THE CRUNCH
Indie games platform Itch.io has added a filter that lets users hide any game made with generative AI from search results. The move follows a mass deletion of AI-generated spam, with the site’s Bluesky account announcing it had “just deleted a couple terabytes of AI slop”.
Itch requires games containing generative AI content to carry a disclosure explaining how it was used in development, and the new “no AI” filter removes any game carrying that disclosure from search. The site said it was extending the filtering to places “where it was critically lacking”, and framed the deletions as targeting spam specifically: uploading ten terabytes of poorly optimised AI-generated models, it noted, does not mean you should.
Steam has a similar disclosure mandate but currently offers no way for users to filter out games that carry it. That gap proved contentious during the recent Steam Next Fest, where developers complained their titles were drowned out by games made using AI.
The response on Itch has been mostly positive, though some users want an outright ban on generative AI assets. That would raise tricky questions about where to draw the line, given AI use ranges from games coded entirely with AI to releases that touched it briefly during development. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, for instance, shipped with AI-generated placeholder art that was later patched out, but still had an Indie Game Awards prize rescinded.