Indie game storefront Itch.io has announced it removed “a couple terabytes of AI slop” and has begun taking steps to combat the deluge of AI-created games appearing on the platform. “Just because you can upload 10 terabytes of poorly optimized AI-generated models doesn’t mean you should upload 10 terabytes of poorly optimized AI-generated models,” Itch wrote in a social media post.
The platform had already noted that the number of game pages being created per day had doubled from 3,000 to 6,000 over the last two months, with reports of users flooding the game uploads page with dozens of AI-created game spams. Going forward, Itch says that these sorts of bulk uploads will result in that spam being de-indexed, and filtering for generative AI disclosure will be added more sections of the site, including the search results page.
This doesn’t mean Itch is outright banning AI-generated content, but it is taking a harder line against people who spam the site with it. In its official terms and conditions, Itch states that if the use of AI in a game is “clearly stated” and if “it adds substantial value” to the user experience, then that’s okay. But if you’re uploading something iterative, that’ll be against the platform’s rules.
Essentially, if you don’t want to see AI-built games when you search Itch, the new filter will keep them out of your search results. This is a far stronger response than Valve’s, as Steam’s approach to AI slop has been very hands-off so far. While Valve has vaguely suggested it’s considering how to address the influx of AI spam following the disastrous October edition of Next Fest, its response to developers fearful of AI-cloned projects has left much to be desired.
According to several developers, AI slop is a much bigger problem than Steam realizes.
Valve said that developers should focus on building a community and more unique features into their games to help stand out, which does nothing to address the issue of their projects being cloned the second they share progress online–although one of the big drivers behind cloned games, Anthropic’s Claude, may have had its copycat abilities throttled recently.