Valve lets you monetize a Counter-Strike video. Its rules never imagined an AI remake

A SWAT team moves through snow toward a domed building, rifles up, breath showing in the cold. Inside, past a stairwell, an operator with a scoped rifle sweeps an office where a stapler sits beside a keyboard, and someone draws a pistol wrapped in a pink and black pattern that any Counter-Strike player will read as a weapon skin. A radio voice says "Aiko, you're up." The whole thing lasts 61 seconds, and anyone who has played the Office map knows exactly where they are.

Patrick Shaw, an editor and videographer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, posted "Reserve. Contain. Extract." to his YouTube channel on Tuesday 29 September. His description calls it an experiment combining "generative cinematography" with his own editing, sound design and creative direction, cut in After Effects in one sitting from 2pm to 4am. He does not name the video model. It had 299 views and 4 likes when we checked on Thursday morning, which makes it a small clip, but it is a clean example of a question a lot of creators are now walking into without noticing. Not one frame of it comes from Valve's game, yet the map, the faction gear and the skin are the entire point. So what does Valve actually allow?

What Valve's page says, word for word

Valve's video policy is four short paragraphs on the Steam store, and it is friendlier than most. The company says it encourages people to make videos "using Valve game content, such as playthrough or instruction videos or SFM movies" and is fine with them going up on YouTube and similar sites. SFM is Source Filmmaker, Valve's own free animation tool that runs on game assets. Monetizing is explicitly allowed: "You are free to monetize your videos via the YouTube partner program and similar programs on other video sharing sites."

The limits come in the same breath. Use of Valve content "must be non-commercial", which the page defines narrowly: you cannot charge people to watch, and "you also can't sell or license your videos to others for a payment of any kind." You cannot pull assets such as voices, music or items out of the games and distribute them separately. And anything that belongs to someone else, music being the example Valve gives, needs its own permission. The page ends by asking creators not to email Valve for a letter to show YouTube, because it cannot answer each request: "Point them to this page."

The gap an AI remake falls into

Read closely, the policy is a permission to use Valve's game content in a video: footage, captured gameplay, SFM scenes built from the game's own models. An AI live-action remake does something different. It copies no file from the game and instead generates new images that imitate a map, a uniform and a skin. The page does not mention recreations, fan art or AI at all, so it neither blesses nor bans what Shaw made. Our reading, which is not legal advice, is that the ad revenue permission plausibly covers a free fan clip like his, while the policy's silence means nothing on that page licenses the look of Counter-Strike for anything beyond a video.

Valve has shown where its patience runs out, though in a different medium. In May 2025 the team behind Classic Offensive, a fan remake of Counter-Strike 1.6 inside CS:GO that Valve had Greenlit in 2017, canceled the project after eight years. According to the team's account, reported by PC Gamer on Thursday 8 May 2025, Valve told them that releasing it "would be distributing 'derivative content' based on [Valve's] intellectual property, which is not permitted under the Steam Subscriber Agreement." That was a playable game handed out to players rather than a video, and the distinction matters. It still tells you that Valve thinks in terms of derivative works, and that its tolerance can end abruptly after years of looking the other way.

We found no public case of Valve acting against an AI Counter-Strike video. The genre is not new either: "Counter-Strike in Real Life with AI" conversions of gameplay have been on YouTube since at least November 2024, and VGTimes wrote up an AI trailer imagining a 1980s Counter-Strike movie in June 2025. Absence of enforcement is not permission, but it is the honest state of the record.

How other publishers wrote AI into their rules

Some studios have stopped leaving it to silence. Larian Studios, the maker of Baldur's Gate 3, updated its fan content policy on Thursday 31 July 2025 with a section headed "Restrictions on the use of generative AI". It is blunt: "Do not prompt or train generative AI tools using Larian Studios IP or otherwise try to recreate Larian Studios IP with generative AI tools to create Fan Content." The clause goes on to bar voice cloning of its actors. Baldur's Gate 3 fan content has its own separate terms, so anyone working with that game should read those too. A Shaw-style remake of a Larian game would be out of bounds on day one.

