--- title: Steam Next Fest October 2026: Standout Demos and the... description: Steam's October 2026 Next Fest has over 8,000 demos, roughly double the June edition's count. Reddit user ScalesGhost asked Valve to add a Discovery Queue... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/steam-next-fest-october-2026-standout-demos-and-the-push-for-a-no-ai-filter-agfyvqxgl twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Steam Next Fest October 2026: Standout Demos and the Push for a No-AI Filter | daily.dev og:description: Steam's October 2026 Next Fest has over 8,000 demos, roughly double the June edition's count. Reddit user ScalesGhost asked Valve to add a Discovery Queue... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/steam-next-fest-october-2026-standout-demos-and-the-push-for-a-no-ai-filter-agfyvqxgl og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/AgFYVqxGl.png og:image:alt: Steam Next Fest October 2026: Standout Demos and the Push for a No-AI Filter og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Steam Next Fest October 2026: Standout Demos and the Push for a No-AI Filter **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Steam's October 2026 Next Fest has over 8,000 demos, roughly double the June edition's count. Reddit user ScalesGhost asked Valve to add a Discovery Queue filter for AI-generated content, since Steam already requires AI disclosure. Valve removed user-defined tags in May, so an official 'AI' tag would need to exist first. Another user, EmmaBooney, called the event 'all AI slop'. Epic reportedly delayed its Star Wars shooter for an 'AI-first' direction, and Capcom is using AI in its REX program for the RE Engine. Standout demos include Guns of Eschaton, a soulslike FPS from the late Viktor Antonov, art director on Half-Life 2 and Fallout 4. ## Content Steam's October 2026 Next Fest has more than 8,000 demos, roughly twice as many as the June edition. That is a lot to dig through, and some players say the volume is part of the problem. ## Demos worth trying A few picks across genres: - **Cozy games:** Loftia and Reshine. - **Co-op horror:** Haunted Paws and UNFROST. - **Detective puzzler:** Inkblood. - **Roguelike auto-battler:** Alchemortis, in pixel art. The one with the most weight behind it is Guns of Eschaton, a soulslike FPS from Viktor Antonov. He was the art director on Half-Life 2, Fallout 4 and Dishonored, and this became his last game. He died in February 2025. I'd play it for that reason alone, and the pedigree gives me real hope for how it looks. ## The AI complaints Not everyone is happy with the fest. Reddit user ScalesGhost asked Valve to add a filter for AI-generated content in the Discovery Queue, pointing out that Steam already requires developers to disclose AI use. Valve cut user-defined tags back in May, so an official 'AI' tag would have to be added before any such filter could work. Another user, EmmaBooney, called the event 'all AI slop' and said they don't want to take part. That's a harsh verdict on 8,000 demos, and surely unfair to many of them, but it shows how fast trust is eroding when the lineup is this big and sorting it is this hard. The industry isn't helping calm things down. Epic reportedly delayed its Star Wars shooter to pursue an 'AI-first' direction, and its CEO bragged about vibe coding the Epic Games Store launcher. Capcom is using AI as part of its REX program for the RE Engine. A disclosure rule without a way to filter on it is only half a tool. Until Valve closes that gap, the best approach is probably the old one: wishlist what looks good and ignore the rest. ## Questions this post answers ### Does Steam have a way to filter out AI-generated games in the Discovery Queue? No, Steam does not currently offer a filter for AI-generated content in the Discovery Queue. Steam requires developers to disclose AI use, but Valve removed user-defined tags in May, so an official 'AI' tag would need to be added before any such filter could work. A Reddit user named ScalesGhost has requested this feature. _Developers tracking platform policy shifts like AI disclosure rules can follow the debate on daily.dev._ ### How many demos are in the Steam Next Fest October 2026 event? The October 2026 Steam Next Fest includes more than 8,000 demos, roughly twice as many as the prior June edition. The large volume has made it harder for players to sort through offerings, fueling complaints about AI-generated content mixed into the lineup. _Anyone deciding which demos to wishlist amid thousands of entries can track event coverage on daily.dev._ ### Who was the art director behind the game Guns of Eschaton? Guns of Eschaton, a soulslike FPS demoed at Steam Next Fest, was made by Viktor Antonov, who served as art director on Half-Life 2, Fallout 4, and Dishonored. It became his last game before he died in February 2025. _Players deciding which indie demos deserve a wishlist slot can find picks like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 144 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-21). **TL;DR:** Commenters largely agree Steam Next Fest is being flooded with low-quality, obviously AI-generated games, but there's heated disagreement over whether 'AI' itself is the right thing to filter versus general low-effort 'slop,' and whether Valve or developers bear responsibility. