As spotted by GameDiscoverCo, the updated form now specifies that it applies only to content “consumed by players,” with its scope including – but not limited to – artwork, audio, localization, narrative, marketing materials, what appears on a game’s Steam page, and any Steam Community assets.
At the same time, the form clarifies that, as far as Steam and Valve are concerned, they have no interest in AI-powered tools embedded in the software used by developers, and will not require disclosure of any “efficiency gains” developers may obtain from using such tools.
TL;DR – if you’re a game developer who, for example, used ChatGPT to sanity-check your code, employed an image generator to ideate on concept art, or simply employed a piece of software with AI capabilities without using those capabilities for any content players would interact with, you won’t have to blemish your project’s Steam page with a Black Spot that many gamers view AI disclosures as.
At the same time, it certainly may come across as a largely cosmetic change – let’s face it, Valve probably was never enforcing the disclosure of strictly-for-development-workflolws AI usage for the thousands of games arriving on its platform every year – but at least it’s now been put in writing that using Substance 3D tools doesn’t require disclosure just because they have Firefly integrated.