The next edition will be the last for the Australian STEM Videogame Challenge, a competition for young people whose submissions have been flooded by low-quality AI-generated games. Organizers believe it has become too difficult to distinguish these games from those made entirely by the children themselves. The phenomenon also affects the itch.io store and the Steam platform.
A competition ending after twelve years
According to an article published by PC Gamer, this event, which has been running for twelve years, will cease operations. The competition was open to students from primary to high school, who could work alone or in groups of up to four people. They had to submit a game on a chosen theme, accompanied by a design document and a short trailer.
In a statement to PC Gamer, Cathy Zemaitis, head of the “Student Learning and Advancement” division at ACER, the organizing company, explained the decision: “This decision was driven by the rapid and complex rise of generative AI in video game development, which makes it more difficult to assess students’ original creations and moves the program away from its initial goal.” In a professional context, the argument for AI is essentially to create games faster and at lower cost, whereas one of the competition’s stated goals is to ‘enable students to acquire real-world skills.’
A parent whose child regularly participated in the competition lamented its closure. “My teenage son and his friends participated in the competition for several years; they would meet regularly, discuss ideas and work together on a project they cared about,” wrote this parent. They added that the competition also gave them “confidence” and a sense of belonging to a wider community. “But this really hit close to home, because this time, the victims are children. My son was visibly devastated when I told him the news.”
A surge in publications on itch.io
In early November 2026, developers began publishing games at a much faster rate on the itch.io online store. According to statistics shared by the platform’s team, the average number of game pages created each day has nearly doubled over the past two months, rising from around 3,000 in early August to 6,000 by the end of October.
However, this increase was not accompanied by a surge in player interest: neither sales nor downloads saw comparable growth, the platform indicated. Its team suggests this situation could be explained by the growing popularity of AI-based technologies in video game development. This increase coincided with the release of the Claude Opus 5 model, launched in July.
A phenomenon visible on Steam
An analysis of public data from Steam, the video game sales platform published by Valve, reveals that 49.9% of games released in October 2026 indicated they used AI-generated content. This figure is nearly double the 26.4% recorded in October 2025, compared to 1.7% when Valve introduced mandatory disclosures in January 2024. These results come from Reddit user u/ploz, who examined approximately 63,600 games released since January 2024.
Illustrations are the most common use, appearing in 63% of disclosures. However, these figures reflect the declared use of AI and do not allow for an accurate determination of how many Steam games actually contain AI-generated content.
