Amid reports that developers putting their games on Steam have received extortion emails from generative AI users seeking protection payments by threatening to release cloned games, Valve business team members advised devs to prioritize depth of originality to fight copycats and encouraged them to contact other authorities in extreme cases.
Valve businessmen Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson attended a recent Korean games event, as Inven Global reports. (A disclaimer on the outlet's story reads: "Originally written in Korean, this article was translated with AI assistance and edited by a native English-speaking editor. Every translation is reviewed by our editorial team before publication.")
Giardino fielded the claims of extortion by users weaponizing AI, acknowledging that folks at Valve are looking to solve the problem that gen AI has created for Steam, but stressing that it's not looking to police games or tools.
He says this event marked the first time he'd heard of AI lookalike makers threatening actual game developers. "If you don't pay, we'll clone your game with AI and release it first," one attending dev said of these bad actors.
To combat copycats in general – which aren't new, Giardino notes, even if we see more of them thanks to AI tools – he reckons devs should focus on making their game the best version available, and something that's difficult to clone to begin with.
"Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective," he says.
When would-be copycats go beyond stealing ideas and begin making tangible threats, Giardino says you can and should still contact Valve as "we want to look into them further and help in whatever way we can," but you should also consider other authorities. Inven Global paraphrases Giardino's comments as suggesting "such extortion is closer to an issue for law enforcement agencies rather than a game platform to solve." Indeed, there's a big difference between somebody making a Vampire Survivors-like, somebody copying assets and titles wholesale, and some AI slop merchant reportedly demanding protection money from devs.
