Copy Cats are "Only Up" in Games! What Could Fortnite’s UEFN and Generative AI Have in Common?
Bits of Signum | 7.13.23
Similar to the Rust maps that exploded onto the UEFN scene (aka Epic Games’ creative platform that is similar to Roblox but technically richer due to Unreal Engine 5) we are seeing another example of a copycat taking off in UEFN. Will this one be viewed differently by Epic? The game Only Up! made by indie developer SCKR Games was already trending as a hit on Twitch. Now, a clone of Only Up!, made by French gaming group Army Units, hit UEFN Fortnite and is 8x bigger than the original, reaching over 100k users in 24 hours. In fact, the clone would rank #9 on Steam. According to Fortnite Creative News, Army Unit’s map is one of the only games to reach 100k concurrent users without promotion from Epic. This is a testament to the power of UEFN that we have been writing about here and here. This situation is worth debating because while the idea of the game is clearly the same, the We have already seen Epic’s reaction to copycat Rust maps - they were taken down.
Question: Will Epic Games view this differently?
On the topic of Generative AI in games, when we heard last week that Valve wasn’t allowing games with AI assets onto the Steam store due to copyright and IP right infringement concerns, we agreed. As AI was really heating up about a year ago, we were in search of AI + Gaming startups who were experienced in both AI and in gaming. Similar to our approach to blockchain gaming in 2017, we have a strong preference for teams with vertical expertise and muscle memory in gaming because making games is difficult and it requires long-term stamina. When Generative AI hit the scene, we were leery of Chat GPT / Midjourney / Stable Diffusion magical asset generation, simply because in AAA gaming, and entertainment more broadly, IP rights matter a lot! See Zarya of the Dawn saga for more on this.
About a year ago, we met Sortium AI, who fit the bill. They have collected a deep bench of technologists who have worked together in both AI and gaming for up to a decade, depending on the engineer. Alex Rozgo, CTO and Co-Founder of Sortium, has a pedigree which runs the gamut from LucasArts to the US Government. The CEO, Marc Seal, brings both AI and start-up experience. Most recently at Topps, he worked directly with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and led the creation of a strong web3 business before the company was acquired by Fanatics. The third Co-Founder, Eaven Portillo, has a similarly impressive CV as an engineer and builder. Their tag line, “your AI-powered production team, a prompt away” means that they are providing tools to AAA game developers to allow them to create production-ready assets faster and cheaper.
The introduction of open-source foundational models has made the technology widely accessible for the first time. Google’s AI presentation at the GDC Nordic breakfast really resonated, “Generative AI is the linguistic equivalent to an optical illusion. It feels like magic.” As investors, we are excited about the magic, and we are also reminding ourselves to focus on the long-term business models. For now at least, staying in the middle of the IP and copyright fairway seems prudent. Again, making games is not for the faint of heart. Given its founders’ histories, Sortium AI understands the workflows of game developers, which fits our mantra of merging onto the highway of behavior that is already happening. Built on Parity Substrate, it is also future-proof in the case that a token might be used to tap into a larger creator ecosystem in the future.
Valve (Owner of Video Game Store Steam) Concerns as Reported by Gamesbeat -
Valve has expressed hesitation about allowing games with AI assets onto the Steam store. Several game developers recently came forward saying their games were rejected by Valve for this reason, and today Valve released a statement expressing reservations about allowing such games given the current state of AI and copyright law.
A Valve spokesperson said in a statement published to GamesIndustry.biz: “The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music. In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer’s responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game.”
Last month, a developer posted their rejection letter from Valve on the AIGameDev subreddit. The letter read, “After reviewing, we have identified intellectual property in [game] which appears to belong to one or more third parties. In particular, [game] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties.”
The letter added, “As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game.”
The use of training data without proper compensation is a major sticking point for AI — in game development and elsewhere. Developers such as Ubisoft, Ninja Theory and Roblox have publicly spoken about using AI in their development process, and in each case the question of where the training data comes from was part of the pushback against it. Voice actors criticized using their voices to train voice-based AI, for example.
In a recent copyright case involving the comic book Zarya of the Dawn, the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that the comic’s author couldn’t copyright any images created with AI as they are not the product of human authorship. Valve said in its statement, “Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion. As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process.”
The spokesperson added that Valve is open to integrating AI and other emerging tech into its policies. “We welcome and encourage innovation, and AI technology is bound to create new and exciting experiences in gaming. While developers can use these AI technologies in their work with appropriate commercial licenses, they can not infringe on existing copyrights.” They also added that Valve would refund the developers’ app-submission credits in this instance.