Palmyre developer Pocketpair launched a dedicated publishing division in January help studios bring their dream projects to market.
At the time, the Japanese company explained that it wanted to use its success to empower other developers. “We want to give you money and help you make a fun game,” it says on its website. There's one caveat, though: Pocketpair won't hand over wads of cash if your project uses generative AI.
Speaking to the game developer at Gamescom Asia about the company's stance on generative AI, Pocketpair PR director and publishing manager John Buckley explained that the company simply “doesn't believe” in polarizing technology. He also wonders, given the fact that Pocketpair is regularly accused of using generative artificial intelligence in Palmyrewhether people will actually believe him.
“People will say I'm lying, but these are just hard facts. We don't believe in this. We are very open about this. If you're into AI, or your game is 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,” he says.
However, he doesn't expect one publisher's stance to prevent AI-powered games from succeeding. In fact, he feels that the floodgates are already creaking open. “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.”
AI content under the microscope
He believes the influx of AI games will lead consumers and developers to put games under a microscope, trying to determine which ones tap into human ingenuity and which ones rely on machine-generated results. This will create its own problems, especially if you are a studio like Pocketpair that has been falsely accused of using AI.
Buckley explains that these claims are difficult to reverse because you're ultimately relying on people to take the word of a company they've already found unreliable. This means that in some cases it is better to simply ignore the noise. But there are some claims that need to be addressed, such as a recent social media exchange accusing Pocketpair of using machine translation tools for localization. Palmyre for Vietnamese, Indonesian, Turkish, Polish and Thai markets.
Buckley says this was not the case and explains that these accusations were based on an incomplete list of authors (bad credit is of course a common problem), which are now updated. Despite this, participating in these battles is often akin to pushing the legendary boulder of Sisyphus up a mountain.
“You know, I can’t just go out and start fighting these people. [who make the AI accusations] because it just fuels what’s going on,” Buckley says.[Regarding the 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. There are many Japanese games, in the credits it is written that the company was involved in localization.
“I'm not saying [that it is] right. This is unfortunate. We don't like it as much as anyone else. But that's how many of these companies want to operate. So we went to the localization company and said, “Hey, look, this is happening, and it's kind of a headache for us.” It would be great if you could just publish all the names. They had to contact each person individually. They eventually got approval. And then we released them all. I then quickly commented: “Hey, thanks for pointing this out, we released [the credits].
“A lot of people on this thread said, 'We appreciate you taking the time,' but of course there are still people on this thread who say, 'It's not enough, it's AI.' That's when I feel like there's nothing more we can do here. I can say, “That’s not true, we did it,” and they can say, “That’s true, you didn’t do that,” and what are we going to do? Just go back and forth forever.”
Buckley admits that this situation, although quite common, still causes him stress. He acknowledges that people have legitimate reasons to make public accusations when they believe they have uncovered the secret use of AI. The technology has yet to capture the attention of many creative minds in the gaming industry and beyond, although executives seem increasingly convinced that it represents a solution to virtually every problem facing their business.
Despite this, Buckley believes that for every legitimate accusation, others are unfairly thrown into the social media maelstrom. In his opinion, this situation could lead to studios like Pocketpair, which, do not forget, are indie developers, being subjected to a “witch hunt.” Meanwhile, despite vocal protests from many in the industry, major players such as EA, Embracer Group and Microsoft continue to tout their vision of a glorious future for artificial intelligence.
The game developer will be attending Gamescom Asia x Thai Game Show 2025 as a media partner, with tickets and accommodation covered by the event organizers.
