Steam's AI disclosures are akin to "forcing developers to list their voting history", says man who must hate seeing eggs virtue signal that they're free-range

Tim Sweeney's throwing a wobbler in the supermarket

How could someone do this to you, fruit, meat, and other foods on the shelves of this shop? You've been forced, in a horrific crime against the companies responsible for you, to reveal some details about how you were produced. No, this isn't reasonable information to offer a would-be purchaser, so that they can feel more comfortable and confident in knowing what they're about to spend their hard-earned money on. It's a bat signal for the anti-battery farming hate mobs and is robbing innocent food producers of their ability to rake in cash without having to reveal some basic info about their products. You might as well stick "mandatory political essays" on the packaging of frozen peas!

This, I imagine based on recent comments he's made about Steam's requirement that games made using generative AI disclose that via a brief blurb on their store pages, is how Tim Sweeney feels every time he goes to stock up his cupboards. Since declaring that Epic are going all-in on genAI and unveiling a new vibe-coded Epic Games Launcher, the Sweens has been pro-AI posting with reckless abandon. On one hand, eeewwwwww, on the other, it's a chance for the rest of us to think about what it might be a good idea for games to disclose beyond any genAI use.

Yep, fooled you. This isn't going to be 400 words of me just clowning on Tim. Some of it definitely is that (hello, opening paragraph), but not all of it.

First of all, what the Sweens said. "Forcing developers to write a political statement to be used against them by the hate mob they’re helping organize is abhorrent," he posted late last week in response to some AI bloke declaring Steam's genAI disclosures absurd. "Age ratings tell parents what’s in a game so they can make informed decisions for their kids," Sweeney continued in the thread which developed. "These AI statements are just as partisan as mandatory political essays or forcing developers to list their voting history to drive cancel campaigns and public struggle sessions.

"There is a real economic cost to Valve’s foray into forced political disclosures. Besides taking 30%, they’re also taking a potentially even larger fraction of developers’ revenue and livelihood by undermining their business with these AI hate campaigns." The Sweens also batted away someone pointing out that Epic-owned asset marketplace Fab asks creators to disclose genAI use via tags, claiming that it being a B2B platform makes it a totally different kettle of fish, seemingly because one of those fish might sue Epic if they ended up unwittingly buying AI-generated stuff to stick in their game.

Obviously, the Sweens is chatting shite here. Having to disclose a detail about how you've made your game isn't some 1984-level travesty of dev privacy or way to force studios to outline their politics. It's not some gotcha causing harm for the sake of it. It's just about making studios admit what's in their games, so consumers can take that into consideration. If the reception a game ends up with as a result is so unfavourable that it undermines businesses, those businesses should probably consider not using tech that the people they're trying to sell their wares to clearly don't want in said wares. To be crass, it's a supermarket yelling about being persecuted because the 'contains human faeces' labels they've had to put on their food due it containing human faeces have led to a decrease in sales and an increase in complaints among folks who don't want to eat poo.

You're getting off lucky, Sweens. Imagine if studios' store pages had to disclose details like how many hours of mandatory dev overtime went into getting a game over the line, the size of their gender pay gap, or, god forbid, how much the publisher's top exec earned throughout development in comparison to the median worker or lowest ranking junior! Maybe a quick breakdown of how many of the devs weren't white dudes. None of those, on paper, would force studios to write a political essay explaining why they've done whatever they've done or why the numbers look as they do. Though, you might feel compelled to pen something if, say, you know that you're operating in a way that'll put off most of your customer base unless you're allowed to hide it.