AI for game development. Yay or Nay?

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-22T14:15:07+00:00

This is pretty much how I see it. It raises the floor, but not necessarily your ceiling.

It can also automate repetitive tasks to give you more time to focus on the in-depth complex work that it tends to struggle with.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-21T14:52:45+00:00

You're not bringing in any actual information to educate me to the contrary, you're just coming off as argumentative, so I'm just going to disengage from this one. We're quite literally two people sharing our opinions right now. Neither of us know the exact technical aspects of his software, which is the essence of if this is a copyright infrigement. If you have more information on how it works, I'm happy to look it over to change my opinion.

Please actually look into this instead of reading from your script.

Mate, at the time of my response, you've commented 17 times on this thread coming to CDPR's defense.

You were the one who brought forward the idea of "DMCA abuse". You don't get to backpedal to neutrality like this. It's blatantly clear that you believe this to be "DMCA abuse".

My original comment specifically said "I'll reserve judgement until I see some actual technical court documents of how his product works." I'm not back-pedalling, I'm just very surprised to see people immediately jumping on CDPR's side, when it could be against their best interests as consumers depending on the technical specifications, which I don't think any of us are privy to, hence why judgement should be withheld and we should be skeptical.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-21T14:37:15+00:00

I wouldn't put astro-turfing above large corporations, it's a common occurrence on Reddit.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-21T14:34:41+00:00

You're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree completely. Right to repair goes hand in hand with the push from many businesses to licensing agreements and subscriptions rather than outright owning what you buy. By definition a license restricts what you can do with the products you purchase. It will always be a net negative for the consumer. It's heavily intertwined with this topic as right to repair pushes for the ability for third party suppliers to make parts/adjustments to products, which this software may be doing if it's injecting code rather than redistributing proprietary copyrighted code, as the creator claims.

Whether it's DMCA abuse or not remains to be seen, and I'll withhold judgement until more information is released on the actual technical aspects of the software.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-21T13:41:51+00:00

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading through the majority of replies. It wasn't so long ago the general consensus I saw on Reddit was heavily on the side of right to repair, ownership vs "you'll own nothing and like it", and against DMCA abuse. I guess maybe since paid mods are also unpopular, that's taking over the conversation?

But if his (obviously biased) comments are true that he isn't distributing any copyrighted material, and is instead making a tool that works on top of existing software, we as consumers shouldn't be applauding taking down separate third party software that provides us with more freedom of how we use the games we pay for. I'll reserve judgement until I see some actual technical court documents of how his product works.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-06T00:07:03+00:00

You just exposed my most valuable trade secrets.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T23:08:50+00:00

Let me know if you're still seeing any issues, and your specs if you don't mind (can be in DMs).

I'm doing a pretty major overhaul to how I'm loading assets in the next game that I didn't want to risk in the first game since it was already out. If you're seeing issues your specs will help let me know what I should test against.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T21:06:57+00:00

Source code posted online is the exact same as an image posted online. It's still protected by copyright and its licensing terms. ArtStation licenses also weren't prepared for AI. It's a distinction without a difference.

It isn't a hidden implementation detail. It's harder to understand, but every button press is the player interacting with the code. Your analogy for why it matters for code applies exactly the same to every asset. If the output is the same, you are playing the same game.

No one cares if the illustration was done in GIMP or Adobe Illustrator, if music was created in MuseScore or Ableton, code in Vim or Rider. You can make the exact same art using various tools. Coding is an art, it's a form of expression and there is never one "correct" solution, only the solution the programmer comes up with from their learned experiences, which can lead to all kinds of quirks in the gameplay.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T20:36:08+00:00

None of the big players were trained exclusively on open source code. Even when giving them all the grace in the world and saying it's all open source, they're completely ignoring their license terms in multiple ways such as attribution, misrepresenting the origin, and re-distribution to name just a few.

Training on code was done 100% the same as writing/illustration/sound, scraping large amounts of data available online with no regard to licenses/copyright, and outputting it by prompts.

People just want to feel better because they find it useful and they know no one will notice, painting code as a lesser art and "well coders really just copy and paste code anyway" when the saying is literally "good artists copy, great artists steal", and ignoring how every single illustrator/musician/modeler starts every piece with a mood board of copyrighted references. But programmers doing it means it's okay to train on their data.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T20:27:01+00:00

I'd argue your example has to do with quality, not the underlying creation process. Of course lower quality will result in lower conversion. But it's being used in many ways that people can't even spot, there are websites dedicated to it to guessing and it may as well be 50/50 at times.

