Does It Bother You That Big Games Companies Are Using GenAI?

Another thing that’s unclear right now is whether enough players are genuinely troubled by the direction genAI is taking the industry. AI-fabricated images and videos from prompts may fool a casual glance, but if a game’s artistic integrity is obviously being compromised and cheapened by uncanny textures and character portraits with 17 fingers, you’d imagine there will be complaints. AI-generated code running beneath it, though? How would the end user even identify that?

Even aspects that don’t seem quite right could be the result of some good old-fashioned jank or human error. Is that odd dialogue text or flat-sounding performance an artistic choice? A sub-par localisation? A weird line read that the VO director missed? As the tech improves, it will get tougher to tell.

For many industry creatives, the answer to the genAI question is self-evident. What are you left with if you cut the artist out of the art?

consider my feedback: i loved working at @larianstudios.com until AI. reconsider and change your direction, like, yesterday. show your employees some respect. they are world-class & do not need AI assistance to come up with amazing ideas.

— anoxicart🍤 (@anoxicart.bsky.social) 2025-12-16T16:20:58.862Z

For players, though — especially those who don’t keep up with the industry’s ins and outs — it’s less clear-cut.

Jacob Navek, a former director of bizdev at Square Enix and current CEO of Genvid Technologies, suggests (unsurprisingly) that “consumers generally do not care” about AI in games. Looking at the aforementioned ARC Raiders, which sold more than four million copies in two weeks, there seem to be enough players who either don’t know or don’t care about the controversy – as long as the game’s good.

As he’s wont to do, Epic’s Tim Sweeney weighed in on the subject of Embark’s game, claiming that the increased productivity of AI “leads to building better games rather than employing fewer people”. Nexon (Embark’s parent company) CEO Junghun Lee told Automaton:

“It’s important to assume every game company is now using AI. But if everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive?”

Some real race-to-the-bottom energy there, with a dash of anxiety akin to Swen Vincke’s golden egg comment. But if we assume that AI usage is as widespread as Lee suggests, the real question, again, is whether players really mind if a game uses genAI. Or, more specifically: Do enough players care about it to give companies pause?

It’s an inflammatory subject online, that’s for sure, as evidenced most recently (well, probably not by the time this goes live) by the activity surrounding The Escapist’s article and subsequent apology following accusations that Blue Prince dev Dogubomb had used genAI, prompting a response from publisher Raw Fury. The echo chambers of social media and gaming forums naturally amplify the outrage, and we’re now starting to see devs targeted with unfounded accusations from aggrieved parties, too. It’s getting ugly out there.

Please don’t do this.We poured years of our lives into this game and only worked with real human artists on everything: From the writing to the coding, all work was done by human hands. We do not endorse generative AI and will never use it. pic.twitter.com/3L7NKVX1L8— Shrine’s Legacy – Out Now! (@ShrinesLegacy) December 10, 2025

As a writer for a games outlet, AI is the latest existential nightmare to ensh*tify the internet and stretch the economics of games media to breaking point. All those necessary SEO evils you spent years living with and working around? They’ve been usurped by a fresh hell which consumes your every word — and your em dashes — for itself. No, absolutely not.

Vincke’s suggestion that AI helps with idea generation (‘ideation’, a word which I struggle to even type) but simultaneously doesn’t speed up the process feels like the confused take of a CEO fearfully reframing tech he surely knows torches the respect of anyone with an appreciation of art versus ‘content’ (another term that induces Eastwood shudders).

It’s useful for inspiration – ideation for the human-crafted content! Is it, though? Really?

— Jon Cartwright (@jon.gvg.io) 2025-11-14T10:40:11.003Z

Given the dubious quality of the ‘inspiration’, it doesn’t take long to realise the bubble will burst. And knowing what the landscape will look like afterwards — when there’s no mice left for the snake that gorged on its own tail — is perhaps the biggest unknown.

Personally, the idea of AI planning my free time, summarising and responding to my emails, speaking to my staff, and writing my words is abhorrently unappealing. As a transcription tool for a long interview, sure, but the moment it starts making suggestions, offering ‘inspiration’, or generating anything, any self-respecting creator should reject with extreme prejudice.

Anyone who supports this is an embarrassment. “Instead of typing it out they’ll generate their idea”? Are you insane?

Call yourself whatever you want but you aren’t creatives, that’s for sure.

— TONY GRAYSON 🗻 (@tonycomputerentertainment.com) 2025-12-18T16:30:37.743Z

Even beyond purely creative fields, outsourcing connection — taking the human out of human resources or any interaction that depends on communication — feels like a fundamental failure and misunderstanding of how we interact as a species, let alone what sparks imagination and joy. It’s an affront that will lead to confusion, burnout, productivity ruin, and a thick sludge of product that the algorithm insists you really should like. My worry is that the killjoys claiming everything was better in the past will one day be right.

A tad dramatic? Perhaps, but given the state of things, you’ll forgive my heightened alert. We try not to flood the site with AI controversy because, frankly, it’s a massive downer – but it is a huge issue facing the games industry, so I’m interested to get a temperature check from people who love games but aren’t professionally obliged to follow the ins and outs.

Do you worry about AI and its effect on the industry? Are you satisfied with genned-up overviews, even if they contain factual errors? Do you really care if developers use genAI in their games? Let us know in the polls below if you’re genuinely bothered by the biggest and best studios using AI during development, and if there’s a difference in your mind in how it’s employed.

Apologies, that’s all a bit rambling. AI could have tightened it up, no doubt, and nuked those typos I missed despite rereading it two, three, ten times. What can I say? Last week was a long one.