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Gamers Furious Over Widespread AI Slop at Steam Next Fest

Amidst the ongoing February Steam Next Fest 2026, which runs until March 2nd, gamers are facing a growing problem: it's becoming increasingly difficult to find worthwhile projects among the 3455 available demos. Users are pointing the finger at generative artificial intelligence as the main culprit, flooding the selection with repetitive, low-effort content.

Players are actively complaining on forums that Steam's existing filters are failing to handle the surge of "AI garbage." Many are demanding the introduction of a specific tag for games that use neural networks, allowing users to exclude them from search results.

Developers are also concerned about the situation: the head of the publishing department at Pocketpair (creators of Palworld) admitted that demos with AI-generated cover art give him a strong urge to scroll right past.

Although Steam requires developers to declare the use of AI-generated content on their game's store page, a dedicated tag for filtering it out still hasn't been implemented. This makes navigating the festival a real quest for those seeking genuinely original, handcrafted projects among the thousands of demos.