Steam users are asking Valve for a filter that hides AI-made games: Reveneau

Why it mattersThe first big marketplace reaction to AI-made software has arrived, and the fight is over how much of it a buyer can see rather than whether it is allowed, which is the next question every store with user submissions has to answer.

A storefront full of AI-made games is now something buyers want to be able to hide. IGN reports that Steam users are asking Valve to add a filter that removes games with AI-generated content from the Discovery Queue, after Valve's Next Fest demo festival drew a wave of submissions whose art and gameplay look generated rather than made by hand.

What the users said

IGN quoted a Steam subreddit post from a user called ScalesGhost asking for a way to personalise the Discovery Queue by filtering out games with AI-generated content. In a separate thread titled around AI having "ruined Next Fest", another user quoted as EmmaBooney said the Discovery Queue was "all AI slop" and they did not want to scroll through it. A third, aesoprowwy, said they hoped engagement metrics would drop enough that Valve would set stricter submission guidelines. IGN noted that Steam already has a user-tag system, but Valve cut back the number of user-defined tags in May, and a filter of this shape would need Valve to add "AI" as a tag the store itself recognises.

Why it is happening now

IGN tied the surge to two things in the same article. Claude Opus 5.5 is behind a current wave of decompilation and mashup mods, and the open-source game-making tools that come out of that work make it cheap to publish a demo. Separately, several large game studios have moved toward AI in the last week on IGN's reading. The outlet said Epic delayed its upcoming Star Wars shooter to pursue an "AI-first" direction, that Epic's CEO wrote on social media that the company had vibe-coded the Epic Games Store launcher, and that Capcom's REX programme is using AI to help maintain its RE Engine.

What Valve has not done

Valve has not announced a filter and has not commented on Next Fest's AI content, according to IGN. The outlet also noted that Steam has historically taken a hands-off approach to curation and left discovery to its ranking algorithm, which usually pushes popular demos up and low-effort submissions down.

For a studio or an indie developer deciding how to describe their own use of AI in a listing, the request from Steam users is the first market signal. Buyers are not asking the store to remove AI-made games. They are asking for a way to see which games are AI-made and skip them. The practical question for anyone publishing a listing is which parts of a game count: generated splash art, generated voice lines, generated level content, or code written with a coding agent. A filter forces an answer, and the one that works for Valve is likely to set a template every other storefront with user submissions will have to decide on next.

Source

Primary source: Steam Fans Are Begging for a No-AI Filter as Steam Next Fest Is Filled With Slop, Jacqueline Thomas, IGN.

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