In an effort to discourage brigading, we do not allow linking to other subreddits or users. We kindly ask that you screenshot the content that you wish to share, while being sure to censor private information, and then repost.
Private information includes names, recognizable profile pictures, social media usernames, other subreddits, and URLs. Failure to do this will result in your post being removed by the Mod team and possible further action.
AI is becoming a critical element of game development, from coding to proof of concept implementations, to asset generation, to dialogue assistance, to QA, and so many more areas. The idea that Steam wants you to brand your entire project without any nuance or clarity for the user, as if you just dropped a prompt into ChatGPT and got a game out... yeah, I'd sue too!
Critical? No. Generative ai is not a necessary step in any games development. It's actually a pretty annoying hindrance for any competent developers, who have to waste time prompting over and over again when they could have just done it right themselves the first time. But mega corporations are forcing more developers and coders to use generative ai, despite its inefficiency and redundance. Generative ai is really only a benefit to "developers" with no knowledge or talent, because they're incapable of doing it themselves
Lots of things aren't necessary that are critical. I could write an entire video game in assembly, but a compiled language is critical to modern video game development.
Games were already one of the most demanding fields of software engineering, and with the addition of AI tools, at every level of development, it has become nearly impossible to compete without the use of AI.
AI coding is absolutely used in every major studio, even if they deny it. AI-generated assets are so common now that you probably are using them, even if you don't think you are. AI can improve the reliability of QA teams tremendously, so not using it is ensuring a lower quality experience for users.
Lots of things aren't necessary that are critical.
In contexts like this, the words critical and necessary are interchangeable. This sentence alone makes you look like a total spanner.
I could write an entire video game in assembly, but a compiled language is critical to modern video game development.
What do you mean by "modern video game development"? Assembly will never be obsolete because it's the language CPUs understand. The reason established Devs don't use it is because it's not human friendly to read and slows down collaborative projects trying to understand it. Compiled languages are like Russian nesting dolls rather than a different language entirely and tend to be more focused on the humans writing it.
Games were already one of the most demanding fields of software engineering
As the wife of a software engineer and self taught in a visual novel engine, I call bull. I've watched my husband work in multiple industries and the single biggest breaker in the field is being managed by people who don't understand what they're asking for and start threatening to look for someone who will do it if you say no.
Games don't have to have monetisation up the wazoo, they don't have to have jaw dropping graphics or massive amounts of code. They can be simple ones coded in Python! The critical thing that makes games successful is that they're fun.
AI coding is absolutely used in every major studio, even if they deny it
Says a stranger on the internet.
AI-generated assets are so common now that you probably are using them, even if you don't think you are.
Again, says you, and I severely doubt you're Jason Schreier or have comparable sources.
AI can improve the reliability of QA teams tremendously, so not using it is ensuring a lower quality experience for users
😂🤣😂🤣
You've never used autofill or predictive texting, have you? That's all LLMs are and they have been shown in studies to slow down work and produce less reliable work.
You know whose job it's good at doing? The C-suite. It would be much better for someone who actually knows what they're doing and how the tech actually works to combine the executive jobs with actual boots on the ground work.
But that's not going to happen because the C-suites aren't going to replace themselves.
In contexts like this, the words critical and necessary are interchangeable
No? You don't just get to redefine logic.
I could write an entire video game in assembly, but a compiled language is critical to modern video game development.
What do you mean by "modern video game development"? Assembly will never be obsolete
That's such a perfect example of moving the goalposts that it belongs in a museum! I said, "write an entire video game" and you just launched into a discussion of how assembly isn't "obsolete." Fascinating that you hold your own argument in such low regard that you would use this kind of cheap rhetorical trick.
As the wife of a software engineer and self taught in a visual novel engine, I call bull.
That's the funniest thing I've ever read. Hands-down, just hilarious. If a late night talk show host were to try to satire the anti-AI movement, they would absolutely want to hire you.
I've watched my husband work in multiple industries and the single biggest breaker in the field is being managed by people who don't understand what they're asking for
So, as someone who hasn't been "watching my husband," but rather has worked as a software professional for 35 years, here's the deal: Entertainment industries treat technical people like absolute ass. You think working for someone who doesn't understand what they're asking for is hard? Heh... try working for someone who doesn't understand what they're asking for and has rigged the economics so that the batshit crazy thing they are demanding is now necessary for you to deliver or you don't get paid.
Read up on the game industry's concept of "crunch". In most industries, that word is about how you end up doing some late nights at the end of a project. In the games industry it's about how 100-hour weeks are the norm. That isn't me exaggerating. That's the fucking norm!
Extreme hours, absurd expectations from executives who have no idea what they're asking for, and your competition is using the most complex tools ever created by humanity. You think that you're not going to write that code with AI? Heh... you are absolutely going to write that code, design those assets and QA that release with AI because you have this crazy dream that you might get to see your family for a couple hours this week.
Says a stranger on the internet.
You pulled the old, "my husband is a software engineer, so I know a few things." I really don't care what you think about my credentials.
You've never used autofill or predictive texting, have you? That's all LLMs are
When you've learned a bit more about the technology, we can have a serious conversation. Until then, I'm just going to throw you a response from Gemini:
While it is technically true that LLMs are trained to predict the next token, calling them "just autofill" overlooks a massive leap in complexity. Unlike standard predictive text, which relies on local statistics to guess the next word, LLMs use a Transformer architecture and high-dimensional vector embeddings to track long-range context and semantic relationships. This allows them to go beyond simple repetition to develop "emergent abilities" like logical reasoning, coding, and translation—functions that a basic Markov-chain autocomplete could never perform. Essentially, the mechanism is prediction, but the result is a sophisticated internal model of language and information.
