Valve allegedly bans Steam game for including AI-generated art

Valve may have made an AI policy quietly known by banning a game due to murkiness surrounding the legal ownership of AI-generated art.

Redditor potterharry97 claims they submitted a game to Valve with “fairly obviously AI generated” assets, sparking conversation both on Twitter and within the AI game dev subreddit. The original Reddit post was made on June 3, but it’s only now just started gaining traction on Twitter.

Potterharry97 shared a statement they claim was sent to them by Valve after they submitted a game for Steam consideration with “2-3 assets/sprites that were admittedly obviously AI generated from the hands.”

If this is a legitimate statement, it seems Valve is taking no chances, as it responded that unless the game developer could confirm they “own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets,” the game would be banned. Potterharry97 “improved those pieces by hand,” but Valve apparently still rejected the build, saying that “it’s unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data.”

Potterharry97 claims Valve also stated that while app credits usually aren’t refunded, it would make an exception in this case, meaning they can still attempt to publish a game that follows Valve’s rules at no extra cost. The user wrote on Reddit, though, that they’ll be attempting to get the game up on Itch.io instead.

It should be noted that potterharry97 never mentions the name of their game, and the only other Reddit post made from their account is one to r/legaladvicecanada. They were looking into setting up an indie studio to distance themselves from the end product.

“I’d prefer people googling my name and future employers being unable to find out i developed this game,” the user said. It is unclear if this is the same game mentioned on the AI game dev subreddit.

If Valve did really ban the game, this is a pretty devasting blow for people looking to use AI to generate assets for their games. It seems Valve is trying to future-proof itself, likely suspecting there will be some legal issues cropping up if any AI-generated assets are found to be in violation of IP and copyright law. One commenter wrote that “violations of copyright are penalized in an absurdly harsh manner. A few thousand sales by valve could result in liability that exceeds the value of the entire company.”

On the AI game dev subreddit, one user commented, “this cant possibly be sustainable for Steam.” Steam already adds over 34 games to its platform per day.

Potterharry97 said they were “a little baffled” by Valve’s purported response, and one commenter had some choice words: “You were flagged for using AI generated assets and were asked to either remove them or prove you have clear legal usage rights to these assets. You instead chose to disguise your assets and skirt past the rules. Now your surprised your game was rejected?”

On Twitter, users are writing that Steam should put out an official statement regarding AI assets, and others are simply replying “W,” indicating their support of Valve’s decision.

Dot Esports has reached out to both Valve and potterharry97 for comment and to attempt to verify the authenticity of Valve’s supposed messages.