I want to talk about Steam Next Fest, but instead we have to talk about AI
The AI problem is about to ruin Steam
Steam Next Fest is one of our favorite weeks of the quarter here at Rogue. Every Next Fest since we've started the site, we've jumped in and tried to find awesome demos for you and your friends to check out.
But there's a massive problem with Next Fest and Steam in general, and it's just getting worse: AI.
See, my method for finding good Steam demos is pretty ironclad at this point. I search through Steam for a few hours and destroy my hard drive downloading everything that looks remotely interesting. Then, later in the week, I'll add any games to my list that slipped under my radar but I'm hearing buzz about. The idea is that this is something I do for a little bit of money each month, so I can devote time to these demos that folks who work a normal 9-to-5 can't.
Well here's the thing: that first part doesn't really work anymore. Or, at the very least, it comes with a major caveat. Every demo I download now has the risk of being AI slop masquerading as something interesting and real. Typically, I can identify the AI rather quickly, because it looks like every other piece of oversaturated shitty AI art out there. But sometimes it's sneaky.
I can't tell you how many times I've downloaded a demo that looked somewhat interesting or had a cool concept at first glance, went to play it, decided I should look at the store page just in case, and saw the AI disclosure at the bottom of the page.
We like games made by people here, and while I think using AI tools for some backend coding is a bit of a grey area, using AI for asset generation absolutely is not.
There are still interesting games out there, and I'm looking for them and playing them whenever I have time. But if you thought the Steam slop was bad before, I don't think you're prepared for just how bad things are about to get now that we're in the age of AI.
Kudos to Steam at least for tagging things made with AI.
