Epic Games' Tim Sweeney thinks game stores shouldn't bother with 'made with AI' labels — statement draws sharp criticism but is also ripe for misinterpretation.

News
By published

Here we go again...

Getty Image
(Image credit: Getty)

The use of AI in games has been the source of much virtual ink, and the debate isn't likely to stop anytime soon. Yesterday's statement by Epic head honcho Tim Sweeney has stoked the fire once more. In a reply to a topic about game storefronts ditching the "Made with AI" label, Sweeney said, "it makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production," in an apparent dig at Valve's usage of the label on its Steam platform.

Valve's approach to its Steam storefront is two-pronged. Since January 2024, publishers must disclose how their games use AI (if at all), making the distinction between "pre-generated" and "live-generated" content. However, Valve asks for a statement from the developers to be partially or wholly included on the game's store page, so players can judge for themselves. Even under the simpler pre-generated banner, a survey from July 2025 stated that about 7% of games on Steam disclosed they had used generative AI in some form.

Sweeney's statement seems clear enough, but it's also easy to misinterpret. A good chunk of the internet took it to mean he thinks that stores straight up shouldn't ding a game because it uses AI, no matter where or how. But that might not necessarily be the case, and this is a situation where semantics and context are of utmost importance.

The "AI" moniker has now been so overloaded and diluted as "app" or "tech." Simply stating that a game uses AI can seem damning, but it can be quite innocuous. Many gamers rebel against the use of AI-generated artwork or voiceovers, which arguably replace or distort the human element in those creations.

However, "using AI" also means using tools like Claude for coding, Replit for repository management, ChatGPT or Perplexity for research, or even something as simple as a guitar amp simulation for an actual musician creating the soundtrack. The question, therefore, is where to draw the line. 'Assistance' versus 'content generation' appear reasonably distinct, but even then, the waters can get muddy.

With that in mind, it's also not difficult to argue that live-generation tools can put a new spin, if not completely break ground, on certain types of games. Fortnite's Darth Vader answering players' voices might be considered gimmicky, but games like Eneme and Retail Mage rely on generative AI as a core feature of their gameplay, hopefully bringing their respective universes to life in a more organic and immersive way.

Backlash to Sweeney and the original post was immediate. Ayi Sánchez, former Counter-Strike artist, likened a lack of disclosure that a game used AI to food products' ingredient list, while Dutch composer Joris de Man reminded Sweeney that game trailers had to eventually get a "not real gameplay" disclaimer to temper expectations. Mike Bethell, an indie producer, was acerbic, stating that "If [Sweeney thinks] AI is the future, wear that 'we used AI to make this' tag with pride, and watch as [his] sales plummet."

It's worth noting that Sweeney also got support from some figures, who mainly pointed out the lack of a defining line on the matter. Matt Workman, the thread's original poster, stated that Steam's catch-all net "is so wide it catches any developer who uses Unreal Engine, Google Suite (Gmail/Docs/Sheets), Slack (MANY AI automations), Adobe Products, Microsoft Office, etc."

Whether Sweeney's broad statement makes sense or is self-serving is arguably up for discussion. One thing is certain, though—this debate isn't likely to stop anytime soon.

Google Preferred Source

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Bruno Ferreira
Bruno Ferreira
Contributor

Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.

16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • S58_is_the_goat
    When will we see "optimized with ai" labels on ue5 games? 😂
    Reply
  • Shiznizzle
    This suits studios that end up trademarking or applying for copyrights on AI made assets that normally would be excluded. Machine made songs cannot be given protections yet are already infiltrating the music scene. It is time for watermarks to be included by all engines that "create" things. The law is behind, once again, and cannot keep up with the pace of progress.
    Reply
  • valthuer
    It’s honestly wild how easily the whole "AI in games" debate derails, mostly because we’re not even talking about the same thing. On one hand, nobody wants games filled with cloned actor voices or artwork that looks like it was spat out by a prompt generator. But on the other hand, the industry has been relying on so-called "AI tools" for years — they just didn’t carry the buzzword label back then.

