cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8882542
It’s a different story for the more established studios with an existing following and previous titles. Game Oracle found that the use of AI by these studios resulted in a significant 40% to 60% drop in sales.
That’s a huge difference. AI stigma seems to hit competent developers with a lot to lose the hardest, and I’m not sure that game studios are ready to accept it.
Stigma nuts
I don’t think that gamers are actively boycotting AI games.
Tim Sweeny disagrees. :D According to Tim, Valve is to blame for forcing disclosure of Ai on their shop, as gamers would boycott and destroy Ai games (according to him). Therefore if the industry uses Ai, Valve is to blame, lol. Sorry, I just can’t get over it.
I can’t wait for both AI and Microsoft to entirely shit the bed.
AI and gaming are becoming an inseparable match. Whether it’s AI used in modern graphics rendering or AI used in actual game development, I’ve stated several times that I don’t think they’ll be separated anytime soon.
This is going to age like milk. I hope this person gets lambasted for being so confidently wrong and is fired and discredited from being a tech writer after the AI bubble pops.
Cale Hunt is his name and he is an AI promoting hack.
https://www.windowscentral.com/author/cale-hunt
Like it or not, I can’t leave out AI integration with the OS. Based on what I’ve personally experienced with NVIDIA’s DLSS 4.5 and tools like multi frame generation (MFG), AI will play a major role in the future of PC gaming. Windows already has an Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature available in Copilot+ PCs, and it’s the only system-level technique on the market.
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows/windows-gaming-edition-future-os-look-like
Ahahahahahahahaha
Game Oracle’s initial research, even at a surface level, is eye-opening. It studied almost 10,000 Steam releases between January and October 2025, discovering that games disclosing AI use averaged just 4 reviews in the first post-launch month compared to 7 reviews for games without AI.
What I want to know is whether this study involved any sort of pre-screening quality filter for the games considered. If that’s not accounted for, there’s definitely going to be a larger volume of very low effort asset-flip-equivalent AI games just because it would be faster and more scalable to make them that way, which would skew the numbers and not show whether people are avoiding games due to the AI label independently of their quality otherwise.
Edit: I realized I didn’t check the text of the study so I went and did that, looks like this is addressed:
We mitigated this however by filtering “slop” out of our dataset based on publication frequency and absurd initial prices (>$100; there is a little over 100 games in this group and most are scams). We removed developers whose historical publication rate is greater than 1 game per every 6 months working
The absurd initial prices of over 100 dollars is because steam will keep all of the money from games that don’t sell 100 dollars gross.
Hell yeah
Good
Seriously, if you guys don’t start liking AI soon and letting corporations use it to replace intellectual and creative workers, then it will have no practical adoption except for mass surveillance, which means we won’t be able to hide the fact that its something we developed just for mass surveillance
if you need steam to tell you a game has AI in it then that means you couldn’t have any way of figuring it out without the disclaimer. If you can’t determine, without the disclaimer, whether a game contains AI then there’s nothing to complain about and you fall back to the age old “do I enjoy this game? yes/no” metric. Backwards policy by Steam to cover their ass.
I feel that disclaimers like “this game contains gambling mechanics. It is a casino.” would be way more important and actually helpful. But no, better to admonish a game priced $2.99 that only sold 10 copies for using AI to generate concepts in the early stages of the game.
Or if you don’t want to take the risk of playing “AI slop” just pirate your games like a grownup.
The thing about this data is that it isn’t controlled for quality (probably, I only skimmed the article). I don’t support AI “art” myself but I don’t bother checking the AI disclosure normally unless it looks clearly AI generated.
EDIT: I got around to reading the original PC Gamer article it’s implied that various factors are controlled for. But realistically there’s no way to actually control for the quality. They apparently filtered out obvious slop though. We can conclude from the data that AI disclosure reduces sales, or that AI use reduces game quality, or both.
Forcing developers to report AI usage is like forcing people that oppose Israel to wear pro-Palestine shirts to a Trump rally. The mob doesn’t understand it at all, they just know they’ve been taught to hate it.
In a way, I guess, in that there are real material consequences to both of thsoe things and people are watching and remembering and forming opinions based on those observations and interactions. Like how there’s a Genocide going on against Palestinians in Gaza, and AI is constantly underperforming, losing money, and menacing the stability of our civilization on several levels. It could also not be fOrCeD by tyrannical BIG GUBMINT, but in fact demanded by consumers because they care about this issue. Kinda like how voters don’t all want their tax dollars funding murder, and such.
No, large companies that focus on AI are losing money, underperforming and menacing the stability of society. When I use Qwen on my local hardware, using renewable energy, I’m doing none of those things. It’s hated all the same.
You act like you can somehow separate the two of those things or like other people are at fault for recognizing they’re directly connected. I’m glad you’re being mindful, in so far as anyone can, but you have to recognize that everything AI affords you in terms of conveneince comes at the expense of creators who had their creative works stolen by data scraping, and still relies on the resource and capital extraction that is currently and increasingly devastating us all in order to operate for your convenience. Plenty of other developers just put in the work and effort, and frankly if they’re doing it you can to. You shouldn’t get an advantage over them in the market should you try to take your products there given you had the assistance, which you would be doing if there were no demand to label your work for how it was made. People will still engage with it knowing it’s had AI assistance, so why be afraid of them knowing and try to hide the fact?
