Over 30% of new Steam games now carry an AI disclosure — and that figure could hit 50% by 2028

A census of roughly 53,600 Steam games released between mid-2023 and mid-2026 shows the share of titles carrying an AI-content disclosure has jumped sharply every year — and the trend shows no sign of slowing down. The research was published by Sulka Haro, co-founder of the Finnish studio behind early access MMO Pax Dei, who also has credits on Habbo Hotel and several The Walking Dead games.

In 2024, 10.9% of Steam releases carried an AI disclosure. In 2025 that figure climbed to 19.9%. So far in 2026, it sits at 30.8%. Haro's data also breaks down where the growth is actually coming from: non-AI launches have risen only modestly, from roughly 1,030 to 1,320 per month, while AI-flagged launches went from about 13 per month before Valve's disclosure mandate to around 530 per month now. If that trajectory holds, AI-flagged games could account for more than half of all new Steam releases sometime between 2027 and 2028. Haro also notes that almost none of these titles generate meaningful revenue, and user review scores — where they exist at all — are poor.

The broader context makes the numbers even starker. Steam Direct launched in June 2017 and replaced the old manual curation and Greenlight voting systems, opening the floodgates for self-publishing. Monthly release counts that rarely topped 500 before 2017 have since climbed past 1,500, and 2025 saw 21,382 new titles ship in total. By mid-July 2026, 13,359 games had already launched in the first half of the year alone. Valve introduced the AI-content disclosure requirement in January 2024, so the 2024 and 2025 figures represent the first full years of mandatory reporting. A follow-up piece by Haro digs into which genres lean hardest on generative AI — management sims sit at the top, which will surprise approximately nobody.

For smaller independent developers without publisher backing, the signal-to-noise problem on Steam is getting genuinely severe. Thousands of AI-generated visual novels and low-effort titles make discovery harder for handcrafted games, and calls for a dedicated AI-content filter on Steam are growing louder. Haro's full census and the follow-up analysis are both worth reading for anyone trying to understand where the platform is heading.