Tim Sweeney Calls Steam's AI Disclosure 'Really Irresponsible.' Epic Is Building AI Into Unreal Engine 6.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney does not like the small print Steam now puts on game pages, and he said so in a new interview with PC Gamer published June 25. Valve makes developers disclose when they use generative AI to build a game. Sweeney calls that label a "Scarlet Letter" and says the company is being "really irresponsible" by requiring it.

He runs the company building AI directly into its game engine. That part matters, and we will get to it.

What Steam actually requires

Since 2024, Valve has asked developers to fill out an AI disclosure when they submit a game. If the game uses generative AI, a section called "AI Generated Content Disclosure" shows up on the Steam store page, in the developer's own words, describing how AI was used.

Valve tightened the language in January 2026. The current version splits AI into two buckets that need a disclosure: content generated ahead of time and baked into the game (art, audio, text, code), and content generated live while you play. The rewrite also carved out an exception. "AI-powered tools" that help during development, like coding assistants, do not require a disclosure on their own. So a studio using an AI helper to clean up code is not flagged. A studio shipping AI-generated art is.

The disclosure does not block a game from selling on Steam. It does not add a fee or a review delay. It puts a paragraph on the store page and lets buyers decide what to do with it.

Sweeney's argument

Sweeney's problem is what happens after the label goes up. Here is how he put it to PC Gamer:

If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you've got to put it on Steam so people can wish list it, and if you want to play 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 went further on Valve specifically:

I think it's really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn't do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.

The core claim is that disclosure invites a pile-on. Tag a game as using AI, and a chunk of players will boycott or review-bomb it on sight, regardless of whether the game is any good. Steam is the storefront most developers cannot skip, so the label is effectively mandatory exposure to that crowd.

This is not a new position for him. Last year Sweeney said on X that it "makes no sense for game stores" to flag AI use "where AI will be involved in nearly all future production."

The part he has a stake in

Epic spent this month talking up Unreal Engine 6 and its AI features. At a State of Unreal event in Chicago, the company demoed large language models wired straight into the editor. In one bit, a developer used a Claude prompt window to furnish a virtual apartment by asking for items, which the engine pulled from the asset library. Another demo changed a city scene's lighting by asking Claude to shift the time of day. Epic said developers keep final control and can change any of it by hand.

So the person calling Steam's AI label irresponsible also sells the tools that would trigger that label. That does not make his argument wrong. It does explain why he is the one making it. Epic wants studios using AI in Unreal without a tax on doing so, and a visible Steam warning is a tax on doing so.

The other side of it

The case for the disclosure is the one Sweeney skips past: players asked for it. Plenty of buyers want to know whether the art and voices in a game were made by people or generated, and some of them will pay more, or only, for human-made work. A label lets them sort that out before they spend money. Valve's framing has been that this is information, not a verdict.

Whether disclosure actually sinks games is an open question, not a settled fact. Sweeney describes a "hater community trying to kill the game," but he did not point to numbers, and review-bombing campaigns have hit games for all kinds of reasons long before AI tags existed. There is a real argument that a transparent label is healthier for the storefront than letting studios quietly ship generated content and hope nobody notices.

What is clear is the shape of the fight. One of the two biggest forces in PC gaming wants AI use surfaced to buyers. The other wants it folded into the toolchain and left unmentioned. Both of them make money either way. The developers stuck choosing between the productivity Sweeney is selling and the label Valve is requiring are the ones who actually have to call it.