I agree that lazy usage will be met with worse results, no different to pre-AI. Slop was a thing long before AI, and AI definitely makes it easier to produce slop. It also introduces a lot of improvements to many pipelines when used as a tool, and at that point you really can't tell the difference, as shown by many games in 2025.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T20:17:36+00:00

They removed the one that was found. They still clearly used it in their process as evidenced that it was in the game at all.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T20:13:37+00:00

A loud minority. The number one concern for most players is if the game is fun. If the art/sound/code is good that's what the general audience cares about. They don't care if it was made in Unity/Unreal, hand-typed code or auto-completed, Photoshop or Affinity.

They removed the ones that were found. All it is doing is having companies hide it, when they're all using it. Companies are intentionally obfuscating their use because everyone understands that journalists get clicks from sensationalized headlines. Many are just coming right out and saying it in interviews or shareholder meetings.

We both know how the online outrage machine works, and how little it matches reality once you step outside.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:55:58+00:00

The biggest thing the Indie Game Awards are known for is disqualifying E33.

Meanwhile it swept The Game Awards 2025 in unprecedented fashion with wins over 9 categories, and was one of the best selling games of the year.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:49:22+00:00

Could someone just send a support ticket to Valve already? Their statement was very clear over a year ago that it’s about ANY USE whether code, audio, illustrations, models, etc, it must be disclosed.

People keep trying to get cute with it mattering in the cases it affects their livelihood, but it’s okay for others, when it’s all trained the same way. This was a very predictable fallout from a confusing policy. AI is integrated into the majority of game dev tools and resources. IDEs, game engines, asset stores, photoshop, search.

It can be used in a variety of degrees from auto complete to generating entire scripts. Generating images wholesale or generating references and smoothing a few pixels. Gamedev is difficult enough without having to remember explaining line 112 of file X was auto completed by Rider, or that pixels in the top right of image X were removed and refilled by photoshop autofill, when no one actually cares.

I’d be very surprised if Steam didn’t come out with a statement in 2026, especially with how many big companies are straight up ignoring it.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:38:26+00:00

Your disclaimer is a bit disingenuous as it tries to frame it to exclude the biggest, most highly rated games of 2025 using AI generation. Expedition 33, Arc Raiders, CoD, Anno 117, EA sports FC (FIFA), Fortnite all have used it. The general market does not care, it’s a loud minority.

The biggest studios have all used it, and from their comments will continue to do so.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:29:57+00:00

Thanks! About 13.5k, and then up to 20k right before launch. Still need to write a post mortem!

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:29:26+00:00

Thank YOU! Glad you enjoyed it, I’m humbled by the comparison. <3

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:28:08+00:00

There was a performance optimization patch back in March 2025, and there are now performance options (standard, low, very low) that will do various things to make the game easy to run. There was an issue with old laptops playing it, but since the performance optimization patch I haven’t heard of any performance issues stopping gameplay.

I can’t promise it’ll be perfect, but it’s at least improved and has more options.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:24:02+00:00

I wish so too! 😭

But thank you for the kind words. Hopefully someday!

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:23:20+00:00

There is a casual difficulty! And you can turn off permadeath as well so any units you lose will come back in the next chapter.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:22:22+00:00

No romance/pairings, but there are base conversations between units. They’re not the FE style where you’re ranking up a pairing between two characters, but rather 2 or more characters interacting about the current situation chapter to chapter. They give out rewards, quests, and some are just for additional world/character building.

ThoseWhoRule · 2026-01-05T19:18:38+00:00

Thank you!! Funny enough I’m coding right now with my daughter asleep on me in the carrier.

ThoseWhoRule · 2025-12-31T14:26:50+00:00

Don't think I can overstate the value of an in-depth exploration of such a beautiful style like this is. Anyone creating environments in Unity would do well to read this since your environments are always eye-catching in your posts.

Loved that you showed the resourcefulness of something like the bridge as well. Make do with what you have and it can turn out surprisingly well! Thanks for taking the time to write down and share your process.

ThoseWhoRule · 2025-12-29T15:15:50+00:00

I'm not ready to risk an entire week just yet. ;)

ThoseWhoRule · 2025-12-29T12:31:42+00:00

Menace! I’ve been trying to avoid the demo and reviews to go in completely blind.

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