The October 2026 edition of Steam Next Fest started on October 19, allowing users to explore Steam’s massive catalog of games with free playable demos. Millions of PC gamers logged on but on…
As much as I agree that there is a difference, it still feels like trying to skirt around the disclosure. Clever way to avoid looking generated at least, I’ll give you that. Agree to disagree on this.
I’m very staunchly against using genAI for anything in the games I play, so if I find out a game uses it in any way my opinion of it and its maker quickly shifts negative. If I played a game that doesn’t disclose any genAI use and later find out genAI was used, I will go out of my way to avoid any further games made by the same people and leave a negative review citing the genAI use as the primary reason.
In my actual opinion, creatives using genAI to do work in the mediums they don’t work in is a betrayal of, and voluntary isolation from, people who should be your peers. I would definitely choose to stop associating with someone I know if they tried to utilize genAI as a part of something creative.
Not everyone has that negative an opinion, or even cares if all the code is generated given they’ll never see or know. It’s a hard-line stance coming from a need I feel to oppose genAI regardless of what it’s generating. Generated code is not something that’s particularly enforceable when it comes to disclosure, anyway.
If you’re following the rules as written then I guess you’re welcome to not disclose genAI use and all I can do is cope.
Yeah, totally understandable. Agree that it’s hard if not impossible to enforce a disclosure on generated code. And also agree that what I’m describing is a code-based means to achieve an art style but a means to skirt disclosure rules that would impact me financially. Both things are true.
I’m hoping they will add a middle ground disclosure where I can differentiate my work from pure genAI slop but also give people like yourself a fair heads up.
On the point about separating ourselves from the people we’re supposed to be working with, I both agree and disagree. In my case, I went to college for animation and game design, but found that none of the jobs I could find out of college would pay enough to cover cost of living. I also heard horror stories about eternal crunch time and studios moving between cities frequently to take advantage of tax incentives. So, I moved home with my parents and got a job at the local computer store. My friend got me a job in a call center as a support technician, but it turned out to be more of a site reliability engineering job under support technician pay. Involved a lot of lateral thinking to solve technical problems and I mostly worked and played video games to try to unwind. I wanted to make something that would allow me to change my circumstances and make money as a creative rather than continually burn out being overworked as a technician. I wrote novels, drew animated shorts, wrote scripts, and made games. But nothing ever felt finished enough to show to other people. I’d always find flaws too deep to fix, or discover it was going to take years to make all the assets I needed and gave up because the work seemed so insurmountable before any payoff was possible. I’ve got about fifteen rich detailed game designs from around twenty years of daydreaming, and not much to show for it.
AI has entirely changed my situation. I left my day job and got a job as a DevOps engineer where I basically has AI teach me all the skills I was missing. I left that job and spent a year trying to build a PaaS. Which like all the other passion projects was aimed at generating enough passive income that I could slow down enough in this rat race and start collaborating with other creatives and get to the point where I can pay them to help me make things.
That PaaS has never been profitable, but it did get me noticed and I’m now a senior software architect at a well-known company. For better or worse, my designs have become central to the product and my work hours have been steadily climbing, currently between 70 and 95 hours per week because so many people depend on my work product for direction and I don’t want to let anyone down. I make enough money to have a house to myself now, but don’t have much time to relax in it. What I can do is set my work laptop on one side, to send it off on AI-driven tasks, while having another laptop on the other side that I give instructions while I wait for my work prompt to come back. I’ve resurrected some of my old ideas and now I’m playing games I was beginning to doubt would ever become a reality.
Hopefully, some of these will be profitable enough that I can both support myself and hire creative people to work on more involved projects. I do see your point about AI separating creatives who should be working together. But it also feels like my best odds of having time to collaborate in a healthy creative way is by leveraging AI to make some things on my own first. And not to say I can’t find ways to bring artists in on my projects that I’m working on now.
