The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, has said that Valve’s decision to have disclosure labels for projects on Steam that make use of AI is “really irresponsible”.
Speaking to PC Gamer, the Fortnite chief said that this decision makes life harder for developers, arguing that AI is a way for creators to make unique assets comparable with asset stores or photoscanning. Sweeney continued, saying that the real value isn’t in creating the perfect asset, but rather in the game, narrative and gameplay around those objects.
“It’s unfortunate we’re in this situation. It’s unfortunate that so many developers now are put into this position. If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you’ve got to put it on Steam so people can wishlist it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game,” Sweeney said.
“I think it’s really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn’t do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.”
Sweeney also discussed the loud public opposition to the use of AI in game development. The Epic boss said that the issue is “not a PR question”, but rather one of “adoption of tools”.
“There’s nothing like a prompt-to-game solution on the horizon that anybody expects will work. All we have right now is the acceleration of programming using these coding assistant tools,” Sweeney said. “They make programmers more productive for a lot of things—like it’s a lot better. Instead of spending an hour hunting down a bug, Claude Code might spend an hour hunting it down for you, then you spend five minutes fixing it.”
Pressed on AI use being a PR problem – that the case has not successfully been made to consumers – Sweeney said that it’s “impossible” to “reconcile the idea” that developers shouldn’t use AI – which he frames as “productivity-improving tools” – with the current state of the market.
“We’ve got to find greater means of efficiency,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate that so many of the AI companies operating early on had such shitty practices, you know, like one of them was found by a court to have gone off to a BitTorrent site and downloaded terabytes of data, that’s ridiculous, they shouldn’t do that. But the industry is, over time, coming up with better practices, and you’re seeing efforts to use thoroughly licensed content bases for future AI models.”
Sweeney has been outspoken about the use of AI in the games industry, previously arguing that platforms should stop tagging games that make use of AI and that the use of AI in development should have no bearing on how a game is received.
Recently, GamesIndustry.biz had a week of content about AI, covering topics including whether the technology was useful for coding and the use of AI in game development in general.
