Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Blasts Valve AI Content Rules As Irresponsible
However, Tim Sweeney also has a business to run, and his comments during the interview are obviously in line with a businessman who wants developers and consumers to more readily embrace AI as Unreal Engine 6 looks to do the same. During the interview, Sweeney asserts that Steam's mandatory AI disclosure policy is "irresponsible" and will make it more difficult for developers to compete.
The way Tim Sweeney frames mandatory AI disclosure is that developers who make games without the tools are doomed to fail against those who do, and that requiring the disclosure serves as a scarlet letter, potentially dooming games developed with AI to fail. The problem with this premise is that by its own logic, you must develop games with AI to win, but if you do, you're doomed to fail on Steam. Not only are these ideas mutually-exclusive, but that's not how things are playing out in the real world.
For a game bearing the "scarlet letter" at launch, ARC Raiders has done astoundingly well.
The launch and success of Expedition 33 and ARC Raiders, both developed with Unreal Engine 5 and labeled with AI disclosures on Steam, heavily contradicts this narrative. Negative public sentiment around the use of AI even in those cases has done nothing to prevent their success. A real "scarlet letter" would have killed both of these games, especially with ARC having launched with the disclosure from the get-go.
There's also a rather obvious elephant in the room: the decades of successful game releases we've seen before generative AI was even a part of the conversation. The idea that game development must continuously be more complex and costly is rooted in AAA development and ignores the ongoing success of releases that compete perfectly fine without relying on generative AI. Even the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind the upcoming pre-order behemoth Grand Theft Auto VI, lambasts the idea that AI can create hits like it or that the game is anything but hand-crafted.
A broader look at the PC Gamer interview also paints a contradictory picture. While Sweeney is lambasting Valve for a policy with broad support from its customer base, Sweeney also salivates at the idea that Steam could join Epic's "Team Open" while admitting that "It's now clear that nobody's going to end up with an absolute monopoly over gaming."
So, is Valve an irresponsible tyrant dooming developers to fail by requiring AI disclosures or is Steam "a pretty sweet business" Epic "want(s) nothing more" than to collaborate with on "Team Open"?
This isn't to say that Team Open isn't a good idea. Sweeney's vision of broad interoperability between games and their ecosystems would certainly have its benefits. The issue is what incentive, if any, the likes of Valve, Nintendo, Sony, or Xbox have to collaborate with Epic.
