Epic's Rehm Criticizes Valve's Handling of AI Clone Games on Steam

Epic Games online services product director Alexander Rehm publicly criticized Valve's handling of AI clone and slop games on Steam as insufficient, according to gamesradar.com. In a LinkedIn post the week before November 4, 2026, Rehm said Valve's response is not enough for most people.

Rehm argued that Valve's approach is reasonable for studios with runway and a team but of little use to one- or two-person developers who shipped a single clever mechanic. He said Valve's statement that AI-clone extortion is a job for law enforcement reads like a platform treating it as someone else's problem, and that "keep improving forever" is a tax only the well funded can pay for indie-sized developers.

Former Valve developer Chet Faliszek disputed Rehm's post, citing Epic's AI-first pivot, its AI-mandatory game jam and its vibe-coded game launcher. Faliszek accused Rehm of mixing an off-the-cuff Q&A response with a written statement and not linking to either.

Days after Rehm's post, Valve announced a change to Steam's review process in response to a surge of games partly fueled by generative AI. Valve said it does not want to dictate which tools developers use even though Steam requires AI disclosures on store pages.

Background

In October, Tim Sweeney said on X that Fab mandates AI disclosures because its business-to-business customers need to understand the provenance of content in their games. Sweeney has repeatedly criticized Valve over Steam's AI disclosures, which are not mirrored on the Epic Games Store, and has emphasized the gen AI features of Unreal Engine 6.