Two numbers landed this week that sketch where generative AI actually sits in games and entertainment: 30.8 percent of 2026's Steam releases disclose AI use, and Netflix says roughly 300 of its shows and films used AI tools this year.

The Steam Numbers

Sulka Haro, CEO of Mainframe Industries and once Habbo Hotel's lead designer, analysed around 53,600 Steam releases from July 2023 to July 2026. The share carrying Steam's AI disclosure label has climbed from 10.9 percent in 2024 to 19.9 percent in 2025 and 30.8 percent so far in 2026. On the current trajectory it crosses half of all releases somewhere in 2027 or 2028. Depending on the window you pick, 60 to 90 percent of the growth in monthly Steam releases is AI-flagged games, and almost none of them make money.

AI lowers the barrier not just to make a game but to make several.

Netflix's 300

The same week, Netflix's second-quarter shareholder letter said AI tools were used on roughly 300 of its productions in 2026 so far, as reported by Kotaku. Most of it is post-production work, plus previsualisation, crowd enhancement, battle sequences and establishing shots, with The American Experiment and Brasil 70: A Saga do Tri named as examples. The letter says the tools deliver "higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional methods", and that some productions "would have had to leave out key shots and sequences in the absence of GenAI technology".

Our Take

Read together, the two stories say the same thing: AI is not yet making better games or better television, it is making more of both. Haro's data shows the flood on Steam is mostly output that earns nothing, and Netflix's own letter frames its wins in speed and cost rather than quality. Disclosure is the number worth watching. Steam makes developers tick a box; streaming has no equivalent, so 300 is whatever Netflix decides to count. When half of everything ships with an AI label, the label stops being information, and the only signal left is whether the thing is any good.