Valve tells indie developers: build a community, not a moat, to beat AI clones
Valve Responds to Developers Fearing AI Slop and Clones
At Steam Indie Connect in Busan, Valve's Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson addressed developers' fears of AI-generated clones and extortion emails. Their answer: Valve won't police which tools developers use, and clones predate AI. Instead, studios should build community trust and keep shipping updates that give a game a personality no single mechanic can replicate. They also explained Next Fest's random first two days and why wishlists measure marketing rather than visibility.
Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective.
- maxbond
This isn't much of a response, what they said amounts to that you should work harder to cultivate a community that you can then funnel into their platform. "Launching isn't the finish line" is obviously true but what has been happening is that people are sniped before launch based on their demo and marketing material, so it's not all that relevant.
Valve ought to be funding lawsuits against these bootleggers. Steam can only exist if indie developers feel confident they can publish there. It's as much a threat to them as anyone else, and indie studios can figure out for themselves they need to market harder but can't necessarily embark on a lawsuit.
- jjcm
It's a very Valve answer, and it's likely the correct one. It feels very similar to their stance on piracy - it's a service problem. If you make the experience good enough people wont do it.
I actually think the games with the best communities are going to see an increase of play time, not a decrease, especially games with mod support or custom games. I had an international flight a week ago and I felt like playing CIV, so I had Claude make me a mod for it before I took off. It built a full new civ, new tile improvements, technologies, and 3d models, and it worked great.
- adam12
I'm afraid a lot of the cloners will have much more time to devote to their community.
- dude250711
It needs to start hurting their revenue.
- VCFundedGenYer
What a bunch of nothing and hand-waivey statements. Valve has issues with cracking down on bad behavior, and this response is rather immature and poorly planned.