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"
Meanwhile, I've tried to use CoPilot for a few things at work, simple things like taking a spreadsheet of addresses and populating lat/long. It completed the task, but many of the lat/longs were not actually at the correct location, making the task that appeared to work a complete failure. The next time I tried it, CoPilot just got locked into "working" for a really long time and didn't give me any results--the spreadsheet was 3 rows long. This was not a complex task, and should be one that AI would excel at. Instead, it's failing. It might just be that CoPilot is terrible, but it's the only AI model we can use at work. If I can't trust the results, how could I push that work to the field and waste real human time going to the wrong locations?
I mean yes, at its core Sweeney has a point. If you can get more game out and shift focus on developing the actually new stuff thats a net positive. Unfortunately thats often not how it works out. Look at how upscalers are misused and you have a perfect example. Its a race to the bottom.
The level of disrespect companies like EA have for their OWN customers borders on contempt. Why dont EA just rebrand to EAi there products will only get even more of that AI sh1t in the future imo because they love cutting corners to reduce cost.
born" trained AI that will make net incomes?Rule of free market economy is that if you want to do business, you'll have to listen to customers who make your corporate's income, or you'll go justly out of business.
So Tim Swine should just go F himself.
Guess that too high salary and wealth simply causes "pee rising to head" like we say in Finnish.
They had the right idea in stone age with mankind's first surgical procedure:
When evil spirit rises to head, you have to make hole to let it out...
Not that it really seems to anyway.
The bottom line is that this level of AI farming that we have now would never be a reality if environmental friendliness was a factor.
For another, no, absolutely not! Most people especially digital artists did NOT and do NOT use pirated courses and applications!! I understand people tend to form their world views and opinions based on their own actions and proclivities but as a developer, artist and even teaching such at university, I can tell you, people thinking like you are a tiny percentage and by far the exception.
Whenever I mention I don't like ryzens cause of that insane light load power draw people handwave me away. Consumers do NOT care about power draw and efficiency, and that's why companies push for high power draw devices. It's not the other way around.
While inventor of company making that additive was having problems with lead poisoning!
(that same person also invented use of freons as refrigerant contributing to ozone layer depletion)
Then there's DDT, PCB...
Also polytetrafluoroethlyne aka teflon needs precautions/has its limits to be safe.
History is full of things which were pushed everywhere without worries.
And definitely see AI being on same track.That goes for every component.
For example in graphics cards having more than one monitor too often like doubles+ idle draw.
(so iGPU would be lot more power efficient for some secondary monitor)
And for last few years also SSDs have been going crazy and we now have NVMes wasting toward 2W or even more for just sitting there.
Earlier even high performance drives (so DRAM isn't excuse) used to idle around 0.5W range without special power savings.
Now many drives struggle to reach that level even with power savings enabled and finding good drive for laptop would be hard.
At least HDDs have that mechanical platter spindle which has to be kept rotating, but SSDs don't have such excuse!
With idling being what SSDs likely do 95-99% of time in most PCs that idle draw should be included in review conclusions about power efficiency and not just full load figures.
Luckily, nowadays, especially if you're a hobbyist, free and open source software Blender 3D and Krita are capable enough for most of that.
At load, however, we're talking about 100+ Watts.I don't share that opinion, but I respect it.