Pocketpair Publishing, the new publishing division created by Palworld developer Pocketpair, is, as you might have guessed from the name, ahead of developers inevitably promoting games created with artificial intelligence, making it clear that the company is not interested.
“People will say I'm lying, but these are just hard facts. We don’t believe that,” said Pocketpair Publishing CEO John Buckley. Game developer (h/t PC gamer) “We are very open about this. If you're into AI, or your game is built on Web3 or uses NFTs, there are plenty of publishers out there. [who'll talk to you]but we are not the right partner for this.”
Pocketpair's stance on AI-powered games aside, Buckley knows the future is unstoppable.
“I think in the next two to three years we're going to enter this strange era—and you can see it slowly happening now on Steam—of really low quality games made by artificial intelligence.
“This is something that has plagued other stores, but Steam has done a good job of containing it. But it happens. This wave is coming, and I think we're going to hit a market of authenticity where people will slowly say, 'No, these guys are really trying to do something special,' to fight back.”
It's worth noting that before its launch, Palworld was repeatedly accused of using generative artificial intelligence for its Pal projects. the studio categorically denies this. More recently, he was accused of using machine translation to localize Palworld for various international markets. In this case, Buckley said it was best not to fan the flames by responding, but he nonetheless cleared up the confusion surrounding the situation.
“You know, I can’t just go out and start fighting these people. [hurling AI accusations] because it just fuels what’s going on,” Buckley said.
“[Regarding the machine translation accusation]one of the most important “evidence” was that since we did not publish the names of the translators, it must be artificial intelligence. Well no, it's just poor Japanese culture in general. A lot of Japanese games will say in the credits that they were localized by a company,” Buckley said, adding: “I'm not saying that [that it is] right. It's unfortunate.”
The terrifying reality is that AI games aren't just inevitable—they're already here. And although they are now quite easy to detect, with the development of artificial intelligence it will only become more difficult. One can only hope that storefronts and distributors step up efforts to label them as such, thereby making it easier for all of us to sort through the garbage of legitimate, man-made games.
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