Despite being made in many different styles and genres, my games tend to have one commonality to them. They introduce some kind of asset submission pipeline where creators can make skins or customizations on top of my games and get paid for their work in a way that fairly balances the time I’ve put in and their submitted work against the benefits our works collectively provide to the player.
Because I am deeply concerned about the direction the world is taking. The ease with which corrupt political parties deceive the populace. The control that the super wealthy have over almost everything. The fact that they will soon be able to do most things without the need for any kind of proletariat. I don’t think the non-wealthy people will get basic income on a platter. They are more likely to be disposed of when they are no longer necessary. It’s already happening.
So, part of my aim is to provide jobs for people in a post-job society. But of course, people without jobs have no money to spend on games. So, the primary purpose of my working insane hours and developing these old game designs is to make money. Specifically, to make enough money that I can leave my job and finish my PaaS. Because that hosting platform will become the foundation of a software creation platform which allows people to democratically create software, in a structure without a competitive hierarchy. One which runs not on capital but collective reasoning between confirmed real humans. And the means of that production as well as the profits of everything produced belong to the ones putting in the work to make the system successful. Those are the rules I need to codify and ensure cannot be corrupted once I allow my system to fork and federate.
And only once we rebuild and improve all of our existing software, currently owned by greedy companies that answer to profit-obsessed shareholders, will the act of living stop funneling profits to the ultra rich. If you can’t change that reality, then it’s only through effective voting and responsible governance that we can regain control of our civilization. And I have stopped holding my breath on that account. These AI companies are spending a lot more than they are making right now because it’s in their best interests to get people hooked and train on the users. It’s only during this window that it’s financially possible for the general populace to create and market tools that will replace the profit-driven platforms of today.
AI does indeed contribute to horrific climate change, enables the ultra rich to disconnect their futures from the existence of the masses, and gets its users addicted in ways that are already hard to reverse. It is nonetheless my opinion that leveraging it heavily in the months and years to come is by far the best shot we have to take the game of the oligarchs and turn it against them. I may be wrong. But you now have all the logic that has brought me to this place.
I can only hope we can find a path that is best for us all.
TL;DR: i think you are correct and most of our differences may be in the perspective from which we view a shared goal
As much as I agree that there is a difference, it still feels like trying to skirt around the disclosure. Clever way to avoid looking generated at least, I’ll give you that. Agree to disagree on this.
I’m very staunchly against using genAI for anything in the games I play, so if I find out a game uses it in any way my opinion of it and its maker quickly shifts negative. If I played a game that doesn’t disclose any genAI use and later find out genAI was used, I will go out of my way to avoid any further games made by the same people and leave a negative review citing the genAI use as the primary reason.
In my actual opinion, creatives using genAI to do work in the mediums they don’t work in is a betrayal of, and voluntary isolation from, people who should be your peers. I would definitely choose to stop associating with someone I know if they tried to utilize genAI as a part of something creative.
Not everyone has that negative an opinion, or even cares if all the code is generated given they’ll never see or know. It’s a hard-line stance coming from a need I feel to oppose genAI regardless of what it’s generating. Generated code is not something that’s particularly enforceable when it comes to disclosure, anyway.
If you’re following the rules as written then I guess you’re welcome to not disclose genAI use and all I can do is cope.
Yeah, totally understandable. Agree that it’s hard if not impossible to enforce a disclosure on generated code. And also agree that what I’m describing is a code-based means to achieve an art style but a means to skirt disclosure rules that would impact me financially. Both things are true.
I’m hoping they will add a middle ground disclosure where I can differentiate my work from pure genAI slop but also give people like yourself a fair heads up.
