Valve Responds as AI-Generated Games Flood Steam, Raising Concerns for Indie Developers

Steam has become increasingly crowded, with thousands of new games released each year. Now, a growing availability of AI tools is adding another challenge for developers who want their games to stand out. These tools can help you make games faster, but they also help people clone existing ideas and get competing products out there. 

Valve representatives Tom Gardiner and Mark Wilson took questions about the growing number of games on the platform during a discussion at Steam Indie Connect on October 27. One developer raised a particularly disturbing problem, with claims that indie studios have been sent extortion emails threatening to clone their games with AI and release the copies first if they didn’t pay.

These threats put smaller developers in a difficult position since they often lack the resources to defend their work against people trying to profit from their ideas. As AI tools become more commonplace, the idea that someone could quickly recreate a game’s core mechanics is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

The situation is like ransomware, but the threat mechanism is different.

Instead of locking someone out of their files and demanding payment, the people behind these emails threaten to create a competing game before the original developer can release theirs. Some of these threats could be bluffs, but increasingly capable AI models make it easier to believe that someone could follow through. Gardiner explained that Valve does not want to act as a gatekeeper by deciding which development tools creators can use. He also noted that cloning has existed in games long before AI became mainstream, as developers have always looked at what works and tried to replicate that experience.

For example, Steam Next Fest allows players to play games that are being released, giving other developers a chance to see how their mechanics work and learn what trends are hot. AI has sped up this existing behavior, making it easier to copy ideas and potentially release competing games much faster.

Wilson told developers to keep building out their games instead of just focusing on a single mechanic that someone else could easily copy. He suggested adding features, personality, and creative ingredients that show the developer’s own point of view. Valve also encouraged developers who were seeing potential game-cloning attempts to contact the company so it could investigate and offer assistance where possible. 

But adding more features does not completely solve the problem. You can come up with an original idea in private and release it without telling much about your project ahead of time, but taking part in public events like Steam Next Fest makes protecting your work more difficult. If you think of an interesting mechanic or a new gameplay idea, other developers may see it and potentially copy the core of that idea with AI. Those imitations could then appear on Steam or competing storefronts, including the PlayStation Store and Nintendo eShop.

Valve also discussed how Steam Next Fest handles game visibility throughout the event.

During the first two days, games are presented to players on a virtually random basis before personalized recommendations become more prominent. These recommendations are meant to surface games that individual players will enjoy and buy more. Valve wants to use better discovery systems to help ensure original games are shown to people who want to see them, rather than copied ideas that get the most exposure.

To get a sense of the scale of the problem, look at how many games are taking part in Steam Next Fest. The most recent event was said to have had over 8,000 games, with about 20% having an AI disclosure label. That’s about 1,600 games, but the label doesn’t necessarily tell you how much AI was used in the development. 

Steam’s AI disclosure requirements thus raise the question of what developers should disclose. “Using a tool like Google’s Gemini to organize business emails is not the same as using AI to create game assets or automate development work. Without understanding how the technology contributes to each project, the differences make it hard to read the disclosure figures.

Then there are the overall release numbers on Steam. Just a few years ago, the platform reportedly had between 16,000 and 17,000 games released each year, but by October 2026, that number had already climbed to around 23,000. That is based on games released to date this year, with more titles expected before December. 

Valve has a tricky balancing act, as the open marketplace on Steam has helped make it the top destination for PC gaming.

The company doesn't sound like it wants to go on a massive rampage to purge every game made with AI. But it still needs to help players distinguish between good releases and cheap knockoffs. Cheaply made games aren’t new to Steam, though AI could make them quicker and cheaper to make.

In the end Valve needs to find ways to improve game discovery without giving up on its fairly open approach to publishing. Better recommendations and investigations of reported cloning attempts could help but may not be enough if the number of releases continues to increase.

Standard artificial intelligence can provide smaller studios the tools to realize their ideas and save money, but it can also be used to clone existing ideas and fill storefronts with cheap games. For both developers and players, the challenge will be ensuring that original games remain visible as AI-assisted development becomes more common.