Indie game website itch.io expands its AI disclosure filter as 'AI slop' continues to overwhelm Steam and other storefronts
Indie game storefront itch.io has expanded its AI disclosure filters, allowing its users to better separate games made with the controversial technology from those who don't.
Indie game website itch.io expands its AI disclosure filter as 'AI slop' continues to overwhelm Steam and other storefronts
Slop, drop, and roll.
Indie game storefront itch.io has expanded its AI disclosure filters, allowing its users to better separate games made with the controversial technology from those who don't.
This expansion, revealed on its official BlueSky account, includes Itchio's search page which now features a "No AI" box. By ticking this, users can hide any game on the website that features the generative AI disclosure. Games created using generative AI must have this disclosure to be present on the platform, similarly to Steam, although without an option to describe to what extent the tech was used.
This change comes shortly after itch.io also revealed the number of game pages being made on the website each day had doubled in the past two months. And, of course, the number of games downloaded and purchases have not doubled to match this new supply.
itch.io is also facing issues linked to the sheer file size. The storefront has a terms of service policy against AI spam, which it cited shortly after it publicly announced "a couple terabytes of AI slop" had been deleted.
This change comes as the industry as a whole has been clogged with an influx of AI games. Steam Next Fest had a record-breaking number of demo submissions last month. Developers pulled demos in fear of their game being copied, and with Steam saying it's the developer's responsibility to make their games less copyable.
It's an issue that isn't going away any time soon. Even as Claude creator Anthropic has introduced rules preventing unoriginal game clones, alternative AI tools can still be used to create them, and the process of creating games using AI tools will still allow for hastily made, low effort slop. Perhaps filters, like the one itch.io has expanded, is a workable solution to this on-going problem.