It's no secret that Valve's latest Steam Next Fest has been plagued by games using AI in some shape or form, with thousands of titles cropping up for the event – and that's not exactly great news for indie developers trying to leave their mark.
Chet Faliszek, a Valve veteran with credits on beloved titles like Half-Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead, acknowledges the AI-induced debacle in a new YouTube video (below). "Steam Next Fest started this week and it is overwhelmed with slop and AI crap and just a ton of games," as he first says. "It's 8,000+ games."
And, as he goes on to explain, that's not such a big problem for consumers themselves as the algorithm can resolve itself. For indie devs, however, it's a pretty substantial issue.
"What's the problem then? And what do I worry about? Well, it's indies finding players." Steam Next Fest "used to be a place that you could start your press beat," Faliszek recalls, "where you could announce your game essentially and get it in there… and every game got some amount of attention, some amount of traction, some amount of feedback and from there you could then grow out."
That's not so easy anymore. It's not just down to AI, the phenomenon of seeing various clones – think that Needle In A Haystack Simulator game – is evident in other markets like mobile gaming, as Faliszek describes, and it's becoming commonplace on PC now, too.
I'm instantly reminded of Roblox, which sees folks churning out sloppy ripoffs of popular hits (especially indie titles, mind you) on the daily. Just see Meccha Chameleon for example.
In the mobile game space, he notes, "Never is there a design track because your design is steal someone else's and learn how to bring more players in and then how to monetize those players and that'll make you more money."
Seeing this take off with PC games – which it can do more easily thanks to AI – is sad. "It used to be that Valve was about Steam, about meritocracy, that the best games rose up over time."
Faliszek brings up Greenlight, Steam's discontinued program to help bolster more community support for indie games. It's not around anymore, but overall, things are far more complicated now.
"With these overwhelming numbers and what's already happening on Steam where you have to go in with a community, you have to go in and not have your announcement be your PR beat, but instead you have to have a PR beat to get to that announcement."
Again, it's like the mobile game market. "We're getting to the point that's like mobile where it's not the meritocracy of game design, but it's meritocracy of user acquisition, and this is the really, really scary part." And, all of those AI clones? The thousands of random games taking over the storefront? Not helping.
"This is the thing that I'm worried about more than anything on Steam. That's where we get as we see all of these games being stolen and taken."
Here's hoping we see more new games that aren't clones or AI-generated cash-grabs make their way to Steam's front page more often in the coming future, and the market somehow heals… I'm not sure I'll be holding my breath, though.
