Valve tells indie developers to beat AI clones with community and steady Steam

Valve's Steam Business Team told developers worried about AI-made clone games to stop worrying and to instead put that energy into building a community and shipping regular updates. By doing so, they will build the kind of rapport and goodwill with gamers that cloned games can’t compete with. The advice came at the Steam Indie Connect event on Oct. 27, and it’s especially prevalent for indie studios who currently have to sit back and watch as low-effort releases flood the market.

The event was co-hosted by Valve, the Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee, and the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA). Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson of the Steam Business Team presented, and Matt from Valve's localization team joined the Q&A.

Why trust beats a copied mechanic

Brutal reality of making 500K on Steam as a game dev https://t.co/pYEd0Hxd1U

— Ejaj AHmed 🦅 (@aeejazkhan) October 26, 2026

Valve's argument is simple: yes, a single mechanic can be cloned quickly, but the core features that foster a genuine connection with players can’t be copied the same way. Making the genuine version the best version has long been Valve's guiding principle, the team said. If developers renew their efforts here, they can only lose to better games that are also made by humans.

On the use of AI itself, Giardino was adamant that he won’t tell developers what they can and can’t do. It’s entirely up to them. "We don't want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn't use," he said. Whether to use AI in development, in Valve's view, is the developer's call.

One developer in the Q&A asked about extortion-style emails threatening to clone a game with AI and release it first. Giardino said it was the first time he'd heard of such cases and expressed his regret.

Next Fest and the "slop" worry

Wilkinson understands there are concerns about low-quality entries. For the first two days, he explained, games are shown to players on a near-random basis. After that, personalized recommendations take over and prioritize titles according to an individual players’ interests. Many articles complaining about junk in the event, he said, were based only on those first two days. What comes next is what really matters.

Giardino isn’t naive, though; he knows that things have changed. It wasn’t that long ago when he was pitching developers to join because there were only 50 or 100 games. Now, thousands take part, which he called "the pendulum swinging to the opposite side."

That said, he also said this isn’t a new thing and reminded everyone that developers asked for ways to filter out Steam Greenlight games about 14 years ago, as well as put in requests for a checkbox to hide Steam Direct games followed when that self-publishing system arrived. Each time, Valve chose to improve the shopping experience rather than pre-sort good games from bad.

The tools Valve pointed to

Wilkinson introduced two items developers can use now.

• Wishlist Data API: Lets developers pull wishlist data by period, country, and language using an App ID and date range.
• Personal Calendar: Moved from a Steam Labs experiment to an official store feature. It recommends upcoming releases that players with similar play styles have wishlisted, and a game needs a set official release date to appear.

Giardino laid out the steps before launch, including Coming Soon pages, demos, Next Fest, playtests, a firm release date, and build reviews. "Launch feels like the finish line, but it's actually the starting line," he said. He also urged developers not to rely on Steam alone, and to use consoles, other PC stores, Discord, and social media too.

The Korea numbers

Giardino opened with Steam's current standing. The platform, which launched on Sept. 12, 2003, recently hit a peak of 43.5 million concurrent users worldwide. His South Korea figures covered growth over the past five years.

Writer's take

Valve insists it won’t impose a filter or launch a crackdown. It’s a position that’s admirable, even if developers might not like to hear it at first. But Valve is simply pointing to a playbook it’s used since Greenlight; in other words, the onus is on developers to build an audience that a copycat can't take with it. As the old, old saying goes, “build it and they will come.”

Developers hoping to appear on the Personal Calendar will need to lock in an official release date for their game first.