Game Developers Band Together To Rubbish Nexon’s Claims That Every Studio Is Using AI
Sam (He/Him) is the former Managing Editor of DualShockers and is now Senior Reporter at TheGamer. He’s been in and around games media for six years now and has held a variety of roles within the industry, including staff writer, SEO editor, managing editor and global head of gaming content.
During this time, he’s hosted a PAX panel, interviewed game directors, reviewed some of the biggest games, attended Gamescom, Summer Game Fest, and Tokyo Game Show and covered some of the hottest news stories.
Sam has been learning Japanese for almost three years now, with the intention of bringing you news from the country before anyone else.
He’s been playing video games for as long as he can remember, and you can regularly find him on his PS5 or Nintendo Switch. When he’s not playing games, he’ll no doubt be watching his beloved Ipswich Town.
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Not content with letting the conversation fizzle out and letting their game do the talking, Nexon ignited fires further with its CEO suggesting that “every game company is now using AI.” That statement, unsurprisingly, turned out to be untrue, and dozens of game studios are fighting back, fervently denying Nexon’s claims.
Speaking out against Nexon’s claims, Xalavier Nelson Jr., creative director at Strange Scaffold (El Paso: Elsewhere, I Am Your Beast), said, “We don’t use generative AI at Strange Scaffold, and I can confirm that a *lot* of other studios are not—whether indie or AAA. Get outta here with this normalization bulls**t.” He adds that, “We’re being told that AI is the only way to make games cheaper and faster, to pull us from this precipice of production nightmares the industry has found itself in. That it’s necessary. We put out roughly 3 motherf**king games a year, not touching the stuff. Skill issue.”
We put out roughly 3 motherf**king games a year, not touching the stuff. Skill issue.
Necrosoft Games, creators of the upcoming, hotly anticipated Demonschool, added its thoughts to the matter, saying, “Hello, not only do we not use AI, we would rather cut off our own arms than do so. Demonschool is 100% human-made.” Other studios, including KO_OP (Goodbye Volcano High), Denkiworks (Cursed to Golf), and Kaizen Game Works (Promise Mascot Agency), also spoke out against the technology.
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Nelson Jr. suggested that “investors and management are pushing to ‘just try it’, hoping issues with the tech will resolve itself, and that developers and audiences will gradually get worn down and just accept it slipping into more and more of the work,” but with indie studios like the ones fighting back, there’s still hope that the gaming industry won’t be completely overrun with AI slop in the not too distant future.
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