Abundant AI Slop is concerning

Hello, I'm writing this out of concern for the growth of this platform and it's one that many others have voiced, and that's the general leniency towards, and flood, of AI shovelware on the platform. It's everywhere currently on the main game page and I do not see how this makes the game look attractive to new players who will shill out $20 for this on launch and be presented AI thumbnail upon AI thumbnail of clear vibecoded trash, not only is this off-putting to newcomers but will also hurt prospective devs from one, taking this platform seriously, and two, will actively strip funds (via the playfund) from creators who bring actual value to the platform and deserve it.

I get it, AI is the future and you can't avoid it 100% in any game dev tools or coding space now, and it does have its merits in parts of game dev here and there, but when its so surface level in terms of visible assets, thumbnails, and game presentation, its a terrible look, and again, people are spending $20 to be shown this as their selection of games as their first impression? There really needs to be some level of regulation or barrier to entry to general visibility and the playfund for this type of content for when the platform grows it will only get worse, S&box isn't like similar platforms such as Roblox where better games easily drown this out, it's small and needs an initial playerbase cemented to grow, and you're going to struggle with that when a good chunk of actual game content visible and playable is straight garbage with no love or passion poured into it.

Hope this didn't sound like too much of a ramble, I genuinely want this platform to succeed but with that clear boundaries and regulations need to be set otherwise undesirables will exploit it for all it's worth.

im pro AI. we need more AI slop.

I can't wait for everyone to buy the game after years of development, click on some garbage AI game and refund immediately. This needs fixing NOW.  

Just let us block devs, we can get rid of 90% of the slop by blocking 3 people, its literally 3 people who own about 50 games right now 👍👍👍

Oh absolutely, nothing screams “thriving creative ecosystem” quite like appointing ourselves as the Supreme Council of What Counts as Passion™.

I especially appreciate the part where we heroically protect “new players” from the unimaginable horror of… seeing thumbnails we personally don’t like. Truly a crisis. Historians will remember this as the moment we bravely took a stand against “vibecoded trash” before it could emotionally devastate someone who just spent $20 and, apparently, lost the ability to scroll.

And yes, clearly the biggest threat to innovation has always been too many people making things. If only we could raise the drawbridge high enough, maybe only the truly worthy creators—blessed by impeccable taste and definitely not subjective bias—could pass through.

Also love the concern about AI “stripping funds from real creators,” as if the defining trait of “real” is conveniently aligned with whatever meets our personal aesthetic standards this week. Very efficient system.

But you’re right about one thing: the platform is small. So naturally, the best strategy is to discourage experimentation, gatekeep visibility, and make sure newcomers feel like they need a philosophical thesis on “authenticity” before uploading anything.

That should definitely help it grow 👍 **aiwritten

Yeah the ability to block specific developers is all I really would ask for. Even if AI wasn't so prevalent I'd still wanna be able to do that. I don't really want S&box to shun devs of fun experiences just because the thumbnail looks like AI though, cuz some of them are probably really fun games, and even though I don't like GenAI it doesn't mean a platform that already has a severe shortage of experiences needs to keep everything clean enough for the >10% of people who have seeing games with AI thumbnails as a total dealbreaker. Roblox and Fortnite seem to be doing perfectly fine and have the problem 10x worse.

Yes, it's saddening some people have greed as their religion.
It doesn’t matter if the product is empty and soulless they want to farm the playfund as much as they could. If the game releases in a few weeks, new players will open the main page and see AI thumbnail after AI thumbnail, play for 10 minutes, get disappointed and refund immediately. The worst part is that this will push away not only casual players, but also developers who could bring new content and new games to s&box. I really hope Facepunch thinks about this.

Garry, if you’re reading this, https://sbox.game/f/general/1633/1/#post7

I'm confused at the OP? We all want to play quality games, and the games that people enjoy most will top the charts and the slop will fall to the bottom.  It doesn't matter if it's been coded by a rookie right out of game dev school or a seasoned developer with 15 AI agents helping with coding and graphics.  Quality rises to the top.

Let the free markets determine what is fun and what is not, not hate towards devs that use AI as a tool to build their vision of a fun game.

just remove games from the frontpage that clearly use AI for its thumbnails, I don't like seeing s&cases and s&money everytime I go to the games menu

I hear you, and honestly I'm not a fan of scrolling past obvious AI-generated thumbnails and zero-effort front pages either, you can spot them a mile away when there's clearly not a single line of good prompting behind them. It's not a great look, I'll give you that.
But here's the thing: you can't really ban it. Where do you draw the line? AI touches almost every part of game dev now in some way. And the reality is, if players think the way you do (and many will), they just won't click on that stuff. Open it, see it's garbage, leave. That's it. The market sorts itself out.
What I'd actually suggest is hopping into the feedback/feature request channel and asking for a "don't recommend this to me" button. That's a practical solution that gives us control without needing Facepunch to play content police.

