Hardware Ready Ready to Bench?
Slop-Inator. The growing presence of content generated via artificial intelligence on Steam is a increasingly debated topic, particularly during events like the Steam Next Fest.
The spread of generative artificial intelligence in video games has become a central issue at the Steam Next Fest, Valve’s event that offers the opportunity to try demos of upcoming titles for free. The latest edition saw a significant increase in games using AI tools for content, generating a volume of low-quality proposals that is difficult to ignore.
Slop-Inator: why it matters
This situation risks further complicating the identification of independent productions and worthy projects. To address this problem, Slop-Inator was developed, a new browser extension created by a user with the pseudonym Elanis.
The tool is designed to flag potential use of generative AI in video games on Steam, providing users with a quick method to identify titles that declare they rely on these technologies. The goal is to allow those who prefer to avoid them to have the necessary information immediately.
Slop-Inator, downloadable from its GitHub page, is not the first tool of its kind: the AI Warning for Steam extension already exists and performs a similar function. However, the new project aims to offer a more detailed reporting system.
Still in early development stages, it should work on game pages, store sales, and sections dedicated to demos. The system uses icons and colored indicators to distinguish different content categories: red indicates confirmed AI usage, while green signals the absence of such technologies in the game.
What changes and what are the effects
Other indicators may remain neutral when there is not enough information to determine if artificial intelligence was employed in specific aspects of development.
As an example of how Slop-Inator works, ARC Raiders, the multiplayer shooter by Embark Studios, is cited. The game still uses AI-generated voices, for which the extension displays a red indicator. However, the studio has announced its intention to replace the artificial voice performances of non-playable characters with those of real actors.
The project is entirely open source and its author invites the community to provide suggestions and observations, clarifying that development proceeds in spare time and therefore implementing requests may take some time. The extension is available for Chrome on Windows and for Firefox, with future plans to expand to other platforms such as itch.io.
Source and further reading on Slop-Inator: original article.
* Content created with the assistance of artificial intelligence systems.