Steam Next Fest just dropped and the numbers are brutal: out of roughly 8,700 participating demos, over 1,700 now carry that mandatory generative AI disclosure tag. That's basically one in five games waving the flag Valve forced on devs. SteamDB made the filter easy, and the data doesn't lie — the disclosure rules are actually working, which means a ton of these projects leaned on AI for art, assets, or who knows what else.

Community reaction is peak "L + ratio" energy. X is flooded with people calling it AI slop, skipping anything with the tag on sight, and begging for an official filter so they don't have to manual-check every page. Reddit threads are the same vibe — players are straight-up depressed scrolling through obvious generated stuff and asset flips. Extensions popping up to auto-pop the disclosure are getting shared like survival tools.

Valve tweaked the policy a bit to let minor "efficiency" uses slide without a tag, but the core rule stands: players gotta know. Big names like Sega already got caught in the crossfire with their Crazy Taxi clarification flip-flop. Meanwhile the indie space is getting absolutely cooked — half the fest feels like either AI garbage or more AI garbage. Lotta devs are owning it, but the skip culture is real and growing fast.