Tim Sweeney claims it’s a “Scarlet Letter” which makes players “try to kill the game”
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has criticised rival Valve for forcing studios to disclose when they use AI in game development.
Epic recently showed how it was integrating AI into Unreal Engine 6.
Time Sweeney said:
“If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you’ve got to put it on Steam so people can wish list it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game.
“I think it’s really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn’t do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.”
Which is totally ignoring the factor that the user should know about the purchase it makes and be able to decide for themselves. Transparency for the player is not a bad thing.
His last “point” doesn’t make any sense.
You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.
If “you’ve got to put it on Steam” and Steam tells you whether a game used AI or not, then everyone is on the same playing field.
That means if you think your game will fail because everyone is boycotting AI games, you are free to not use AI… and you won’t “probably fail due to competition that does,” because their games are also on Steam!
Hope I am explaining what that sounds like to me (a contradiction of his whole statement).
Also he can go to hell. Gaming is being kept alive by Steam and It’s always little timmy trying to tear it down with his shitty manipulations. Why doesn’t he buck up his ideas and go make an actual competitor to Steam?
Epic Games CEO can go fuck himself!
If you’re proud of your use, it’s a non-issue, if you’re ashamed of it, why are you using it?
Transparency is only ever an issue when concealment and deceit are core elements of the activity.
If disclosing the use of genai will make a game fail, then not using it can’t make studios “fail due to conpetition that does”, because said competition will fail. You just said that, Tim.
You didn’t read correctly. He said that you either have to not use GenAI or fail due to competition that does (not use GenAI). So yeah, that’s as it should be.
Here is a more nuanced argument. Steam marks ai use generally, so even if your game just uses text to speech for accessibility reasons, the hate will immediately go towards ai use even tho nobody would mind it if the rest is handcrafted.
Yeah I feel like some uses are fine. When it’s used as a tool with thought and consideration.
These giant companies just want to replace people with AI though and flood the market. It would be nice to have more information
Yes, I wouldn’t mind a more detailed description of how and where AI is used.
Steam lets developers include a description of the AI use, not just whether they used AI. This is the “AI Generated Content Disclosure” for Stellaris:
The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:
We employ generative AI technologies during the creation of some assets. Typically this involves the ideation of content and visual reference material. These elements represent a minor component of the overall development. AI has been used to generate voices for an AI antagonist and a player advisor.
I really want to be a voice actor and that last part makes me so sad. Games and stuff used to be one of the best ways to break into the market
Why should they fail when the competition fails by default in his argument.
What a piece of shit. Stfu.
Then he’s more than welcome to hide the ai label on his own sales platform. Oh right, no one using epic games. So unfair
I don’t care that much, but I rather have that information then not.
Tim Sweeney
Fuck him, and fuck Unreal engine.
Tim Sweeney claims it’s a “Scarlet Letter” which makes players “try to kill the game”
That’s because we don’t want slop in our media, and we have a right to not want it.
What this shithead is saying is that customers should be lied to so they can’t choose a product based on what they actually want.
He’s also saying that “choosing not to purchase” is the same as “killing a game.”
Guess I’d better pour one out for the literal thousands of games I’ve personally killed.
I don’t get it, if AI is so great and the future, wouldn’t you be happy to disclose your use of it in your product?
I want to play quality games crafted by hand with love and intention and an artistic vision that the author brings to life.
Anybody who tries to argue that their product won’t sell if the consumer is well informed doesn’t make a quality product worth buying anyway.
He thinks his game won’t sell because it has the AI scarlet letter but if he doesn’t use it, his competition would have an edge over him because they use AI.
Does he realize how stupid he sounds since they would then have the scarlet letter of AI and his game wouldn’t and would then sell better.
I can’t even get mad, I find it genuinely funny that that’s the argument he came up with to elaborate on why AI disclosure mandates are irresponsible.
It’s full-on “no one reads past the headline anyway” effort-level without understanding that people who read past the headline are his only possible reachable demographic, because not looking past the headline is defaulting to the easy assumption that Epic is just spewing garbage.
Tim Sweeney continues to be a whiny jealous entitled bitch, more at 11.
Complete lack of self-awareness making such a statement.
In order to be successful, games have to launch on our competitors platform!
Moron.
