Thursday, June 25th 2026
Epic Games CEO Calls Steam AI Disclosure "Irresponsible"
Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, has a reputation for his hot takes on the gaming industry, and he has previously been vocal about both the perceived benefits of AI in gaming and his criticisms of its detractors. Now, the executive has expanded on his prior comments about Valve's mandatory generative AI disclosure, which he previously said "makes no sense for game stores," in a new interview with PC Gamer. These comments follow the recent announcement that Unreal Engine 5.8 and Unreal Engine 6 will add more generative AI features to the game engine. Addressing the question of AI art and how it may be more of a PR problem, Tim Sweeney said that "it's just a question of adaptation of tools, because there's nothing like a prompt-to-game solution on the horizon that anybody expects will work," going on to explain that artists at Epic Games are already using generative AI to "reduce the drudge work," referring to some of the more tedious parts of the 3D modelling and texturing process.
He goes on to advocate for using AI, stating that "it's impossible to reconcile the idea that developers shouldn't use productivity-improving tools with the state of the industry." He goes on to explain that how you go about creating an in-game asset isn't important, and that "you might spend a million dollars modeling a flower pot to get the most detailed flower pot creatable by humanity, but you could also scan a flower pot with a very high resolution camera," and that "the value is not in creating a perfect flower pot...the real value is in building the scene and building the game and building the narrative." Ultimately, his argument is that AI makes it cheaper to make games and in-game assets, but he argues that "it's unfortunate that so many developers are put into this position. If you want to launch a game and get it as widely publicized as possible, you've got to put it on Steam...then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game." He calls Valve's AI disclosure "irresponsible" and says that it makes it "much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success."
Sweeney's comments follow a recent analysis that saw AI games on Steam sell as many as 53% less units, so his argument that the tech deters players may hold water, however, it should also be mentioned that the aforementioned analysis also found that the backlash was worse when it was a large studio using AI, and that players frequently reviewed games made with AI more negatively. Anecdotally, there have also been several instances of backlash against successful games using AI art for final assets or during the development process, and several indie game developers have spoken out against the use of generative AI, including Pocketpair and Fireshine Games. The developer of Vampire Survivors also recently announced that it would be reconsidering its collaboration with Fortnite after Epic Games showed off an AI-heavy workflow on social media.
Despite his positive attitudes towards AI art, Tim Sweeney seemingly does not think that AI can replace artists in the game development pipeline, with the CEO commenting that "You're not going to create good art by giving a computer a prompt and having it spit out a mesh. You're going to get good art by an awesome artist using all of the tools available to make it."
Source:
Tim Sweeney via PC Gamer
He goes on to advocate for using AI, stating that "it's impossible to reconcile the idea that developers shouldn't use productivity-improving tools with the state of the industry." He goes on to explain that how you go about creating an in-game asset isn't important, and that "you might spend a million dollars modeling a flower pot to get the most detailed flower pot creatable by humanity, but you could also scan a flower pot with a very high resolution camera," and that "the value is not in creating a perfect flower pot...the real value is in building the scene and building the game and building the narrative." Ultimately, his argument is that AI makes it cheaper to make games and in-game assets, but he argues that "it's unfortunate that so many developers are put into this position. If you want to launch a game and get it as widely publicized as possible, you've got to put it on Steam...then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game." He calls Valve's AI disclosure "irresponsible" and says that it makes it "much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success."
Despite his positive attitudes towards AI art, Tim Sweeney seemingly does not think that AI can replace artists in the game development pipeline, with the CEO commenting that "You're not going to create good art by giving a computer a prompt and having it spit out a mesh. You're going to get good art by an awesome artist using all of the tools available to make it."
94 Comments on Epic Games CEO Calls Steam AI Disclosure "Irresponsible"
Well, I do care sometimes about how businesses conduct themselves, legal or not.
It should 100% be disclosed and right now gamers in general hate any form of AI because of what it's doing to the gaming hardware landscape, so while it's nice to imagine a world where games are made faster and at a high quality with ML assistance what does it matter if most can no longer afford the hardware.
Imagine losing every single race in the season by not even trying to compete, then calling the champion a d***. That's what's happening here.
I suspect that the 30% of Windows 11 code that's done with genAI was at one time the "drudge work" for the engineers at MS, and the current state of Windows 11 is not exactly all roses.
Having disclosure is a pro-consumer move, since more often than not it's used as a lazy way to rush game development, I see no point in hiding if a game uses AI during development.
I'm not giving a new hire that because I don't see any value in it. The latter might appear that way, but without an understanding of the system or the problem, they're going to spin their wheels a lot when they can be productive somewhere else. I'd rather give them a task that has a well defined problem with a well defined requirement that actually applies directly to the system they're working on.
Except for the freebies. Those are cool. But that's about it.
I never liked their platform or the principle of locking down games to their store, but free games might be worth it if you can tolerate how bad EGS is.
Granted, I don't have an irrational hatred of AI use in software/game development, so maybe that's why I don't get it?
AI scrapes all of the internet's data and can potentially plagiarize others hard work, while making something new from said data that was scraped and used, and without the others getting paid for the work being used by AI. Also, many dislike it as there can easily be graphical anomalies and other issues making generative AI art practically inferior to man-made art. Another big issue is job displacement and the severe economic impact it causes. Take your pick and none of these things really appeal to the majority of humans living due to all of the negative impacts.
10 WAYS A.I. IS RUINING SOCIETY
01. Job Displacement
02. Privacy Invasion
03. Misinformation and Deepfakes
04. Cybersecurity Threats
05. Loss of Human Connection
06. Environmental Impact
07. Death of Creativity
08. Over-Reliance on AI
09. Lack of Transparency
10. Mental Health Impact
So, naturally we want a full disclosure before we spend our money on your warez.This. But also "lack of effort": if someone doesn't care about investing time and effort to create quality content and takes shortcuts, why should I care to pay for it? Then there is the massively negative impact on the environment and the tech industry.
That said, I think Steam / Valve (which I despise) are still in the right to disclose these details, at least in this transitional stage (I suppose in 10-20 years nobody will care). If I was the boss I would maybe enforce disclosure of only AI generated art, but that's my personal line being drawn.