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Nearly nine in ten games industry workers believe GenAI use should be disclosed on storefronts

A GamesIndustry.biz survey found overwhelming support for generative AI disclosure and mostly negative attitudes towards AI in game development

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Feature

by Chris Sutcliffe<br>Contributor

Published on March 19, 2026

This article is part of AI Week.

Almost nine out of ten workers in the games industry (88.4%), predominantly developers, believe that generative AI use should be declared on digital storefronts like Steam, according to a survey conducted by GamesIndustry.biz.

Valve brought in its AI-disclosure policy back in January 2024, and by July 2025, around 7% of all games on Steam had declared generative AI usage. But the requirements were relaxed in January this year, so that developers only need to disclose the use of AI for content generation and not for "efficiency gains" during development.

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Crucially, the survey found that nearly half of respondents disagreed with this aspect of the policy. When asked "Do you agree with Valve's approach of requiring developers to declare AI use only for content 'consumed by players', rather than for efficiency tools?", 48.7% said "no", compared to 32.1% who said "yes", and 19.2% who responded "maybe or don't know".

The respondents also indicated they would practice what they preach, with 70.8% stating they would declare the use of AI for administrative purposes – for example when checking code – on the game's storepage. Similarly, the majority (76.8%) said they would declare AI usage even if it was only used in the concepting process.

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It suggests that, at least among the respondents to the survey, transparency is paramount when it comes to disclosing the use of GenAI during game development, regardless of whether the player interacts with those elements directly.

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The issue is how granular AI disclosure should be. 28.4% of respondents said they believed a simple yes/no statement regarding whether AI was used at all would be sufficient, while 3.1% believe a percentage estimate of how much of the final product is AI generated would be better. An overall majority of the respondents (51.9%) said they instead favoured allowing stores to provide a list of criteria for AI use that developers and publishers must choose from. This would include everything from "used for QA and store description pages" to "generative AI used to create concept art", encompassing both player-facing and dev tool use. Of the 13.7% of respondents who provided a custom answer, the majority advocated full, detailed disclosure of every instance of AI use.

Survey respondents

The GamesIndustry.biz survey was sent out via the GI Daily newsletter, running for just under two weeks, and was limited to people who work in the games industry. It received 826 responses, 93 of which were a partial completion of the form.

The majority of respondents (71.2%) said that their company's primary focus was game development. Two-thirds (66.1%) said that generative AI tools are not used within their company, with 30.6% saying they are used to at least some extent.

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However, even if a company offers GenAI tools, it seems not everyone is using them. 78.5% of respondents said they "never" use AI on their own projects, and almost one in ten (9.5%) said they "rarely" use it. 4.7% and 2.9% reported using AI on a "somewhat regular" and "very regular" basis, respectively, while 4.5% of respondents said that they use AI "daily".

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The companies to which the respondents belong skew smaller, with 64.8% belonging to firms of up to 49 team members. 15.5% work for companies of between 50 and 250 employees, with the remaining 19.7% belonging to companies of 251 or more employees.

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A large proportion of respondents work in the creative aspects of game making. A quarter (25.2%) said their primary job focus is in art, with a further 18.9% reporting their work primarily involves game design. A large proportion of the 9.8% of respondents who wrote in their job description stated that their responsibility lies in narrative or narrative design.

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A quarter of the respondents (24.8%) are at executive or senior leadership level, with 16% at team lead and 7.2% at management level. Almost four-fifths (79.6%) also self-reported as being mid-level or veterans within the industry in terms of experience.

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The received wisdom in the industry is that senior management is pushing GenAI use, but given the...