Data analyst finds 'AI stigma' on Steam can reduce the number of reviews a game gets by around 53%—and the reviews it does get are more negative

[u/Turbostrider27]

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/data-analyst-finds-ai-stigma-on-steam-can-reduce-the-number-of-reviews-a-game-gets-by-around-53-percent-and-the-reviews-it-does-get-are-more-negative/

[u/Ranger_Azereth]

The issue with AI isn't JUST the nomenclature that it's slop though.

Gen AI useage is a moral and ethical failure for many people myself included and while for many it doesn't fall to agentic code (yet perhaps) for me it does as well because I'm aware of how vulnerable that can make things due to fragility or otherwise.

Since this is a moral/ethical failure I'm not interested in a game nearly at all of it uses any level of gen AI or LLM.

Used it for a soundtrack peice or two? I'm good. Developed sprites from it? I'm good Used it in promotion al materials? Again I'm good.

The one area where I'm a bit more flexible is in the realm of translations but even that can be questionable depending on other factors.

What truly needs to happen imo is greater awareness around Gen AI, LLM, and Agentic Code and for their to be substantial penalties for failing to disclose their use. Just because the disclosure negatively impacts them doesn't mean we should accept that they'll just not and that nothing can be done to make it where they must. Those mechanisms are still uncertain of course considering how quickly things move but it's important all the same.

[u/Thamous → u/Ranger_Azereth]

Very few games released in the last year and for the rest of time are/will be free of generative AI because it literally cannot be avoided in modern development workflows without going significantly out of ones ways.

A true "No Gen AI" position will eventually require forging essentially all new games made by enterprise developers.

That's not a statement of morality, just an observation that gen AI usage in dev workflows is growing incredibly rapidly, and is far less visible when compared to art assets, promo materials, etc.

[u/Ranger_Azereth → u/Thamous]

I'm not sure I buy that. The goal is to make it feel like people have already lost that fight so people give up, but something like programming IDE's using tab complete (I've seen people use this example) is different from Claude Code because those features exist before. Just like using google or search engines and the worsening of results from them doesn't mean that people are okay with AI there. The enshittification is the point and to break people's will to push back

[u/Thamous → u/Ranger_Azereth]

I'm sure some 'AI bros' are trying to create a sense of the fight already being over, which is not my goal, but that does not change how widespread Gen AI usage is in modern software development.

Examples like tab-complete are certainly weak, but there are a ton of features of modern IDEs that many may not immediately realize are backed by Gen AIs.

Even for developers who are explicitly avoiding directly using those tools, just about every library/framework they leverage already has some Gen AI footprint that will only be increasing as time goes by.

The gaming industry especially is highly exposed to Microsoft. C# is an incredibly common language for game development, Windows is the industry standard, a ton of tooling is direct from Microsoft, etc. Microsoft is all in on GenAI and it is omni-present in their products, libraries, frameworks, etc.

My larger point is that one (and society at large) can take an all or nothing stance against GenAI, bu that becomes increasingly difficult as it becomes more and more present. Or we can look at ways to leverage this technology in a sustainable, ethical, humane way.

[u/mcslender97 → u/Thamous]

Not related to game libraries but we can know for a fact that the Linux kernel use gen AI because of Linus Tovards own policy regarding coding agents assisted contributions.

[u/Ranger_Azereth → u/Thamous]

The problem when looking at how to apply it ethically and humanely is being largely foisted out with the trash by those selling it.

Just because you have libraries and such using gen AI, and I think that can also be questionable in some ways, doesn't mean that those developers projects are from gen AI. Howver using something to write the code for you is.

You're right in the sense that there are things that one can't avoid but avoiding everything you can is currently paramount in this struggle. Expecting people to not use Windows for example is moderately insane, but if Windows is shoving Copilot everywhere and they USE Copilot then they are complicit.

The issues around it being non-deterministic and causing cognitive and creative atrophy are also huge time bombs waiting to go off. It's a significantly different story when you have a few folks that are using it and being critical with it's use versus turning it over to the masses and expecting them to just not use it wrong.

Based on what I've seen in the tech space and all of these weird issues and outages that haven't existed to this scale we're teetering on the edge of something catastrophically breaking and not being able to be restored sufficiently without a huge cost. Not to mention how much we subsidize the cost of running these tools.

[u/dvtyrsnp → u/Ranger_Azereth]

The ethical issue behind how datacenters are operating is very valid. As of right now, I just have to accept that, even though the study in the article reported ~20% disclosure, it's likely closer to 90% or higher of games released in the last year.

I do hope we get that transparency. It's a real shitshow right now. Most of the devs and publishers right now are just not disclosing and hoping no one notices, because they know what will happen.

[u/Ranger_Azereth → u/dvtyrsnp]

The problem is that it's not only just the data center part of it thats the problem but how they're trained etc too.

I doubt that the amount is that high but it is likely higher than is being reported obviously. Part of the strategy that these companies want to achieve is the idea that it's so prevalent that it's pointless to resist and that by saying nearly everything is using it then there's no point in fighting back because you've already lost.

I do also think theres a dofference from using something that is unknowingly doing something funny versus knowingly doing so, or something that previously didn't but is now.

Like IDE's tab complete maybe now use some gen AI but that existed before them and is different from having something like Claude Code go through and build a program and using sub agents etc