As for the Playfund and visibility , do you really think the devs who built this entire platform specifically to let creators generate revenue are going to shoot themselves in the foot by not addressing quality over time? Natural selection will kick in. The good stuff will rise, the trash will sink. It always does. S&box is still early, the curation, the community filters, the discovery tools, all of that will evolve as the platform grows and the player base settles in.
In the meantime, take a breath, enjoy what's there, and support the creators you think deserve it.

I agree that seeing a lot of AI-generated thumbnails gives nausea, and while the philosophy of “let the market decide” isn’t a perfect solution, I don’t think this is a good idea.

That’s a tricky thing to implement. Who can judge the quality of a thumbnail and decide what is acceptable or not? It would likely cause drama. And I’m not sure Facepunch would want to take on this kind of time-consuming moderation.

Instead, I prefer the idea of being able to block creators individually. More importantly, I’d like to be able to create playlists of games and share them.

Thanks for the replies, will respond to some of these to clear up what I'm trying to get across.As stated in the OP, I understand yes they do also have that problem, my issue is S&box is small and they aren't, this lazy content is easily swallowed up by the mass of better games on Roblox that dominate over them anyways whilst S&box has it sprayed all across their main game page as it's general footing of solid content ain't there yet, whereas also people are paying $20 to access this content meanwhile Roblox and Fortnite are free, terrible first impression to anyone wanting to learn and get into the game, moreover, sure maybe some of these games are fun but surely you can see how this reflects bad on us as a community as a whole when an outsider looks in? I understand S&box massively lacks a solid game catalog at the moment too but I believe more quality than substance is healthier for us in the long-term.I get the whole free market will decide argument but when that free market favours laziness for things that can be easily corrected i.e. how hard is it to draw/commission your own game thumbnail? Then that's when I feel there's a problem. And yes I also state this in the OP that AI is the future and hard to escape within most coding tools now, but to reiterate, my issue is when it's so surface level i.e. thumbnails, in-game assets, presentation, etc, as I really could not care if someone's game is vibecoded to shit as long as they are genuinely passionate about it and its fun, my issue is when it's so blatantly clear that something is AI from just glancing at it from a scroll of the game's page and they have cut corners on the most simple of things, and its several scrolls long of such content when you browse for games. I'm not advocating for the Facepunch stasi to crack down on all and any AI content but at least some better content enforcement for as the game grows as how does a stream of visible AI unboxing, casino, gambling, generally crap game experiences, hold any staying power on for those new coming in? At least hold games being posted up to some standard or else the worst kind of people will milk this rather generous platform for all it's worth.
This is one promising solution and whilst not perfect would be a good step in the right direction.

Wouldn't it already help a lot of  if bots are blocked and make sure AI slop games will never ever hit the top? 

Even though I also do not like games being published with little effort put into them because claude was their UI designer, I think it is probably best to not overregulate this and keep the 'market' more organic.

I would love if this issue was properly addressed 

A simple web extension could do the trick, but not sure if it can work for the in-game browser.

Facepunch provides the main tool and we build around it. Each community will develop its own pro-AI, anti-AI, Role-play...

You can criticize AI slop as much as you want, but if it's the players' choice, they deserve what's happening. However, I'm more inclined to believe the problem isn't so much with the players themselves as with the recommendation system. If the platform better promoted games that interested players, it would have a positive impact on retention, because right now, it seems like players aren't being recommended games based on their interests, forcing them to wander aimlessly around the platform looking for something interesting.

Recommendation system would be brilliant actually, good shout

Games produced with the help of AI should have to be declared by the developer, much like it is on the Steam store

I don't agree that anything else should be done

People should be free to make the games they want to make, however they want to make them
People should be free to play the games they want to play, however they were made

Past that, since the visibility of the AI created games are seemingly a concerning sight for people, users could be given the option to filter these out to avoid the distress and aggravation it's causing

Personally I don't mind if a developer uses AI to aid in development and don't think they should have to declare that, but I do think there should be a community option like the thumbs up and down to flag a game for blatant low effort AI slop usage.

This is purely a symptom of the poor discoverability on the platform. Most of these low effort games have pretty shocking review stats etc. But are still displayed on the front page. 

agree with Droob strongly. this is an issue with discovery, not content moderation.
there are tons of quality games on s&box already. they just need to show up on the front page.