Valve tells developers to make games harder to clone, as AI copies spread on Steam

Valve told developers at a Steam event in South Korea that it will not restrict AI use on Steam, and that the best defense against AI-made clones is a harder-to-copy game. The same session also addressed the low-quality games developers say crowd Steam Next Fest.

Steam Business Team members Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson took questions from developers at Steam Indie Connect on Tuesday. Their remarks come from reporting by Korean outlet Inven, based on its transcription of the session. Eurogamer notes the comments are second-hand and passed through machine translation, which Inven checked with a native Korean speaker, and says it has asked Valve for clarification. ¹²

One developer asked whether Steam has protections against AI cloning, citing people who threaten to clone a game unless they are paid. Giardino said it was the first he had heard of that, that extortion is mainly a matter for law enforcement, and that Valve would look into reported cases and help where it can. ¹²

He did not describe any new anti-clone measure. Instead he said Valve does not want to be a gatekeeper on tools. His advice: build an active community, make the legitimate version the best one available, and keep adding features and personality. Quoted: “Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy,” developers need to keep growing their games. ¹³

He added that copies existed before AI and that Steam focuses less on removing clones than on giving the original version weight and visibility. ³²

The clone worry is not hypothetical. Developer Freya Holmér posted a prototype of a rotating Tetris-style game in March and, days later, saw AI-assisted copies appear before her own release. ⁴ A studio called Alliance Arts delayed a public Next Fest demo of its game Drunken Goddess Reflux over fears it could be imitated with AI before launch. ⁴ Eurogamer also points to Needle in a Haystack Simulator, an unreleased indie game copied so often that it is hard to tell which is the original. ¹

On Next Fest, a developer said they saw poor engagement and noted complaints about low-quality games dominating the event. IGN reports that about 17 percent of Next Fest demos last year disclosed generative AI use, and that this year’s event hosted more than 8,000 demos. ³ Wilkinson said recommendations are random for the first two days, then become personalized, and that complaints probably came from the random window. ³²

“We recognize that the trade-off is some low-quality games get exposed,” Wilkinson said, adding that a significant number of people are working on the problem. Giardino said Valve is not perfect and that making Steam “smarter and more dynamic” is its starting point, not limiting developer access. ²

Giardino also noted that users asked to filter out certain games when Steam Greenlight launched and again when Steam Direct arrived. ²

Steam’s anti-clone guidance is advice, not a policy change. An X post from Eurogamer points readers to its coverage. ⁵

Our read: Valve has named both problems and offered no new rule for either. For developers watching clones pile up, the practical message is that Steam’s tools will stay open and the fix, for now, is to out-build the copies. Watch for Valve’s answer to Eurogamer’s request for clarification.

Footnotes

1. Eurogamer, “Valve addresses Steam’s AI game cloning problem - by suggesting developers make their games less copyable”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Video Games Chronicle, “Valve has ‘a significant number’ working on Steam’s visibility dilemma but says it won’t gatekeep games made with AI”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. IGN, “Valve Responds to Steam AI Slop Deluge Complaints”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Ars Technica, “AI game clones are making indie developers afraid to show their work”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩²

5. X, “Posts on X from @eurogamer”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