    So along comes Tim Sweeney — blunt, a bit provocative — saying "Made with AI" labels don’t make sense. And sure, his comment is easy to misread, but it also highlights a real issue: the label is now so broad it basically means nothing. We can’t pretend that TTS voice acting and an animator smoothing out transitions with a smart tool belong in the same category.

    The problem isn’t disclosure itself. The problem is what we’re disclosing and why. Transparency only works when it tells players something meaningful — not when it lumps every modern tool into one catch-all term that scares people more than it informs them.

    Until we figure out where the line actually is — what counts as assistance, what counts as content generation, and what genuinely replaces human creativity — the debate isn’t going anywhere. And maybe that’s a good thing: at least it shows that, even in an age of "magic" tools, we still care about the human work behind the games we love.
    Reply
  • Findecanor
    Meanwhile, some game studios are differentiating themselves by proudly proclaiming that they did not use AI.

    I've also seen YouTube creators post banners "Made Without AI Slop", and artists moving their artworks to sites with a clear anti-AI stance.

    They do this on one part because they are against their work being stolen, and take a stance against it.
    And they do this because there is a definite demand for quality content, and a general anti-AI sentiment out there among consumers.
    Reply
  • Jabberwocky79
    valthuer said:

    Until we figure out where the line actually is — what counts as assistance, what counts as content generation, and what genuinely replaces human creativity — the debate isn’t going anywhere.
    All good points. That's where the line is, for me, right there. But how do you police that? You can't. Because AI is NOT like tools of the past. A traditional artist uses a paintbrush , but no one argues the creativity of the artist himself. Even when digital design came along, there may have been some controversy, but it's still the artist who is directly involved in moving the pixels around. And you can't tell me that all of the digital matte painters in Hollywood and all the 3D artists in the game industry don't have tremendous talent and creativity. But now, I've seen people twist that argument that they, as a generative AI prompter, also still have the creativity and talent because they have to know how to prompt the right way to get the results they want. Eh, maybe... I think that argument is on very thin ice, but can I disprove it? No, not really. At any rate, I think that the vast majority of the human race is gifted with a powerful imagination. But gifted with the ability to bring those visions into existence? That resided with a relatively small number... at least until now.

    So back to my original point... how do you draw the line on what is creative and what isn't? It's a total mess, and a lot of people have been and will be screwed over. But I can't think of a lot of technologies that haven't done that in some way or another. This is just the latest one.

    Findecanor said:
    Meanwhile, some game studios are differentiating themselves by proudly proclaiming that they did not use AI.

    I've also seen YouTube creators post banners "Made Without AI Slop", and artists moving their artworks to sites with a clear anti-AI stance.

    They do this on one part because they are against their work being stolen, and take a stance against it.
    And they do this because there is a definite demand for quality content, and a general anti-AI sentiment out there among consumers.
    I am all for this movement. Anytime I see a company that proudly excludes AI, I'm instantly more drawn to them. And this is coming from someone who isn't 100% anti-AI either - I use it every day. But I think it's one of the most egregious copyright violations in history for big corps to train their models on the work of others without asking for permission or making compensation. It is just insane.
    Reply
  • valthuer
    Jabberwocky79 said:
    All good points. That's where the line is, for me, right there. But how do you police that? You can't. Because AI is NOT like tools of the past. A traditional artist uses a paintbrush , but no one argues the creativity of the artist himself. Even when digital design came along, there may have been some controversy, but it's still the artist who is directly involved in moving the pixels around. And you can't tell me that all of the digital matte painters in Hollywood and all the 3D artists in the game industry don't have tremendous talent and creativity. But now, I've seen people twist that argument that they, as a generative AI prompter, also still have the creativity and talent because they have to know how to prompt the right way to get the results they want. Eh, maybe... I think that argument is on very thin ice, but can I disprove it? No, not really. At any rate, I think that the vast majority of the human race is gifted with a powerful imagination. But gifted with the ability to bring those visions into existence? That resided with a relatively small number... at least until now.

    So back to my original point... how do you draw the line on what is creative and what isn't? It's a total mess, and a lot of people have been and will be screwed over. But I can't think of a lot of technologies that haven't done that in some way or another. This is just the latest one.

