Gamers complain that Steam Next Fest is filled with gaming AI slop
More than a third of indie games presented at October’s Steam Next Fest were created using generative AI tools, nearly doubling the number from June’s event.
More than a third of indie games presented at October’s Steam Next Fest were created using generative AI tools, nearly doubling the number from June’s event.
This is reported by The Gamer with reference to data from the SteamDB service.
According to the overall statistics, 7,145 new and upcoming titles were announced at October’s Steam Next Fest. After weeding out games that lacked the AI marker in development, the number dropped to 4,549.
This means that at least 2,595 projects (over 36%) used generative AI at various stages of production. For comparison, during the June festival, this figure was just over 19%. Thus, in just four months, the presence of AI content among indie developments has increased by 17 percentage points.
Gamers on Reddit are actively expressing their outrage over the prevalence of so-called AI slop and are demanding that Valve add a separate filter that would completely hide games with AI elements. Users complain about the lack of strict moderation in the store.
Let’s scroll the #SteamNextFest demos for ~90 seconds (Red means "ai content" was used) https://t.co/0d2RLPuPi4
— murph (@MurphyObv) October 20, 2026
“The lack of moderation is just ridiculous. You’ll see about 20 games that are completely generated by AI, or a nice-looking game where the description states that the AI created ‘just the logo.’ If you were too lazy to create at least one illustrative element, then of course you used it for more than just that,” one Reddit user is indignant.
Currently, browser extensions that flag projects created using generative AI on Steam are gaining popularity among gamers.
Despite player dissatisfaction, AI is being rapidly implemented not only by small studios, but also by large players in the market — in particular, Epic Games and its CEO Tim Sweeney, who publicly support the use of algorithms in development. Earlier, the company introduced a preview of a completely redesigned game launcher from the Epic Games Store, created using vibecoding .
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