The older policies are more permissive but more formal than Valve's. Riot Games grants a revocable license to make derivative works from its games for free community projects, allows passive ad revenue, forbids its logos and trademarks, and asks for a notice saying the project is unofficial. Microsoft's Game Content Usage Rules, last updated in January 2015, also grant a derivative works license, allow YouTube and Twitch ad revenue, and require a credit line linking back to the rules. Nintendo's guidelines, updated on Monday 2 September 2024, cover gameplay footage and screenshots only, and its FAQ says fan art and other uses of its characters fall outside them entirely.

• Publisher and policy: Valve, Video Policy. Last updated: Undated on page; Ad revenue on YouTube: Allowed; Selling or licensing the video: Not allowed; Says anything about generative AI: No
• Publisher and policy: Larian Studios, Fan Content Policy. Last updated: Thu 31 Jul 2025; Ad revenue on YouTube: Allowed, with conditions; Selling or licensing the video: Not allowed; Says anything about generative AI: Yes: no recreating Larian IP with generative AI
• Publisher and policy: Riot Games, Legal Jibber Jabber. Last updated: Aug 2018; Ad revenue on YouTube: Allowed for individuals; Selling or licensing the video: Not allowed without a written license; Says anything about generative AI: No
• Publisher and policy: Microsoft, Game Content Usage Rules. Last updated: Jan 2015; Ad revenue on YouTube: Allowed on YouTube and Twitch; Selling or licensing the video: Not allowed; Says anything about generative AI: No
• Publisher and policy: Nintendo, Game Content Guidelines. Last updated: Mon 2 Sep 2024; Ad revenue on YouTube: Allowed via listed programs; Selling or licensing the video: Not allowed; Says anything about generative AI: No; fan art is outside scope

YouTube has its own two rules

Clearing the publisher is half the job, because YouTube sets conditions of its own. The YouTube Partner Program, the scheme that pays creators a share of ad revenue, requires content to be original and authentic, and its monetization policy now lists "AI-generated content made with generic or unoriginal templates giving the impression of mass production" as ineligible. YouTube tightened enforcement of that rule on Tuesday 15 July 2025. A single directed short like Shaw's is not the target; a channel posting the same map-to-live-action prompt thirty times a week would be.

Disclosure is the second rule. Since March 2024 YouTube has required creators to label realistic synthetic content, and on Wednesday 27 May 2026 it moved that label onto Shorts as an on-screen overlay and began applying it automatically when its systems detect significant photorealistic AI. YouTube says the label alone does not change recommendations or earning eligibility. Shaw's clip already carries an AI tag on its watch page, and he says so in his own description.

Clear the music before you clear Valve

The one rights question Valve's policy answers directly is the one most fan films trip on. Shaw's clip runs over a vocal track with lines like "Moving like the speed of sound", and the description does not credit it. We have not heard the audio and only have YouTube's auto-captions, so we cannot say whether it is licensed, generated or his own. Valve's page is clear that third-party music needs the owner's permission, and on YouTube an unlicensed track is far more likely to cost a creator their ad revenue than anything Valve does.

What this means if you are making one

In practice, for anyone making work this week, an AI Counter-Strike short can earn ad money on YouTube under Valve's own words, as long as it stays free to watch. The commercial line sits where the policy draws it: you cannot sell the film, license it to a brand or put it behind a paywall. A brand commission set on Dust II is a conversation with Valve's lawyers rather than a creative brief. Credit or license the music, tick YouTube's AI disclosure box, and describe the piece as fan work so nobody mistakes it for an official Valve trailer. Before you start on another studio's game, read its fan policy first, because Larian has already said no in writing.

There is also a real opportunity in a clip like Shaw's. Game-to-live-action is a portfolio piece that shows direction, pacing and sound in one minute, and his is the most watched thing he has posted this year. The craft that sells is the edit and the restraint, not the map. Valve's policy page still asks people to stop writing in for permission and to send YouTube a link instead, and across its four paragraphs the word AI does not appear once.

What is still open

We have not asked Valve whether it considers AI recreations of its maps to be covered by the video policy, and its page is undated, so we cannot say when the wording was last reviewed. The Classic Offensive quote is the mod team's account of Valve's message as reported by PC Gamer; Valve did not comment publicly. We did not identify the model behind Shaw's clip, sampled 16 frames with the sound off, and have not contacted him. The earlier AI Counter-Strike videos are cited from YouTube listings and VGTimes and were not reviewed frame by frame.