    You’re raising solid and genuinely thoughtful points — and honestly, I think you’re also circling around the heart of the issue: creativity isn’t a single action, it’s a chain of actions.

    Traditional painting, digital matte work, 3D modeling — those all sit at different points on that chain. And yes, generative AI shifts things again, sometimes uncomfortably. Not because it’s "not a real tool", but because it can compress multiple creative steps at once, which blurs the boundaries in a way older tools didn’t.

    But that’s exactly why "policing" creativity will never work.

    Not because AI is unknowable — but because creativity itself has never been a fixed, enforceable category. We’ve just convinced ourselves it was.

    Someone sketching with charcoal, someone sculpting polygons in Blender, someone refining a procedural generation system, someone shaping a model’s output with 40 iterations of prompts — they’re all engaging with different layers of the creative process. The value of each layer is contextual, not universal.

    And that’s why disclosure matters more than enforcement.

    We don’t need a creativity tribunal deciding who qualifies as an artist and who doesn’t. What we do need is transparency about which parts of the chain were authored by humans, which were automated, and which were hybrid. That way players (or viewers, or listeners) can judge based on the actual workflow, not vibes or assumptions.

    Will people still get screwed over? Unfortunately, yes — because every major technological disruption has redistributed labor faster than culture can adapt. But hiding the process won’t help; clarity at least gives us a fighting chance to build norms that make sense.

    At the end of the day, creativity isn’t dying — it’s mutating.

    And like every mutation in art history, the real challenge is learning how to talk about it without flattening everything into the same category.
    Reply
  • Jabberwocky79
    valthuer said:
    You’re raising solid and genuinely thoughtful points — and honestly, I think you’re also circling around the heart of the issue: creativity isn’t a single action, it’s a chain of actions.
    ...

    But that’s exactly why "policing" creativity will never work.

    ...
    And that’s why disclosure matters more than enforcement.

    We don’t need a creativity tribunal deciding who qualifies as an artist and who doesn’t. What we do need is transparency about which parts of the chain were authored by humans, which were automated, and which were hybrid. That way players (or viewers, or listeners) can judge based on the actual workflow, not vibes or assumptions.

    ...

    At the end of the day, creativity isn’t dying — it’s mutating.

    And like every mutation in art history, the real challenge is learning how to talk about it without flattening everything into the same category.
    Excellent points, and I agree with all of them, maybe except one. I do feel that creativity is dying. Not, of course, to the point of non-existence as that would be a very silly argument to make. But I don't think AI enhances creativity. I think AI helps with efficiency. In the process of being so effortlessly efficient, I think it stifles creativity. I see creativity as a muscle - the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Conversely, we have hard evidence that a sedentary lifestyle - OR - lack of resistance (such as in zero gravity environments) creates muscle atrophy. It's no different with the creative process. And studies are already pointing in that direction - Over reliance on AI stifles creative and critical thinking skills. So, long term, big picture, I think that truly gifted creativity and creative talent is dying. Now, whether or not the bubble will burst, or there will be a huge anti-clanker revolt or whatever before we all become potato-brains is for another discussion LOL.

    But back to the main topic at hand, I appreciate Steam's effort to have these things disclosed. One commenter on the original Twitter thread compared it to listing the ingredients on food packaging. I think that's an appropriate comparison and Sweeney is full of crap. Secondly, here is a commenter replying to the latest TechLinked video, and a statement I wholeheartedly agree with:

