Steam Week in Review: More than 300 games released on Steam last week, and 120 of them had AI disclosures

Android Who Dreams of Stars looks like the kind of visual novel that has appeared weekly on Steam for over a decade. Its trailer shows a series of static sci-fi anime images accompanied by simple plaintive music. It centres around "autonomous android" Eve Nova whose existence is cause for wonder and concern in a futuristic Tokyo governed by AI. In this future, "war and hunger [are] treated as relics of the past" thanks to the governing prowess of said AI.

Uh, did AI write this? Turns out, yes. Developed by JinCycle, who has released 11 games on Steam since 2020, Android Who Dreams of Stars uses AI generated content for its "artwork, sound, story, localization, and store assets". In other words: pretty much every element the user interacts with is made by AI. Amusingly, its low-effort trailer even includes an erroneous Steam screenshot chime.

My Summer Love Memories is an FMV romance game whose videos, images and music were created using generative AI. Even its dialogue was composed by LLM. Meanwhile, as Ted Litchfield pointed out yesterday, Kryonull is another visual novel whose "voices in the game, as well as on the store page" were generated using AI. The developer NovelkaGames is charging a cheeky $100 for it, leading some in the Steam discussion forum to speculate that it's a money-laundering exercise.

$100 AI-generated games aren't new, though. Typical NPC was developed by SmogGames, a fairly prolific slop vendor. That visual novel released on May 11 for $100, and according to its disclosure, "all images used in the game were AI-generated. All images on the story page were also AI-generated". SmogGames issued another $100 serving of churn on June 13 with After the Hero, though apparently only its images—and not its very many words—were AI generated. The wording of their disclosures is eerily similar.

Joining SmogGames in this mysterious pricing exercise is KalendulaGames (notice a consistency in naming convention?) who released Velvet Emergency for $110, and in May, released Blood in the Ice and Signal Snow on the same day, both for $100, and all with heavy AI disclosures.

I clicked into every Steam listing for games released from June 9 here in Australia through to, well, about an hour or so ago. That's just under a full week. During that period 338 new games released, and 120 of those had an AI disclosure.

An AI disclosure doesn't mean a game is predominantly made with AI like those listed above. Many developers disclose AI use for store page assets, especially for capsule images. While that's a dubious creative and business decision—I can always immediately tell when a game's capsule image is AI generated, making it easy to skip—it may not affect the actual game it's advertising.

Sometimes AI disclosures don't really feel necessary. The developers of Underwater disclose that they use AI-generated images as art reference only, and not directly in the game itself, begging one to question whether they needed to make a "content" disclosure at all. According to Steam itself, the disclosure box is "concerned with the use of AI in creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players" (emphasis mine).

Some developers use the AI disclosure box to get a touch defensive, which I guess is understandable. The creators of Kamilia insist that "less than 1%" of their game contains "AI-assisted content", while the creator of Idlemoor uses the box to defend against using AI to make the game's logos. "The logo images on the store are AI generated," the developer writes. "This lets me focus on making the actual game, as I am not an artist. AI art will not appear in the game itself when you are playing."

Overall I was surprised by how many of these 120 games use generative AI for music and assets. I had assumed that the vast majority would be for translation and store page images. The former raises quality control questions and is obviously a disaster for actual humans who are employed to translate games, but it's arguably less egregious compared to machine-made music, textures and narrative.

One thing's for sure: the slopscape is broadening, and with it a new style of scammy, spammy game that doesn't seem designed—or priced—to even be played.

Top Steam games by revenue (June 2 - 9)

Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays, so the below chart doesn't factor in some late week releases that might have been big, though I don't think anything major released during last week's Summer Games Fest frenzy.

Gothic 1 Remake went gangbusters, which I'm glad to see. According to THQ Nordic it sold 500,000 copies in its first week and reached a peak concurrent players count of "almost" 78,000.

I spoke to a Polish developer last week who explained to me that Gothic is a massive phenomenon in Europe: basically a household name. It's certainly not that well-known here in Australia and it seems not much more than a niche concern among North Americans. Whatever the case, I'm going to blast some early '90s symphonic metal later this week and give it a go. I loved the Elex games and have wanted to jump into Gothic for years.

Steam Deck's appearance in the list has everything to do with stock replenishments, and the fact that it's much, much more expensive than your average Steam game.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

"This is the only game where I can rummage through trash and actually get paid for it. In real life, some old lady would probably call the police"

丨十卂匚卄丨, with a very relatable sentiment, on Where the F**k is my Bitcoin.