Steam Next Fest is being flooded with thousands of low-effort games, while developers are becoming reluctant to share their work for fear of seeing it quickly cloned.
Yes, that’s why my first comment talks about effort, compared to the amount of slop that can be made. You aren’t allowed to steal people’s work, and you’re also required to tag if your game uses gen-AI. It’s just prohibitive to keep up with all of it now.
The legal process though is a formal requirement to sue them. Valve doesn’t need to go through that. They could (and I think do) have a system for developers to claim that a game has stolen its work and request for it to be taken down. You don’t need to go to court for a private company to enforce that. It’s just that, again, it’s impossible to keep up with it now. It’s too easy to create a clone so, even if it’s taken down, another one can appear in its place trivially.
. They could (and I think do) have a system for developers to claim that a game has stolen its work and request for it to be taken down.
I agree with this. Something like community notes on other social media might help on identification and alerting other users, but making sure that’s not gamed by bots and the like is a separate issue.
Yes, that’s why my first comment talks about effort, compared to the amount of slop that can be made. You aren’t allowed to steal people’s work, and you’re also required to tag if your game uses gen-AI. It’s just prohibitive to keep up with all of it now.
The legal process though is a formal requirement to sue them. Valve doesn’t need to go through that. They could (and I think do) have a system for developers to claim that a game has stolen its work and request for it to be taken down. You don’t need to go to court for a private company to enforce that. It’s just that, again, it’s impossible to keep up with it now. It’s too easy to create a clone so, even if it’s taken down, another one can appear in its place trivially.
I agree with this. Something like community notes on other social media might help on identification and alerting other users, but making sure that’s not gamed by bots and the like is a separate issue.