    @AlexHerlan "I've said this elsewhere online, but, if AI is all it's cracked up to be, they should consider this labelling a badge of honor... If their games really are "that much better, thanks to the new better tool that is AI", then it will speak for itself, and become a badge of honor.... The fact it's a badge of slop right now, isn't anyone's problem except for the lack of imagination and effort of these developers, who aren't using it as a new better tool, but as a means to be lazy and unimaginative."
    Personally, I don't care so much whether a game contains AI. That will not make/break my decision to buy it in of itself. But the specific ingredients of that AI usage could affect my decision. Again, just like food I may choose to buy and have a right to make an informed choice about.
    Reply
  • valthuer
    Jabberwocky79 said:
    Excellent points, and I agree with all of them, maybe except one. I do feel that creativity is dying. Not, of course, to the point of non-existence as that would be a very silly argument to make. But I don't think AI enhances creativity. I think AI helps with efficiency. In the process of being so effortlessly efficient, I think it stifles creativity. I see creativity as a muscle - the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Conversely, we have hard evidence that a sedentary lifestyle - OR - lack of resistance (such as in zero gravity environments) creates muscle atrophy. It's no different with the creative process. And studies are already pointing in that direction - Over reliance on AI stifles creative and critical thinking skills. So, long term, big picture, I think that truly gifted creativity and creative talent is dying. Now, whether or not the bubble will burst, or there will be a huge anti-clanker revolt or whatever before we all become potato-brains is for another discussion LOL.

    But back to the main topic at hand, I appreciate Steam's effort to have these things disclosed. One commenter on the original Twitter thread compared it to listing the ingredients on food packaging. I think that's an appropriate comparison and Sweeney is full of crap. Secondly, here is a commenter replying to the latest TechLinked video, and a statement I wholeheartedly agree with:

    @AlexHerlan "I've said this elsewhere online, but, if AI is all it's cracked up to be, they should consider this labelling a badge of honor... If their games really are "that much better, thanks to the new better tool that is AI", then it will speak for itself, and become a badge of honor.... The fact it's a badge of slop right now, isn't anyone's problem except for the lack of imagination and effort of these developers, who aren't using it as a new better tool, but as a means to be lazy and unimaginative."
    Personally, I don't care so much whether a game contains AI. That will not make/break my decision to buy it in of itself. But the specific ingredients of that AI usage could affect my decision. Again, just like food I may choose to buy and have a right to make an informed choice about.

    You make an excellent point, and I genuinely appreciate the muscle analogy — it’s spot on. Creativity does need resistance, challenge, and effort to grow, and over-reliance on AI can certainly shortcut that process. Efficiency is great, but it’s not a replacement for the struggle that sparks ingenuity.

    That said, I’d argue AI isn’t inherently a stifler — it’s more like a mirror or a sparring partner. Just like any tool, it reflects what we put into it. A developer who leans on AI to avoid thinking might indeed weaken their creative muscle. But one who treats it as a collaborator, a problem-solving assistant, or a way to explore ideas faster could actually exercise creativity in new directions we couldn’t imagine before.

    So the danger isn’t AI itself, it’s how we interact with it. Sedentary creativity is what kills the muscle — not the tool. That’s why disclosure, like Steam is encouraging, matters. It lets the audience see how AI was used, and it encourages developers to think critically about their workflow rather than hide behind a label.

    I also love your point about badges of honor. AI should be like any advanced paintbrush, engine, or software: if it truly elevates the art, it deserves recognition. If it’s just a shortcut, that’s the story too — and that honesty benefits everyone.

    At the end of the day, I don’t think creativity is dying — it’s evolving. But evolution isn’t effortless. Muscles still need to be flexed.
    Reply
  • Shiznizzle
    Findecanor said:
    Meanwhile, some game studios are differentiating themselves by proudly proclaiming that they did not use AI.

    I've also seen YouTube creators post banners "Made Without AI Slop", and artists moving their artworks to sites with a clear anti-AI stance.

    They do this on one part because they are against their work being stolen, and take a stance against it.
    And they do this because there is a definite demand for quality content, and a general anti-AI sentiment out there among consumers.
    Youtube is now infested with AI slop. To the point that i recognize certain voices as they are frequently used. As soon as i hear "that voice" i know its not human.

    I am not against AI. Some studios, Blizzard, use AI. I dont plat wow. It does not make the product any cheaper though even though most of the heavy lifting, the art work, was done by a machine and done very quickly as well. What normally takes a long time to create a new expansion art flavor can now be done in as little as a day. Tweak it with human hands and job done, 50 pounds please plus 10 pounds per month sub fee. And then artist who draw by hand get laid off.
    Reply
  • LordVile
    Depends what “made with AI” means though.
    Reply