able to select "Exit Steam" when right-clicking the application.

 

[Anthedon]

I don't mind the new look, but certain functions just take way longer than previously.

 

[Zewp]

I could live with the new UI, if it actually worked. But almost a month after the rollout it is still very broken. Clearly another case of testing on prod.

 

[whydoibother]

Clearly another case of testing on prod.

Top G behavior. Put some hair on that soy chest.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

I for one am glad Steam now mimics a real steam engine and takes several minutes to get fully up and running! Seriously it brings my system to a near halt trying to boot it.

 

[Just Locus]

 

[Endemic]

I could live with the new UI, if it actually worked. But almost a month after the rollout it is still very broken. Clearly another case of testing on prod.

I think the Steam (webkit-based) browser is a bigger problem in that regard.

 

[JamesDixon]

Steam now uses Electron for everything.

I don't mind it actually and I love the smooth animations.

 

[Naraya]

Oh god, Electron...

Out of curiosity (since the last time I had Steam client installed was in... 2016 I think?) - how much RAM does it eat up? ALL OF IT?

 

[JamesDixon]

Oh god, Electron...

Out of curiosity (since the last time I had Steam client installed was in... 2016 I think?) - how much RAM does it eat up? ALL OF IT?

For me it's about 500 MB, but I have 20 GB installed.

 

[Baron Dupek]

That means Win7 is viable again?

New prices thresholds
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/3700310527377680732
https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/

• A product priced at the $0.99 USD tier could discount up to 50% off
• A product priced at $1.99 USD tier could discount up to 75% off
• A product priced at $4.99 USD tier could discount up to 90% off

 

[Don Peste]

Argentine Peso +536%

adiós honey, I'm going out to buy Opposing Force at 75% off

 

[Just Locus]

I could live with the new UI, if it actually worked.

I haven't ran into any issues with the new UI so far, the biggest change they've made is with the UI and I think the new UI is nothing but a net positive.

With the old overlay, you had the weird grey buttons at the bottom, you had like 4 different methods of interaction. The random grey buttons at the bottom, the huge panels, with different styled buttons, then underlined hyperlinks on the top right, It's much easier to add customization when you design it from the ground up, so making the overlay consistent, with the buttons along the bottom, making the windows you can open have less margins to obstruct your view, The default being blank with just the buttons in the new one is better as well it shows you what is open, uses icons that represent what you want at a glance, The slider isn't completely wide anymore.
The only thing that mostly stayed the same was the friends' menu, but that's because it's the same menu used outside of the overlay too. The achievement window doesn't just open a fucking web page of your profile with the achievements anymore - not to mention the Notes feature is very handy in general, whereas in the past you had to alt-tab from your game and into your notepad and cause the game to sometimes fuck up or hell some older games don't even have alt-tab support, so making it so you can add in notes right off the bat from the Overlay is great.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Epic getting more desperate. They are insisting that the console wars come to the PC. If free games for a several years doesn't do it, then maybe this will.

Boost your revenue share from 88% to 100% with Epic First Run​

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/features/epic-first-run-program

Epic First Run is an opt-in exclusivity program that offers third-party developers 100% net revenue of user spending on eligible products in their first six months of exclusivity on the Epic Games Store. When the exclusivity period ends, the revenue share captured from user spending will revert to 88%/12%.

 

[JamesDixon]

Epic getting more desperate. They are insisting that the console wars come to the PC. If free games for a several years doesn't do it, then maybe this will.

Boost your revenue share from 88% to 100% with Epic First Run​

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/features/epic-first-run-program

Epic First Run is an opt-in exclusivity program that offers third-party developers 100% net revenue of user spending on eligible products in their first six months of exclusivity on the Epic Games Store. When the exclusivity period ends, the revenue share captured from user spending will revert to 88%/12%.

I use EPIC only for the free games. Sweeny can go suck Chinese communist cock for all I care.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

EGS would have never been viable if it wasn't for the billion of retards playing Fortnite.