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.
Stop using AI in your now $80 “experiences” then
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 can shove it’s corporate opinion up it’s own corporate ass.
Sweeney’s not a fan of informed purchase practices. Good to know, Tim, I’ll make sure to not float any cash your way.
I’m not really surprised. That was clear when they started with the Epic Games Store without user reviews.
Capitalists in general hate information being freely available, because it reduces arbitrage options.
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 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.
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 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.
Usually it’s more responsible to disclose things.
Exactly. It’s like hiding the amount of ingredients on the packaging for food, just because it looks bad and people would boykott it.
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.
Sure sweeney, how about you address your defence of Grok doing kiddy stuff first.
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.
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.
Timmy is just mad because his new game engine pressures devs to fill their games with AI slop, and Steam will force their developers to disclose it.
