Epic Games, Steam, and the New AI Label Divide
If you browse Steam lately, you might notice a new line on some store pages: an AI generated content disclosure. Games like Arc Raiders now clearly state where generative AI is used, whether that is for art, voices, or other assets.
Head over to the same game on the Epic Games Store and that disclosure is gone. This is not an accident. It is a direct reflection of how Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks game storefronts should handle AI.
Sweeney recently said publicly that AI tags on game stores are a waste of time. In his view, AI disclosures make sense in art galleries or licensing marketplaces where ownership and rights are the main concern, but not in game stores where he believes AI will soon be involved in nearly all production anyway.
That comment has sparked fresh debate about how transparent game platforms should be with players, and what role AI is going to play in the future of game development.
Why Tim Sweeney Thinks AI Labels Do Not Belong On Game Stores
On social media, Sweeney agreed with a user who called for Steam and other digital storefronts to drop generative AI labels. He argued that AI tags are useful in two main places:
- Art exhibits where authorship and creative credit matter
- Digital content licensing sites where buyers must understand usage rights
For regular game stores, he sees things differently. His reasoning is that AI tools will become a normal, almost universal part of game production. If nearly every modern game uses some form of AI generation during development, then a label stops being informative and just becomes noise.
This is not the first time Sweeney has publicly backed generative AI. He has previously imagined future games where dialog is effectively infinite and context aware, built from human performance but expanded by AI to react to player choices and personality. In that scenario, human actors would still train and guide the system, but AI would generate far more content than traditional recording sessions could ever produce.
From a purely technical standpoint, he is likely right that AI will be used more and more behind the scenes. From procedural art upscaling to voice cloning and world generation, it is poised to become part of many studios pipelines, big and small.
The Other Side: Rights, Trust, and Player Choice
Where Sweeney’s stance runs into criticism is around ownership, legality, and player trust. Even he has acknowledged in the past that many AI systems are trained on massive datasets that may include copyrighted art, text, or audio. Major media companies are already fighting legal battles over exactly that, arguing that some AI tools essentially vacuum up protected work without permission or payment.
That is one of the strongest arguments for having AI labels on game store pages. If a game uses generative AI, especially for visible or audible content, some players want to know so they can decide for themselves whether to support it. It becomes even more important if there is a risk that the underlying models were trained on unlicensed material.
There are also studios actively avoiding generative AI entirely. Some developers have publicly stated that they will not publish or support games that use it, because they do not believe in the ethics or long term impact on creative jobs. On the other side, whenever a game is caught using what looks like AI generated art or assets, it often triggers a backlash from parts of the community.
In that environment, transparency matters. Labels give players information. They do not ban AI, they simply disclose it. For many critics of Sweeney’s position, that is the key point. Removing labels does not make AI use cleaner or fairer. It just makes it harder for players to make informed decisions about what they are buying and supporting.
There is also the simple question: what is gained by hiding it? If AI is going to be everywhere and perfectly normal, as Sweeney predicts, then an AI disclosure should not be a threat. The concern from some gamers is that supporters of aggressive AI adoption want the labels gone precisely because they know a large chunk of the audience still dislikes the idea of generative AI replacing or copying human work.
What This Means For Gamers And The Future Of Game Stores
For players, this debate is not just about a small label on a store page. It is about control and expectations in a rapidly changing industry.
On one path, platforms like Steam continue to show AI disclosures. That road leans toward transparency. You can see when a game uses generative AI, match that to your own preferences, and reward or avoid titles based on your values.
On the other path, stores like Epic skip AI labels entirely. That approach treats AI as just another internal production tool, no different from a game engine or a physics library. From a convenience standpoint the store is simpler, but you lose visibility into how the content was made.
In the near term, players will probably see a split landscape. Some platforms will lean into transparency and others will keep things minimal. Studios that proudly avoid generative AI may use that as a marketing point, while others will push AI as a way to deliver more content, more dialog, and bigger worlds for lower cost.
Long term, the outcome will likely be shaped by three forces:
- Legal rulings on how AI can be trained and what counts as infringement
- Player spending habits and whether they reward or reject AI heavy projects
- How visible the use of AI actually is inside the final game experience
If the industry does reach a point where nearly every game relies on generative systems in some way, AI labels might fade naturally because they no longer provide useful contrast. But right now we are in a transition phase, and for many players, those little disclosures are one of the few tools they have to navigate a complicated and fast moving part of modern game development.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/epic-boss-tim-sweeney-thinks-stores-like-steam-should-stop-labelling-games-as-being-made-with-ai-it-makes-no-sense-he-says-because-ai-will-be-involved-in-nearly-all-future-production/