On the point about separating ourselves from the people we’re supposed to be working with, I both agree and disagree. In my case, I went to college for animation and game design, but found that none of the jobs I could find out of college would pay enough to cover cost of living. I also heard horror stories about eternal crunch time and studios moving between cities frequently to take advantage of tax incentives. So, I moved home with my parents and got a job at the local computer store. My friend got me a job in a call center as a support technician, but it turned out to be more of a site reliability engineering job under support technician pay. Involved a lot of lateral thinking to solve technical problems and I mostly worked and played video games to try to unwind. I wanted to make something that would allow me to change my circumstances and make money as a creative rather than continually burn out being overworked as a technician. I wrote novels, drew animated shorts, wrote scripts, and made games. But nothing ever felt finished enough to show to other people. I’d always find flaws too deep to fix, or discover it was going to take years to make all the assets I needed and gave up because the work seemed so insurmountable before any payoff was possible. I’ve got about fifteen rich detailed game designs from around twenty years of daydreaming, and not much to show for it.
AI has entirely changed my situation. I left my day job and got a job as a DevOps engineer where I basically has AI teach me all the skills I was missing. I left that job and spent a year trying to build a PaaS. Which like all the other passion projects was aimed at generating enough passive income that I could slow down enough in this rat race and start collaborating with other creatives and get to the point where I can pay them to help me make things.
That PaaS has never been profitable, but it did get me noticed and I’m now a senior software architect at a well-known company. For better or worse, my designs have become central to the product and my work hours have been steadily climbing, currently between 70 and 95 hours per week because so many people depend on my work product for direction and I don’t want to let anyone down. I make enough money to have a house to myself now, but don’t have much time to relax in it. What I can do is set my work laptop on one side, to send it off on AI-driven tasks, while having another laptop on the other side that I give instructions while I wait for my work prompt to come back. I’ve resurrected some of my old ideas and now I’m playing games I was beginning to doubt would ever become a reality.
Hopefully, some of these will be profitable enough that I can both support myself and hire creative people to work on more involved projects. I do see your point about AI separating creatives who should be working together. But it also feels like my best odds of having time to collaborate in a healthy creative way is by leveraging AI to make some things on my own first. And not to say I can’t find ways to bring artists in on my projects that I’m working on now.
Despite being made in many different styles and genres, my games tend to have one commonality to them. They introduce some kind of asset submission pipeline where creators can make skins or customizations on top of my games and get paid for their work in a way that fairly balances the time I’ve put in and their submitted work against the benefits our works collectively provide to the player.
Because I am deeply concerned about the direction the world is taking. The ease with which corrupt political parties deceive the populace. The control that the super wealthy have over almost everything. The fact that they will soon be able to do most things without the need for any kind of proletariat. I don’t think the non-wealthy people will get basic income on a platter. They are more likely to be disposed of when they are no longer necessary. It’s already happening.
So, part of my aim is to provide jobs for people in a post-job society. But of course, people without jobs have no money to spend on games. So, the primary purpose of my working insane hours and developing these old game designs is to make money. Specifically, to make enough money that I can leave my job and finish my PaaS. Because that hosting platform will become the foundation of a software creation platform which allows people to democratically create software, in a structure without a competitive hierarchy. One which runs not on capital but collective reasoning between confirmed real humans. And the means of that production as well as the profits of everything produced belong to the ones putting in the work to make the system successful. Those are the rules I need to codify and ensure cannot be corrupted once I allow my system to fork and federate.
And only once we rebuild and improve all of our existing software, currently owned by greedy companies that answer to profit-obsessed shareholders, will the act of living stop funneling profits to the ultra rich. If you can’t change that reality, then it’s only through effective voting and responsible governance that we can regain control of our civilization. And I have stopped holding my breath on that account. These AI companies are spending a lot more than they are making right now because it’s in their best interests to get people hooked and train on the users. It’s only during this window that it’s financially possible for the general populace to create and market tools that will replace the profit-driven platforms of today.
AI does indeed contribute to horrific climate change, enables the ultra rich to disconnect their futures from the existence of the masses, and gets its users addicted in ways that are already hard to reverse. It is nonetheless my opinion that leveraging it heavily in the months and years to come is by far the best shot we have to take the game of the oligarchs and turn it against them. I may be wrong. But you now have all the logic that has brought me to this place.
I can only hope we can find a path that is best for us all.
TL;DR: i think you are correct and most of our differences may be in the perspective from which we view a shared goal