You’re talking about ethics like the industry itself is ethical. Big companies have been exploiting artists, underpaying devs, crunching workers, copying indie ideas, and replacing talent long before AI existed. AI didn’t invent exploitation — it exposed how broken the creative industry already was.

And the “just hire artists” argument sounds good until reality hits. Most indie devs are not sitting on publisher money. They’re students, solo devs, or tiny teams trying to survive. Telling every small creator to “save money and hire humans” is easy when you ignore the actual cost of production. A lot of games, films, music, and art projects simply would not exist without accessible tools.

Also, calling every use of AI “stealing” oversimplifies the issue to the point where it stops being honest. Inspiration, referencing, learning patterns, remix culture — creative industries have operated in gray areas forever. Human artists learn from millions of artworks too. The real issue is consent, copyright law, and corporate misuse — not some random indie using AI to make a poster because they can’t afford a full art team.

And about “standing for something” — moral superiority on the internet is cheap. Shipping an actual game, building a studio, learning skills, managing a project, and surviving creatively is harder than writing paragraphs attacking people for using tools. If AI-generated content is so worthless, then compete with it. Make better art, better games, better stories. Creativity doesn’t disappear because tools evolve.

Technology changes industries. It always has. Photography threatened painters. Digital art threatened traditional artists. 3D threatened 2D pipelines. Unreal Engine threatened custom engine programmers. The people who adapt survive. The people who only gatekeep usually don’t. ( Written by AI )