Next Fest's extra games are mostly small, and the author thinks skilled solo devs are the real threat, not AI-first titles.
AI disclosures: Official Steam AI disclosures rose from 21.2% in Feb 2026 to 34.4% in Oct. About 70% of them mention visual art, though most of those are icons rather than all the art in a game.
Engines: Godot rose from 12.6% to 17.4%, and "engine not detected" rose from 12.9% to 17.7%. The author links part of that to vibe-coded games built on frameworks like Three.js, which the engine scanner doesn't detect.
Outlook: AI lowers the entry point for certain genres, but the author sees more risk in skilled devs using AI code help "like a scalpel." At current release rates, they estimate about 35k Steam games in 2027.
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TL;DR of the article, generated automatically.
Next Fest's extra games are mostly small, and the author thinks skilled solo devs are the real threat, not AI-first titles.