Earlier this month, Jeonghoon Lee is the CEO of Nexon, the parent company behind the current live-action shooter. Arc Raiders — made a splash in the game development community with his simple statement. “It’s important to assume that every gaming company is now using AI,” he explained. Indie developers rushed to loudly and enthusiastically call it nonsense. “This is simply not true,” Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, co-founder Argument And Myth Shattered developer Polygonal tree housetells Edge.
Similar reactions have spread on social media, with many developers saying that rejecting generative AI is not just a matter of personal pride, but also a matter of professional marketing that developers use to let their players know that their games are made by people.
For Kanaris-Sotiriou, the question of adopting the use of artificial intelligence to create games was an easy one to answer. “The foundation it's built on is the idea of using other people's work without permission to create art. […] unfair,” he says.
Lee's comments are just the latest in a series famous gaming directors stating that generation AI is the future of the environment. But Kanaris-Sotiriou, along with many of his fellow game developers, wanted to refute this claim. So earlier this year they collaborated to develop a solution – a simple image file gold seal in the shape of a gear which states, “This developer assures that no generational AI was used in this indie game.”
They made an image(which Kanaris-Sotiriou corrected to make sure it doesn't look too similar better known seal of approval) is freely available to any studio for use in their marketing materials, websites or game pages. Although Kanaris-Sotiriou does not have exact figures for its use, the seal appears on the store pages for Rosewater, Astral ascent, Staffand much more. IN Bluesky theme announcing the creation of the sealseveral indie developers have shared that they have posted it on their Itch.io pages and on Steam, where it serves the exact opposite of the platform's AI disclosure rules.
Other developers make their own decisions, which act as both an informative statement against the AI generation and a philosophical one.
“Absolutely everything in Unbeatable was created by people without any generative assistance.“, reads graphics published by D-Cell Games on Bluesky about the upcoming game invincible. The image was created specifically in response to Lee's comments. “Every frame drawn, every word written, every model created, every line of code typed, every song sung by a real voice, every guitar played by a real hand, every moment is flawed and messy because so are we.“
While other developers have taken a simple declarative approach against the AI generation, the enthusiasm in D-Cell's statement is clear and feels almost like a challenge to those using these tools. “Ignoring all the ethical, moral and legal issues associated with the use of generative AI, this is a huge waste of effort,” says Jeffrey Chiao, producer at D-Cell Games, in an email to Edge. “We can achieve results that meet our quality standards without his help.”
Generation AI enthusiasts see the technology as a way to unleash hidden creativity, and for many, it a tool to speed up labor-intensive and expensive processes inherent in video game production. Some of the largest companies take advantage of this; EA announced partnership with Stability AIfor example, while Microsoft is using A.I. generate gameplay.
Ubisoft, in particular, has a lot to say about the AI generation. CEO Yves Guillemot calls it “just as big [of] revolution in our industry as the transition to 3D” in a recent earnings report. Players can chat with Neo-NPC of the Ubisoft generation based on artificial intelligence while Ghostwriter's tool generates short snippets of dialogue called barks. Subnautica 2 And PUBG publisher Crafton invited its employees to voluntarily resign if they fail to comply with the new company rules Reorganizing “AI First”. Meanwhile, generation AI assets are emerging in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (and again in Black Opera 7), 117: Pax Romana, Alters, Final, Arc Raiders, InZoy, and much more.
Video game development budgets are growing And games take longer to come out. A tool that can help bring games to market faster and cheaper is an attractive proposition, especially in the indie space, where investments have dried up significantly and small teams require developers to perform multiple tasks. And while generative AI is being used at all levels of the industry (with notable exceptions), the loudest pushback comes from the space that supposedly stands to gain the most from it. “The limitations we face as indie developers inspire us to develop truly creative solutions,” says Kanaris-Sotiriou.
“The limitations we face as indie developers inspire us to develop truly creative solutions.”
Tom Eastman, President Aces in battle suit developer Trinket Studios shares this sentiment. He says there are problems generation AI supposedly decides this is exactly what makes game development so rewarding. He talked about how in the last days of the studio's work on the previous game Brigade of combat cooksSome key locations in the game did not have ready-made graphics. Instead of creating the hand-drawn lines that dominate the game's aesthetic, the team decided to use less labor-intensive watercolor. “These are interesting, creative solutions that are fun to work on, rather than ‘please, a magic box will solve my problems’.”
The developers I spoke with acknowledged that as AI technology improves, the need to use it will increase. And while it's hard to quantify with hard numbers, they're also seeing how their official statements against AI have resonated with their players and communities. “At the current rate, it will almost certainly be all around us, but I think what people want from our work won't change because of it,” Jiao says. “So we’ll keep to ourselves and keep doing things our way—it’s more fun that way.”
