A use-case guide with Steam disclosure flags.
For indie & AA teams shipping to PC / console on Unreal Engine 5 or Unity 6. Every way a studio can use AI, mapped to Steam’s disclosure rules — so you can decide what to embrace, what to disclose, and what to avoid.
AI only helped you work faster; its output never reaches the player’s screen or speakers.
AI-made content ships and is seen, heard, or read by players — pre-generated or live.
Content made with AI during development that ships and is consumed by players.
You affirm no illegal or infringing content and consistency with your marketing. Valve reviews AI output the same as everything else, and it’s declared in the Content Survey — shown publicly on your store page.
Content made with AI while the game runs — LLM NPCs, runtime image / voice, dynamic quests.
Efficiency tools are explicitly exempt. Code assistants, generative fill on internal drafts, AI debugging — “not the focus of this section.”
“Consumed by players” is the line. Internal art, AI-assisted code and brainstorming don’t need flagging.
Marketing assets count. AI content in store pages, capsule art, screenshots or trailers is pre-generated disclosure.
Live-gen got new machinery. A Steam Overlay button lets players report illegal AI-generated content.
Valve has rejected games on training-data provenance grounds even with full disclosure. Image and story generation are the most legally fraught.
DLC & updates are covered. The survey only edits via Steam Support once approved.
Vagueness is the failure mode. Specific, honest disclosures are a far smaller problem than vague ones.
The community cost is real. The AI label can roughly halve a game’s review count and skew it negative.
The full tables from the guide. Use the filter to isolate everything at a given flag level across all disciplines.
None of it ships to players — so nothing here needs Steam disclosure. Watch confidentiality and hiring law instead.
Ideation is free. The line is whether generated design data ships — baked at build time or at runtime.
Tooling is explicitly exempt — even shipped code. Flags appear only when a model generates content at runtime.
The most disclosure-sensitive discipline. Disclosure ≠ safety — provenance is the risk. Prefer licensed / indemnified-data tools for shipped art.
Enhancing human work is free; generated audio that ships is disclosed. Any voice needs documented consent.
Runtime LLM dialogue is the flagship live-gen case — and story generation is a legally fraught category.
Nothing QA makes reaches players — effectively all exempt. Anonymize player data before using cloud tools.
Adopt only if ready for the guardrail, review, and moderation obligations. This is where AI is the feature.
Steam marketing assets count. Off-Steam is Valve’s blind spot — but players compare, so stay consistent.
It appears verbatim on your store page. Name the tools, name the content categories, describe the human role — and for live-gen, describe guardrails concretely.
“Character portraits were created using Stable Diffusion and hand-edited by our artists for consistency. All other art, writing, and audio was created by our team.”
“Optional NPC freeform chat uses an LLM. All outputs pass a moderation filter blocking hate speech, sexual and illegal content; NPCs are restricted to in-world topics; players can disable it.”
“Some AI tools were used during development.”
Vagueness is the failure mode.
Inventory the pipeline. List every AI touchpoint per discipline; assign a flag.
Classify by the test. Ships & consumed → disclose; efficiency → exempt; runtime → live-gen.
Decide what to embrace. Weigh provenance, community sentiment & review friction.
Keep provenance records. Tools, versions, licenses, key prompts, human-edit history.
Fill the survey precisely. It locks after approval — edits need Steam Support.
Re-audit every update. New AI assets post-launch, and every other storefront’s rules.
All exempt efficiency uses — the productivity is free and invisible to players.
Disclose-required uses with licensed / indemnified-data tools, disclosed specifically.
Live-gen only when AI is the feature — budget for guardrails & review.
Decide per use case. Disclose specifically. Keep the receipts.