Steam's AI dilemma manifests in How To Grow a Black Hole

Indie developer Desolation Digital had a breakout week. How To Grow a Black Hole — a “chill incremental cosmic sim” where players feed and manage a growing black hole while competing for the biggest one globally — launched on 23rd June and immediately took off.

It gained over 50 “Very Positive” reviews, climbing to 12th most popular upcoming game on Steam, and 3rd most popular upcoming indie title.

At roughly 25,000 copies sold in the first week at $3.99, that’s an estimated $99,750 gross — around $65,000–$70,000 net after Steam’s standard 30% cut for a solo developer’s debut release.

Then a negative review changed the conversation. A single reviewer labeled the game “AI slop,” alleging it showed signs of AI-generated code or design with minimal human oversight, and called for disclosure.

The game's Steam’s store page does not carry any AI-disclosure tags, which under Steam’s own policy is itself a claim of non-use.

The developer addressed it directly in an official post-launch update, and the explanation is more concrete than a flat denial.

“I didn’t use AI to make this game. The UI, code, art, and design were made by me. I have a background in web design and web development, so that probably explains why the UI has that kind of style.”

Of course, Steam has no platform-wide mechanism to authentically confirm or refute an AI-use claim after the fact. It relies on developers to be truthful.

And that's why a single reviewer’s aesthetic judgment — “this feels AI-made” — can shape buyer perception indefinitely, with no way for a developer to definitively clear his name beyond his own word.

It’s a live example of the bigger disclosure fight playing out across game development right now: should AI usage be mandatory to declare, and what happens to a small developer’s reputation and revenue when an unproven accusation goes semi-viral before any verification is even possible?

The same post-launch update notes Desolation Digital is no longer a solo operation. The developer’s brother, Logan (“Pray”), is joining full-time to help ship fixes and content faster, with current focus on stabilization and reworking the leaderboard system after fairness complaints.

Interestingly, some of the performance bugs (frame-rate cap bypass, CPU overheating) that fed the “AI slop” narrative are being treated as ordinary launch bugs, not evidence of AI shortcuts.

Whether Steam's voluntary disclosure model needs fixing remains firmly open to debate.