"I don't want to play them:" 10% of the top Steam Next Fest demos admit to using generative AI

Steam Next Fest should be a celebration of upcoming indie games; a festival of free demos and gaming opportunity. It should be a time to furnish your wishlist and check out new genres. A weird match-three game with an indecipherable narrative? That's Titanium Court alright. A raccoon playing a coin pusher roguelike? Raccoin is for you. Whether you're after a worthy Disco Elysium successor or something else entirely, Steam Next Fest should be there for you. Unfortunately, 2026's first edition of the festival is filled with generative AI.

"I wish there was a way to filter out games that use generative AI and flip assets," writes Reddit user u/SomeRandomArtist31, "Because I don't want to play them." Many others replied in agreement. But just how many of Next Fest's games use the controversial technology? It's more than you'd like.

PCGamesN manually trawled through the best games of Steam Next Fest, as tracked by Valve's own 'Top Demos' page. We found that ten of the top 100 games admitted to using generative AI in development via Steam's disclosure. While that's just a fraction of the 3,456 game demos on offer during the weeklong festivities, you can only imagine that the quantity of so-called 'slop' only increases as you near the least popular end of the list.

Of the games in the top 100 demos of Steam Next Fest, the ten that disclose using generative AI are: Warhounds, Fearwoods*, The Stupendous World, Esports Manager 2026, Wild West Pioneers, FRUKT, Guardians of the Wild Sky, Vacation Cafe Simulator, Data Center, and Copa City. This comes after in-depth research showed that over 500 games admitted to using generative AI in the October 2025 edition of the festival.

Despite the small sample size, there are some learnings we can take from this data. Four of the ten games say that they used generative AI to create "placeholder" images or music, which either has already been replaced or will be replaced in the full game. That doesn't lessen the environmental impact of this workflow, nor the impact on the health for those living near data centers. But does make for an interesting insight into how developers expect the AI disclosure to be received by players.

One game, Fearwoods, discloses that its 2D artist used AI tools in Photoshop to speed up the workflow, which doesn't ring any alarm bells to me - hence the asterisk in the aforementioned list. I'd have thought most people have used some kind of AI upscale or generative fill in their image software of choice, and it doesn't leave the same sour taste in my mouth as entirely designing assets using ChatGPT or Midjourney does.

The most common element to be generated by AI among the top 100 games of Steam Next Fest is portraits and logos, followed by music and voice-over. These are all things that are easily made by hand, and have been done so for years. There may be a rush to get a demo out in time for Next Fest, but that doesn't excuse the use of this damaging technology for many players.

It's worth bearing in mind that these are just the games that disclose the use of generative AI. There are countless others that probably use the software but have no intention of explaining themselves, as Valve hasn't figured out an appropriate punishment for developers misrepresenting their assets in this manner as of yet. There's no downside to not disclosing any use of generative AI, so why would developers be honest about it when players are broadly against the technology?

It's clear that Valve needs, at the very least, filters on its storefront so we can eliminate AI-created games from our searches and Next Fests. It also needs to do better at enforcing its AI disclosure, which currently only punishes honest developers and allows bad actors to slip through the cracks. As for Steam Next Fest, I've seen less slop in a pig's trough, and I dread to imagine the results if I had time to check for disclosures on all 3,500 games taking part. While 10% is high for games in the top 100, I fear the actual percentage would be far higher if all games were tallied and checked.