The Surprising Number of Steam Games that Use GenAI — Totally Human Media

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses the surprising number of Steam games that use generative AI (GenAI) technology, such as DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney, in their development process. It covers the following key points:

🙋 Q&A

[01] The Surprising Number of Steam Games that Use GenAI

1. How many Steam games use GenAI? The article reveals that there are over 1,000 Steam games that use GenAI, which is much more than the author expected. The article provides several examples of games that disclose the use of GenAI, such as:

• The Great Rebellion
• Atman: Rebel Flame
• Girls of The Tower
• ARC TCG
• RetroMaze

2. What are the different ways developers are using GenAI in their games? The article categorizes the use cases of GenAI in games into the following areas:

• Character and NPC artwork
• Background and environment artwork
• Concept art
• UI and icon graphics
• Store/marketing imagery
• Voice acting and audio
• Narrative content
• Artist's tools for generating details, coloring, and upscaling

3. What is surprising about the use of GenAI in games? The author is surprised by three things:

1. The sheer number of games on Steam that use GenAI technology
2. The fact that both small and large game studios are using GenAI
3. The breadth of use cases beyond just generated images

[02] Valve's Policy on GenAI in Games

1. What is Valve's policy on the use of GenAI in games? The article mentions that Valve initially pumped the brakes on games generated with AI, but then earlier this year, came up with a policy that allows developers to use GenAI pretty broadly, as long as they disclose how it's used.

2. How are developers disclosing the use of GenAI in their games? The article provides examples of how developers are disclosing the use of GenAI in their games, such as:

• "This game and associated materials uses AI generated audio and visual graphics content. All AI generated content is commercially licensed from the industries leading AI generation platforms."
• "Some of the backgrounds in a few levels are based on images created with AI, as well as a few props in the levels. They were only used as a basis to start from and have been heavily edited manually afterwards to make them fit with the rest of the game's pixel art artstyle."

[03] The Author's Conclusions

1. What are the author's main conclusions about the use of GenAI in games? The author concludes that:

• A nontrivial portion of the game development industry is actively exploring and incorporating GenAI technology into their creative processes
• As the tools advance and become more accessible, the trend of using GenAI in games is likely to continue
• The author is curious to see how the numbers of games using GenAI will look like at the end of December 2024