Companies pumping hundreds of billions in investment into new generative AI tools and LLM models promote it as a sea change technology that will be as revolutionary as the introduction of the desktop computer. Even some game industry figures believe it will usher in a new era in which games are made better, quicker, and more cheaply, democratizing development for creatives without hundred-person teams behind them. For indie publisher Tim Bender, the recent explosion in AI slop has been nothing but a headache. “If I sound frustrated, it’s because, like, honestly, all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult.”
The label he helps run as CEO, Hooded Horse, struck gold after signing the medieval base-builder mega hit Manor Lords, but its library of published games has grown far beyond it in the past two years with releases like the Lego-like tower-defense game Cataclismo, the economic management sim Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, and the 4X sequel Endless Legend 2. Being strategy games isn’t the only thing they all have in common. They also all adhere to a strict ban on generative AI art.
Battlefield 6 is getting accused of using Gen AI. pic.twitter.com/fa2E79X8as
— Shooter Intel (@ShooterIntel) December 22, 2025
“I fucking hate gen AI art and it has made my life more difficult in many ways…suddenly it infests shit in a way it shouldn’t,” Bender told me in a recent interview. “It is now written into our contracts if we’re publishing the game, ‘no fucking AI assets.’”
It turns out that just saying no to gen AI is the easy part. Actually trying to enforce a ban is where things can get tricky. There’s no magical machine you can put a game through to detect if it has generative AI content in it. Platforms like Steam, which require disclosures for the use of such content, basically operate on good faith that developers will be honest about what’s in their games. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 briefly had AI placeholder art in one part of the game at launch before it was eventually pulled, but that box on the Steam page was never checked.
Production can be messy enough even within small studios. Development teams working with freelancers or outsource companies, as many indies do, will have an even harder time maintaining checks throughout the production pipeline to weed out any gen AI art usage.
“[Gen AI art] is cancerous”
“We’ve gotten to the point where we also talk to developers and we recommend they don’t use any gen AI anywhere in the process because some of them might otherwise think, ‘Okay, well, maybe what I’ll do is for this place, I’ll put it as a placeholder,’ right?” Bender told me. “Like some, people will have this thought, like they would never want to let it in the game, but they’ll think, ‘It can be a placeholder in this prototype build.’ But if that gets done, of course, there’s a chance that that slips through, because it only takes one of those slipping through in some build and not getting replaced or something.”
He continued, “because of that, we’re constantly having to watch and deal with it and try to prevent it from slipping in, because it’s cancerous.”
Hooded Horse, which already this year helped usher the grand strategy sci-fi game Terra Invicta out of Early Access and into its 1.0 release, employs two full-time artists who help with all of the publisher’s marketing art, which can include appearances in showcases and announcements for things like Xbox Game Pass launches. “It would be a betrayal of them to work with anything that is using gen-AI art, like, I wouldn’t be able to face them if we had that right. And we’re absolutely committed ethically, for all the reasons you know, against this,” Bender said.
His point of view isn’t one you hear a whole lot among the video game industry’s giants. EA is all in on the potential for AI to make its loot-box-driven sports franchises even more lucrative. Embark Studios, maker of last year’s mega-hit Arc Raiders, continues to shrug off complaints about the game’s use of generative-AI voice performances.
“We don’t use AI to not have to hire people or replace people or job groups or voice actors,” CEO Patrick Söderlund recently told GamesBeat. “People have to take a step back and understand what it is and how it can be a big help to developers and be a tremendous benefit to players. I realize it is an intricate subject and discussion.”
It’s about good ethics, not bad PR
There’s also a sense among some developers that everyone else is rushing to embrace the AI revolution, and anyone who doesn’t will find themselves left behind in a landscape that’s increasingly competitive and hostile to new game releases. “Korea is reportedly one of the countries where ChatGPT is used most actively,” Sean Kim, the co-CEO of Lies of P publisher Neowiz, told Game Informer. “It’s hard to find a game company here today that isn’t using AI in some way. At the very least, companies are using either ChatGPT or Gemini.”
Even some acclaimed GOTY winners have been captured by this mindset. “Our successes come from empowering people to work in their own way and bring the best out of their skill & craft, so that we can make the best RPGs we can possibly make,” Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke posted on X last month. “In that context, it would be irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies. However, our processes are always evolving, and where they are not efficient or fail to align with who we are, we will make changes.”
Holy fuck guys we’re not “pushing hard” for or replacing concept artists with AI.
We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I’m very proud of what they do.
I was asked explicitly about concept art…
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) December 16, 2025
The Larian Studios cofounder was responding to controversy that had erupted over previous remarks that suggested gen-AI would be used in the making of the studio’s next RPG, Divinity. Vincke promised no gen-AI assets in the finished game but suggested artists might experiment with it during the exploratory phase of development. For Hooded Horse, the issue with gen AI isn’t just about skepticism over its usefulness or potential backlash from players, it’s about the moral issues surrounding tools trained on plagiarizing other people’s work.
“When it comes to gen-AI, it’s not a PR issue, it’s an ethics issue,” Bender said. “The reality is, there’s so much of it going on that the commitment just has to be that you won’t allow it in the game, and if it’s ever discovered, because this artist that was hired by this outside person slipped something in, you get it out and you replace it. That has to be the commitment. It’s a shame that it’s even necessary and it’s a very frustrating thing to have to worry about.”
