Valve admits Steam has an AI slop and cloning problem, but says 'we don't want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn't use'
News Source
β’Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:37:24 +0000
π° What Happened
Valve has admitted that Steam has a problem with low-effort AI games and copycat releases. Two Valve staff, Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson, spoke at the Steam Indie Connect event in Busan, South Korea. They said some developers have even been threatened: pay up, or a copied version of your game will ship first.
Valve said it does not want to act as a gatekeeper that tells developers which tools they can use. Instead it points to how Steam Next Fest works, showing games in a random order for the first two days so smaller titles get a fair shot.
π The Backstory
Steam has no strict review queue, so almost anyone can publish a game. That openness helped small studios for years. Now cheap AI tools let people make many games very fast. Nearly 23,000 games have hit Steam in 2026 already, and this year's Next Fest carried more than 8,000 demos. Valve's advice to developers is to build a community and keep adding to a game so a copy cannot simply match it.
π― Why It Matters
If you buy games on Steam, finding the good ones is getting harder. For small developers, a clone can now steal their launch before they earn anything.
Valve has admitted that Steam has a problem with low-effort AI games and copycat releases. Two Valve staff, Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson, spoke at the Steam Indie Connect event in Busan, South Korea. They said some developers have even been threatened: pay up, or a copied version of your game will ship first.
Valve said it does not want to act as a gatekeeper that tells developers which tools they can use. Instead it points to how Steam Next Fest works, showing games in a random order for the first two days so smaller titles get a fair shot.
Steam has no strict review queue, so almost anyone can publish a game. That openness helped small studios for years. Now cheap AI tools let people make many games very fast. Nearly 23,000 games have hit Steam in 2026 already, and this year's Next Fest carried more than 8,000 demos. Valve's advice to developers is to build a community and keep adding to a game so a copy cannot simply match it.
If you buy games on Steam, finding the good ones is getting harder. For small developers, a clone can now steal their launch before they earn anything.