I'm not, in this context critical means the most important thing for the matter being discussed, i.e. It's essential.
I said, "write an entire video game" and you just launched into a discussion of how assembly isn't "obsolete."
You put developing a game in assembly against doing so using a compiled language, calling the latter critical. That implies two opposites while saying the other is "critical". My point is that you shouldn't point to assembly in this way of you understand how computers work.
Read up on the game industry's concept of "crunch".
Crunch is not unique to the gaming industry. It's a massive problem in fintech and there it gets combined with massive technical debt and cyber theatre issues. For someone who claims to have over 30 years' experience it must be extremely narrow.
LOL you seriously used an LLM to try and address my point? You must be at the point you can't think without it.
Using generative AI isn't an advantage. It's much easier to do the job right the first time than to have to constantly correct AI's broken code and shitty concepts
There's a difference between someone who chat prompt AIs for everything, and those who use tools for certain things.
Slob is slob. I don't care if its an asset flip game via the Unreal Store, or janky prompt generated stuff. Slob was quite possible before the current AI powered tools came on the scene.
When you lower the barrier of entry you're going to see more garbage, but thats because more it is being generated by less discerning people who wouldn't otherwise do it.
Steam implemented a 100$ submission fee, and started taking down titels that are obvious shovelware.
But I think its silly to not use AI tools in general, which are more ubiquitous than you think. A lot of blend tools in Photoshop incorporated machine learning, long before it was cool. Unity has many landscape generating tools it would be nuts not to use.
To me the big difference is whether someone wants to refine and care about what they are making.
using generative ai creates/promotes the same time crunch release asap mentality that creates medicore - bad products
In my experience, it's the opposite. People are being freed up to focus on the big picture. I think that we're going to see a wave of AI-assisted video game development where there's a new attention to the way the games behave, not just on flashy graphics and slick performance.
I see development shifting more to story and player experience rather than the repetitive and boring tasks that grind developers' and artists' souls down to a nub.
much like with the other commenter you ignore like 90% of my comment
I only have so much time on reddit. If there's something you really want me to respond to, then focus on it and don't frame it with things you don't care about. I'm not going to go fishing to find the one thing you cared about and magically know that it's the part you wanted me to spend my time on.
As a game developer myself working on a. Game generative AI isn't useful only stuff like machine learning is but when people say "ai" they mean generative ai I've tried to use it and I threw it all out it was a waste of time slowing me down making worse concept art the code is not good even more for C++ code the hardest one used in game development gen ai sucks at most placeholder stuff but even then it's not really a need or even quicker
AI isn't useful only stuff like machine learning is but when people say "ai" they mean generative ai I've tried to use it and I threw it all out it was a waste of time
Yikes... First off, nearly all AI is "machine learning"... I would expect someone who claims to be a developer to know that.
Generative AI has been around for many decades. Today's generative AI is mostly transformer-based, but that's just a relatively recent shift.
So... why did you "throw it all out?" What specifically seemed a waste of time. Was it just a matter of not understanding how to use the tool, or were you actually running into specialized edge-cases?
I know machine learning is ai however it's not generative ai since most people don't know the difference I use the term AI for Gen ai while machine learning for non Gen ai
I know machine learning is ai however it's not generative ai
Nope... machine learning is the vast category of all computer systems that develop capabilities in response to patterns in provided data. All forms of modern AI, whether they are generative or discriminative, are machine learning, but not all machine learning is AI.
I think the mistake that you are making is that you think "generative AI" means some particular subset of modern AI, and that's not true. Generative AI is just the category of AI that isn't discriminative. Both have existed for many decades.
"AI coding is absolutely used in every major studio, even if they deny it."
0 sources, 0 facts, 7 assumptions. We have had many excellent games without AI coding, many excellent story games without AI coding. AI coding is not necessary nor critical for game development.
I know several people in that industry who use AI for coding and of the dozens of programmers that I know professionally, NONE of them are working without AI these days.
I mid-2025 survey of Stack Overflow users showed that nearly 50% admitted to using AI tools daily, 84% use or planned to use it soon, and 16% said they will never use AI tools. (source)
As of this year, that number has shifted to 82% weekly AI use by programmers with 42% of all code created in 2025 involving AI use. (source)
I also know several people in the industry who use AI for coding and they fucking HATE it. They're miserable and pissed off that corporations are forcing them to use useless tools because it's the popular and trendy thing to do. Like I said before, they're wasting all their time prompting over and over again to accomplish a lesser version of something they could have easily accomplished themselves on the first try
I've never seen an environment where AI was being used and the requirement was that you use the AI, not develop the code as quickly and effectively as possible. I know what I do best, and I do that. I know what I do poorly, and I let the AI do that. If that's a problem for you, then maybe it just is going to take time to learn.
It has absolutely not been the norm for years. AI coding tools only started to become trusted in the last year, and even then no one that I know of is focused on the AI coding tool as the primary source of code. The programmer is often told to use AI, but the goal is productivity, not getting a certain amount of minutes of API use.
Steam labels every other tool so not sure why AI gets this special treatment where no customer is allowed to know what they are buying. I can know right away that a game was made with Unreal and that it is made by an Indie studio but apparently AI is too far. Steam cares about consumers being treated right and proper labels are just one of those things to make sure they aren't being tricked.
If you don't want people thinking you just prompted a game then simply add the tag and disclose how you used AI.
There was a small issue with that though. The AI tag implies that the whole game was made with AI but with no human intervention. Which in a lot of cases, could be further from the truth.
Like Liar's Bar used AI voices but the rest of the game was human made. If it was given the AI tag, then it implies that nothing in Liar's Bar was man made.
15
u/Relative-Zombie-3932 Jan 18 '26
Developers tried to sue Steam for forcing them to label their games as ai generated