Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney spent the weekend doubling down on his severe criticism of Valve, calling Steam’s AI content disclosure a “political act.”
The controversial majority owner of Epic is all in on AI, having recently triggered a “huge pivot” of the company to retool it for “maximum AI acceleration,” Sweeney said. Epic is a long-standing rival of Gabe Newell’s Valve, with the Epic Games Store struggling to make a dent in Steam’s dominance over the PC gaming market even as it offers developers more financially beneficial terms.
Sweeney is particularly upset with Steam’s AI content disclosure policy, which requires developers to disclose the use of AI in “creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players.” This includes content such as artwork, sound, narrative, and localization. It does not include “efficiency gains” through the use of AI tools.
On Friday, Sweeney hit out at Valve’s policy, saying “forcing developers to write a political statement to be used against them by the hate mob they’re helping organize is abhorrent.” This statement sparked a backlash online, with a number of people — developers included — confused by the suggestion that an AI disclosure was political in any way, and insisting that Valve was only providing clarity its customers wanted.
“Customers have a right to know what they’re buying,” David Goldfarb, founder of Metal Hellsinger developer The Outsiders and former Battlefield developer, replied. “They still bought Arc Raiders, they will definitely buy games they want to buy, AI use or no. Does it disadvantage small teams who need to leverage AI to survive? Jury’s out. Calling it a hate mob is far-fetched.”
Undeterred, Sweeney issued a number of social media posts defending his position, saying AI disclosures are “just as partisan as mandatory political essays or forcing developers to list their voting history to drive cancel campaigns and public struggle sessions.”
When one person challenged Sweeney on this, accusing him of being “anti-consumer” for forcing something consumers don’t like on them, the Fortnite boss compared Steam’s AI disclosures to Valve forcing developers to list their political affiliations.
“Say there is a large contingent of gamers that don’t like democrats or, equivalently, republicans. Should Valve force developers to list their political affiliation? Is that pro-consumer? Do you think that policy would have a positive effect on gaming?” he said. As you can imagine, this statement was ridiculed in the replies, with one person saying “equating AI to how a person votes is pure cope gymnastics.”
Read Full Article At Source
