Yesterday, Google announced Project Genie, a new generative AI tool that can apparently create entire games from just prompts. It leverages the Genie 3 and Gemini models to generate a 60-second interactive world rather than a fully playable one. Despite this, many investors were scared out of their wits, imagining this as the future of game development, resulting in a massive stock sell-off that has sent the share prices of various video game companies plummeting.

The firms affected by this include Rockstar owner Take-Two Interactive, developer/distributors like CD Projekt Red and Nintendo, along with even Roblox — that one actually makes sense. Most of the games you find on the platform, including the infamous “Steal a Brainrot,” are not too far from AI slop, so it’s poetic that the product of a neural network is what hurt its stock.

Unity’s share price fell the most at 20%, since it’s a popular game engine. Generally speaking, that’s how most games operate: they use a software framework, such as Unity or Unreal Engine, which provides basic functionality like physics, rendering, input, and sound. Studios then build their vision on top of these, and some developers even have their own custom in-house solutions, such as Rockstar’s RAGE or Guerrilla’s Decima.