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.
Sure sweeney, how about you address your defence of Grok doing kiddy stuff first.
God forbid we give consumers the ability to make informed decisions.
Fellas, is it woke to vote with your feet?
Epic games can shove it’s corporate opinion up it’s own corporate ass.
If what Steam does is such a problem for everyone involved, why doesn’t Sweeny make a better product himself then?
Oh, he has but it’s worse?
Whould’ve thought!
Remember when Epic Games Store launched and Tim defended the barebones functionality and quality, in comparison to how Steam launched barebones back then? That was his justification. Having real competition is a good thing, but it has to be a competition, not exclusivity. GOG does a good job and providing value.
Epic lacked a search bar and a shopping basket for months after launch. He compared his 2018 product with a 2003 product and still lost.
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?
Epic Games CEO can go fuck himself!
While I think I understand what he means with regards to catching hate for being marked “AI”. I think it should be marked, but give a scale of sorts. Then it is easier for people to decide what things they are “okay” with vs what they aren’t. Like “AI voice over” is different than a game done “Mostly/completely AI”. Which would also help the random people that really like AI to find games using it (obviously that crowd is niche).
Maybe allow marking in detail elements that are AI place holders for Early Access games, where the dev is a small team or single person (no excuse for AAA games with huge budgets). The context matters, and people that don’t want any AI would already be leaving really bad reviews when they find out AI was used at all (along with demanding refunds). Could even be good for those Early Access games to find people to work with in replacing the place holders if people see things are still needed and reach out.
Would also be good if the same kind of scale markers could be applied to games that don’t use AI but do use pre-made assets. Not like AI is the only cause for all the slop games.
Isn’t this literally what Steam does? Every game I’ve looked at that has an AI tag explicitly states where/when AI is used and, usually, its for stuff in development that gets switched out. Not always, mind you, but thats usually the tag that I see. Stuff like Liar’s Bar will then also have the tag saying AI Voices and what not.
I hadn’t noticed, but cool that they already have something more transparent than just a vague “AI is used” stamp (and nice to have some tiny validation to my headspace not being a terrible idea lol). Then it for sure means the Epic Games guy is just reaching for weird hills to die on.
My god!
A well thought out and reasoned opinion? I can’t believe it took me this long to leave reddit!Honestly, if visual elements are ai created I am not sure I even care. AI is (now) really good at that and if it saves the devs weeks or months of drawing graphics that they can spend on the story or the action of a game, I (so far) think I am ok with that.
lol I’ll take the vote of approval! Currently the topic gets boiled down to “everything AI is slop” automatically, but removes situations where it can be used as a tool in a more “correct” sense. I would be happy if devs/studios started using it on some level to help bring back real optimizations so some games would actually use hardware to the fullest. And not just rely on people just constantly buying new GPUs or feel like the high-end hardware is a requirement.
Just need to make sure to test and re-test the results, and maybe good devs would actually go back to see how the optimizations were done to try doing it themselves (and not just get lazy/dumb in their own code). The cash grab vibe-coded slop stuff should be called out at all times. Just like the pre-AI asset flipping shit that was already flooding stores. Would also be great if bad reviews call out specific issues and not just blanket say “AI crap” or something like that to help other people have a better picture of things.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It’s still stupid, but he’s talking about review bombing forthcoming AI games across all platforms because they disclosed on steam vs forthcoming AI games that aren’t listed on steam that don’t disclose on other platforms.
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.
I bet sketchy food producers also balked at the idea of ingredient lists when they were first rolled out. If you’re offering something to others and think they might not like something you used in it, maybe it’s better to avoid the thing rather than complain that you’re being forced to tell people about it.
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
So, if a dev uses AI, they fail because of haters, but they also win because they’re more productive than devs that don’t?
Being strong and weak at the same time is always a fun rhetoric.
Also, afaik, Valve only asks for disclosure of generative AI for asset generation, not productivity tools like coding assistance.
not productivity tools like coding assistance
Given how Microsoft has really jammed AI code-assist down the throats of developers whether they want it or not, it would be kinda crazy if they did. The “contains AI” tag would be on virtually everything that touches Visual Studio, hollowing out its value as an indicator.
I think that is a valid point. That’s why Valve changed the initial policy. If I remember right, in the beginning it was “Ai” in general, without this distinction. But this is still not 100% clear (even if we assume the devs are not lying). In example is generating code with Visual Studio “generative Ai”?
It is, but it’s not asset generation. That’s the distinction. Assets are an already defined concept, textures, UI elements and so on.
yeah it sounds like the old immigrant taking your job but also cashing in welfare
You just don’t understand Sweeney logic. If you use AI you are more productive as a developer so you win, but you can’t win because you need to let everyone know you used AI so you lose. So to keep the winners winning you need to make sure the thing that makes them lose doesn’t happen.
Okay, in all seriousness I can understand his developer-centric takes but it’s pretty clear he still treats gamers, the actual consumers of the product, as cattle. We exist only to give money to game developers so they could make games, at least according to satan Sweeney. I was just wondering if he’s finally come around with all the improvements the Epic store is getting but no. Let’s just hope that bright mind at Epic gets to keep their job because it’s pretty clear it wasn’t Sweeney’s idea to improve the Epic store.
As something of a developer myself, I’d argue he has a developer-centric take. He’s probably more focused on profits.
I’d say a developer wants to create a quality product rather than hastily cobbled together slop. Especially when we’re talking about asset generation. Sure, you save money and time by churning out generic AI assets, but you gain quality from an actual artist. I guess improvements on the Epic Store are exactly that.
Funny how the greedy of the gaming industry never understand that quality gets them money rather than quantity.