That’s no different from saying all art/music you enjoy comes from the other art/music the creator stole for inspiration. Nothing is derived from a vacuum.
You also make it sound like using AI takes no work or effort. It, also, doesn’t work in a vacuum. You need skillful prompts to get anything of value, and oversight to ensure it’s of appropriate quality. It’s less work and effort than not using AI, but that’s the whole point.
Some people will, but that’s the same as saying “Every non-straight person should be outed, because people will still like them” completely ignoring the hate that those with irrational abhorrence will target them for being open. If you don’t want to face that animosity no one should be forcing you to.
And if the argument is that AI is low quality, then you shouldn’t need to disclose that it was used - it will be self evident, if that argument holds any water. The closing argument is that all creations should be judged based on their quality, not based on prejudice of the tools used.
Ispiration and theft are different concepts, and we DO punish people for stealing artistic content in other contexts, the histories of the music industry and cinema are rife with legal disputes over the boundaries between the ideas and the qualities of works that cross that line. On that point, are you going to address the fact that trillions of gigs of personal and professional data have been copied without respect for copyright laws and without renumeration to original creators to build the AI tools you recognize? Facebook for one explicitly said in court filings they couldn’t make AI if the had to pay creators for copyrighted materials in their data scraping.
Where are you digging up these insane hypothetical juxtapositions to infuse moral biases? Stop asking AI to make your bad arguments. Labelling a product based on it’s production is no different from outing gay people to you? What the actual fuck. A game is not a person, and customers have a right to know what they’re buying and what kind of development they’re supporting. Writing a prompt is a different skill from graphic design, you’re prompting the AI to use the styles and assets it’s absorbed from other creators to reach your described goal without your direct engagement with the process.
I literally typed assisted, I didn’t say no work, I implied LESS work, which is objectively true and a fair representation. The disparity in working hours per product outcome is where I take issue because I believe in paying humans fairly for labour, especially creative works, rather than elevating producers who use tools that if adopted universally, over time will by necessity degrade skill and damage the capacity for humans to produce original high quality works.
I guess that’s the point on which we disagree fundamentally - I don’t see it as theft anymore than an author reading a book, being inspired by it, and writing their own works by incorporating ideas from the various media they’ve consumed. At a technical level, that is true of AI, too. At the base level, it is an adjustment of weights in synapses - same as our brains. You will only ever see it as theft, though, and I suspect it’s because you hold an incorrect view of how the information is retained by the model.
I’ve never once used AI for a post here, or on any social media. Not once. That just illustrates my point that you cant tell the difference between something that is AI created, and something that is not. My intent in comparing it to similar situations is to invoke empathy for the developers involved. You say “a game is not a person” and no one is ever saying they were, but if you were following my analogy correctly your statement would have been “a developer is not a person” which highlights the moral quandary you are conveniently overlooking.
My mistake, I mistook your argument. It is a common one with people who here AI and I over generalized in my response. However, I also believe in paying humans fairly for labor, especially creative works. However, that is not viable for a lone developer with no budget, and that is AI is such a boon. In it’s absence, they wouldn’t be paying people, the art just wouldn’t be created at all. I think that governments should be taxing organizations that benefit from AI and using those funds for Universal Basic Income. That would be fair compensation for any inspiration from original works, in my opinion.
Meta is scum, with morally bankrupt practices. No argument there. I’ve never used their models, and never will. However, by using community developed, open models, I’m opening myself up to the same hate that they’ve earned by self-reporting that I’ve used AI because the angry mob does not do subtly. They don’t make that distinction, so only harm is done by reporting that I’ve used AI.
“I don’t see it as theft anymore than an author reading a book, being inspired by it, and writing their own…”
Great, so then the result is neither your work, nor something that anyone should be paying for when you produce a game using AI. The AI was the one inspired to make it and did so with existing materials, you just ordered it to.
“I suspect it’s because you hold an incorrect…”
If it’s factually incorrect, then you can’t suspect such a thing because there’s no room for doubt. It’s no more correct or incorrect than your subjective assertion which is how we can have a disagreement. Just asserting your correctness is not a factual validation of your stance, which is one driven by bias as you personally benefit from the use of AI. Not saying you’re not allowed to use that language but it is rhetorically deceptive and that’s not lost on me.
“However, that is not viable for a lone developer with no budget…”
Countless now successful independent developpers started out this way. I personally think we should have a financial incentive system to reward their effort and help them start up like some pilot programs in Ireland seek to do, rather than defer to private capital and technology that is ruinous to our ecology and economy for a tool to ease access and lower the threshhold of skill. The blissful ignorance of externalities in your used of AI in an apparent ‘vacuum’ is galling, frankly. Cursing Meta and acknowledging their horrible practices begs the acknowledgement that ALL AI training as we have seens so far has similar impacts, and if not I think you should send me some information about this miraculous tool you’re using that shows how it is markedly different. I’ll believe in such a thing if you can.
“which highlights the moral quandary you are conveniently overlooking…”
No, because even if that were your argument, and to be clear it wasn’t; Using AI is a choice and being gay is not. There’s nothing at all convenient about the terrible analogy you invoked, and I don’t know why you’re trying to rescue it lol.
AI slop seems perfect for mobile games, although, can those really be called games?
