Valve says it won't gatekeep AI tools as developers raise cloning fears

Valve will not act as a gatekeeper over which development tools studios use, a member of its business team said at a Steam Indie Connect developer conference in Korea, where developers raised concerns about games being cloned with AI.

Tom Giardino, speaking alongside colleague Marc Wilkinson, said Valve does not want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools to use, according to InvenGlobal, whose report was based on a machine translation it verified with a native Korean speaker. Eurogamer has asked Valve for clarification.

The question came from a developer who cited a case in which developers were blackmailed by people threatening to clone their game. Giardino said it was the first he had heard of such ransoming, that it was probably a matter for law enforcement, and that Valve would help in whatever way it could.

On protecting a game from copycats, Giardino pointed to building active communities and trust, and to making the legitimate version of a game the best version available. He added that a more complex game is harder to copy, and advised developers to keep growing their game with features, personality and creativity rather than relying on a single easily copied mechanic.

Needle in a Haystack Simulator, a simple unreleased indie game, has been copied so many times that its developer joked about adding a mode where players must find the original among the clones.

In 2018, amid concern about the kinds of games on Steam, Valve's Erik Johnson said the right approach was to allow everything onto the Steam Store except things considered illegal or straight-up trolling.