Steam Next Fest is live until October 26, and the figure being passed around about it, that just over 36 percent of its games carry a generative-AI disclosure, did not come from Valve. It comes from a third party running a filter across a database of Steam listings, and Valve has never published a disclosure count for any edition of the event.
Valve's own Steamworks page puts this edition between October 19 at 10:00 AM PDT and October 26 at 10:00 AM PDT. Its Steam blog post calls the lineup "thousands of FREE demos" and gives no total.
What Steam's AI disclosure rule actually says
Valve introduced the rule on January 9, 2024, in a developer announcement titled AI Content on Steam. The Content Survey that studios complete when submitting a game gained a section asking them to describe how AI is used during development and while the game is running.
Valve splits that into two categories it names itself. Pre-Generated covers "any kind of content (art/code/sound/etc) created with the help of AI tools during development".
Live-Generated covers "any kind of content created with the help of AI tools while the game is running". That second category carries an extra duty, because the studio also has to describe the guardrails stopping its AI from producing illegal content.
Valve said it would publish much of each declaration on the game's Steam store page, which is why the labels are visible to shoppers at all. Those labels have drawn complaints from developers too, and Epic's Tim Sweeney has argued they punish smaller studios.
The declaration is written by the developer. Valve says it checks AI output in pre-release review the same way it checks everything else, and it added an in-game reporting tool, but that tool covers Live-Generated content only.
Where the 36 percent figure comes from
The tally has been reported as 7,145 games in this edition, dropping to 4,552 once AI-disclosed titles are filtered out, which leaves 2,593 carrying a disclosure. That works out at just over 36 percent.
It has been described as the result of one person applying a third-party database's AI filter, counting games only and excluding software and music. None of those three numbers is Valve's, and the database blocks automated requests, so the arithmetic could not be checked here.
Valve's own wording argues for caution as well. Its press-preview text states that the "full list of participating games is subject to change up until launch of Next Fest", and that many studios publish their demos during the run-up.
A count taken on any single day of a week-long event is a snapshot rather than a result.
The comparison with June has no published base
The claim that disclosures have risen rests on a figure of nearly 20 percent for the June 2026 edition. That percentage was circulated without the total number of games it was drawn from, so there is no denominator to compare against this edition's 7,145.
Other counts of the same June event disagree outright. One has been reported at 11 percent, down from 17 percent in February 2026.
Those cannot all be measuring the same thing. Different counters use different inclusion rules, and none of them is the store operator.
One of Valve's own rules complicates the trend further. Its eligibility page says titles are only allowed to participate in one Next Fest, so each edition is a fresh set of games rather than a population that can be tracked across events.
What is not in dispute is that AI tooling is now widespread in development. A Japanese industry body reported this year that 85.8 percent of the developers it surveyed use generative AI.
What the player reaction actually amounts to
The "absolutely ruined" line attached to this story traces back to a single thread on the r/IndieDev subreddit. Reddit blocks automated requests, so that thread's score, its comment count and its date could not be verified.
No review-bombing figure, petition total or other countable measure of anger at this edition has been published. The evidence is a scattering of comments, not a measured revolt, and it should not be read as a verdict from players in general.
Steam users do organise around AI when they have a target. Reviews on Total War: SHOGUN 2 Complete Edition turned against alleged AI upscaling this month, and that reaction was visible in the store's own rating.
The one hard reaction number available sits on Valve's original policy post, which carries 1,500 up-votes against 737 down-votes and 822 comments. Valve has published no disclosure figure of its own for this festival, and the only new feature it announced for this edition was genre, theme and feature browsing, not an AI filter. Next Fest closes on October 26 at 10:00 AM Pacific, and any count stays provisional until the roster stops moving.
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