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 35% mixed · 55% skeptical **The case for** - Some argue AI tools let passionate but unskilled people finally realize game ideas they couldn't build before. - A few point to cases like Paradox games where AI is used as part of a workflow without sacrificing quality. - Skilled developers can ship higher-quality output faster using AI as one tool among many. **The pushback** - Many argue the flagged games are poorly balanced, poorly coded, and devoid of basic quality or authorial intent. - Several worry a blanket AI tag would be meaningless since nearly all developers now use AI somewhere in their pipeline, even in acclaimed titles. - Some feel Valve profits heavily from sales while doing little curation, making the slop problem effectively their responsibility. - Critics note AI lowers the barrier to entry in a way that floods storefronts and crowds out legitimate indie games from discovery. - Some argue the real issue is lack of curation/quality control, and AI is just exposing a pre-existing trust problem on the platform. **By community** - hackernews (heated): Agreement that Next Fest is swamped with low-quality AI-made games coexists with sharp disagreement over whether 'AI' versus 'slop' is the right axis to filter, how to define or detect it, and who (Valve, devs, or gamers) should fix it. **Hottest debate:** Whether an 'AI' tag/filter is even meaningful when AI is used to varying degrees by nearly all developers, versus a cleaner 'slop vs. non-slop' distinction that's harder to define or enforce. **Open questions** - How would Steam technically implement or verify an AI-use filter across art, code, and tooling? - Where exactly should the line be drawn between acceptable AI-assisted workflows and 'vibecoded' slop? - Would curation changes (higher deposits, stricter review, Greenlight-style gating) be more effective than a binary AI tag? **Highlights** > There appears to be a lot of calls for nuance here. This is what people are mad about: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5106420/Leverage_Real_Est... https://store.steampowered.com/app/5155900/Ages_TD_Demo/?cur... https://store.steampowered.com/app/5200920/BATTLE_PARTS__POW... https://store.steampowered.com/app/4609270/Naval_Supremacy/?... These are, as a whole, poorly-balanced, poorly-implemented, and in some cases poorly-conceived. The art is terrible, but the code is also terrible, and the games are not fun. Not only are we lacking authorial intent, we’re lacking any amount of basic quality. Everything from the code to the store page is AI-generated, and it makes it not only be unfun, it robs you of the usual markers of a low-effort cash-grab asset flip (eg, Stock Car Store Simulator) And there are a lot this year > — [freeone3000 on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50169883) > I think you might be in a bubble if you think that most people don't hate AI. A lot of people hate it with a passion. https://news.gallup.com/poll/712751/americans-cool-toward.as... 39% of people think it does more harm than good, compared to 9% who think it does more good than harm. Now 52% are equivocal, but as you can see, dislike of AI is much more common than like of AI. > — [lambda on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50170549) > > If you don't want to be tagged as AI, don't use AI to write your games I don’t think you understood my point. If 90% of new games get tagged as AI no matter how non-slop they are, no developer will care if they get tagged, and most players will ignore the tags since it carries no meaning about the quality of the games. > — [underyx on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50169970) > The problem is that in the context of AI, "slop" has lost its definition. It originally meant low-quality content that was obviously AI that's trying to be passed off as real. But the anti-AI crowd has co-opted the term to mean any AI-generated content, regardless of quality and the intent of its usage. Some of them refer to Expedition 33 (Which scored as one of the greatest games of 2025) as AI slop, despite AI not even being used for the final product, beyond one in-game poster that accidentally shipped with its AI placeholder rather than the hand-made asset. > — [Sohcahtoa82 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50170258) > What Steam users want is a way to filter out crap but crap existed well before AI (trust me, I've spent a _lot_ of time scrolling through games on Steam both for "Fests" and just in general). And unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to filter "crap" out. There as good games that use AI, there are bad games that use AI, there are good games that don't use AI, there are bad games that don't use AI. I don't think "AI" is a good filter. Thankfully Steam has easy refunds if you don't like a game or it doesn't live up to it's marketing page. > — [joshstrange on hackernews · 6 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50170061) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50168190) · 108 points · 144 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [10 Must-Play Steam Next Fest Demos](https://daily.dev/posts/10-must-play-steam-next-fest-demos-ycbgmr623) · 80 LEVEL · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Epic's Sweeney says platforms should stop tagging games made with AI](https://daily.dev/posts/epic-s-sweeney-says-platforms-should-stop-tagging-games-made-with-ai-ecxrffcki) · GamesIndustry.biz · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Top 10 Most-Played Steam Next Fest Demos Display a Ton of Variety](https://daily.dev/posts/the-top-10-most-played-steam-next-fest-demos-display-a-ton-of-variety-04gmtxyr9) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ubisoft bets big on GenAI and Steam comes under fire](https://daily.dev/posts/ubisoft-bets-big-on-genai-and-steam-comes-under-fire-oioystc4i) · Game Developer · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#gaming](https://daily.dev/tags/gaming), [#steam](https://daily.dev/tags/steam) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/steam-next-fest-october-2026-standout-demos-and-the-push-for-a-no-ai-filter-agfyvqxgl) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Steam Next Fest October 2026: Standout Demos and the Push for a No-AI Filter","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/steam-next-fest-october-2026-standout-demos-and-the-push-for-a-no-ai-filter-agfyvqxgl","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/steam-next-fest-october-2026-standout-demos-and-the-push-for-a-no-ai-filter-agfyvqxgl"},"datePublished":"2026-10-21T18:26:37.294Z","dateModified":"2026-10-21T18:27:17.922Z","description":"Steam's October 2026 Next Fest has over 8,000 demos, roughly double the June edition's count. 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