Comment on Big Walk Used AI In 'The Final Stretch' Of Development, Kicking Off Intense Awards Debate
pory@lemmy.world 3 days agoValve’s disclosure policy is very specific. It’s about visual assets (models and textures), audio (music and VA), script writing (not explicitly translation or subtitling either), and that’s it. There is no requirement to disclose AI-assisted, AI-researched, or fully AI-generated code.
The assets stuff also is specifically about the final game. If a studio uses AI for placeholders and doesn’t ship them in the actual Steam game, it’s not required to disclose that process.
AI generated code does need to be disclosed actually, per store.steampowered.com/…/3862463747997849618. It’s unclear to me exactly where the line is drawn between what needs to be disclosed through that and using AI for research like this, but IMO this is probably removed enough from the final product that it shouldn’t need to be disclosed.
To be clear, fuck ai, but examples like the one given are fair enough that I can’t really be mad at them for using it.
This article is from 2024.
The actual form (not visible to the public) has changed in January 2026: linkedin.com/…/simoncarless_interestingly-pc-vide…
Where on that page does it say code needs to be disclosed?
The most relevant bit I found is this, and that is not about code:
Pre-Generated: Any kind of content (art/code/sound/etc) created with the help of AI tools during development.
Code is mentioned directly in the bit you quoted.
Welp, I’m stupid I guess. I do recall House House saying that code did not have to be disclosed.
Looking at the current Steam documentation, rather than that linked article from 2024, no mention of “code” is made (I used Ctrl+f to make sure this time).
Directly due to the immediately obvious grey areas regarding “ai assisted code design” (including tools like Unity and Unreal moving towards directly including AI “assistance” in the engine’s main toolkit), Steam’s policy is currently (and was at the time of Big Walk’s release) that only AI-generated assets must be disclosed.
Kojichan@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Seems like it’s just punishing devs that know they used AI for something not typically considered “AI use”, but are honest enough to admit it.
Would be nice to see what parts were tagged with AI so people could make their own judgements.
pory@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Remember, this Big Walk scenario specifically isn’t about Steam disclosure or the wider debate on what “AI use” in code/game dev is or if that use is ethical/acceptable. The IGF’s rules for award eligibility do define chatbot-assisted troubleshooting as AI use, and that “AI use” means ineligibility for the award.
By the rules of the contest, House House isn’t qualified for the award. Issues about the ease of cheating this rule are criticisms of the IGF.