A bundler, a transpiler, a runtime (designed to be a drop-in replacement for Node.js), test runner, and a package manager - all in one.

Bun’s single-file executables turned out to be perfect for distributing CLI tools. You can compile any JavaScript project into a self-contained binary—runs anywhere, even if the user doesn’t have Bun or Node installed. Works with native addons. Fast startup. Easy to distribute.

Sounds like an additional reason to be doing it in a way where participants can’t be debanked by payments middlemen

Part of the headache here is that this situation inherently props up a few monopolistic platforms, rather than allowing people to use whatever payment system is available in their own countries. Some of this can be worked around using cryptocurrencies – famously, the Mitra project leverages Monero for this very purpose, although I’m told it now can accept other forms of payment as well.

Hell yeah, I didn’t know about Mitra. It sounds like it’s a Patreon esque kind of deal with what the payments part is for.

Well, at least the advertising companies will lose money this way

Quickly and effortlessly get some music playing that can act as a backdrop for your real activity such as working, driving, cooking, hosting friends, etc. Keep it rolling indefinitely.

“Discover” new music by statistical means based on your average tastes.

This is the main thing I want out of music software tbh.

I feel bad that you think that’s what I’m getting at with this, arguments shouldn’t be about getting one over on someone, they should be about improving mutual understanding. I’m just not putting effort into finding and posting a link nobody wants to see or thinks they could benefit from, that’s really it.

I apologize for rescinding the offer, but I’m going to do myself a favor and just block everyone and be done with it.

Sniffs

Nope, still good

people in general don’t hate AI I swear guys

That’s not really the point, but whatever. Honestly this comment thread is exhausting, and I question whether anyone actually cares, which is why I don’t feel like taking the time to look up that information. But if you will tell me with full sincerity that you care whether it exists, I will try to find the link for you.

so having rules against AI on a platform is “vigilante enforcement”

I feel like you’re dramatically misinterpreting my statements on purpose now, this one is more obvious. I’m on the fence about whether disclosure requirements are a good idea, but am not emphatically condemning it, it’s understandable that they have them. But I am emphatically condemning efforts to use AI disclosures to brigade and harass developers, and I think the existence of those efforts is the reason why requiring disclosure is questionable.

Barely even trying to pretend to be honest

Public mod log is a big accountability improvement over the absence of information Reddit has

I’m not going to dredge up the reddit threads providing evidence of it, but afaik there really are popular discord groups with the express purpose of brigading AI users, and I think the people here overtly defending the practice probably know it’s a real thing.

I didn’t learn to program using AI, so I don’t know all the details of how it would go for an amateur in the process of learning, but I have incorporated it into my work, so I know it can be very useful and save a lot of time, and that isn’t just about generating code. If you want to plan out how to debug something, you can get solid guidance. If you want clarification on what an unclear part of a tutorial means, you can get that. The more introductory the topic, the better and more reliable the explanation. I remember when learning spending a lot of hours just staring at a screen being completely lost on what to do next to debug something. I’m assuming you haven’t used it for coding very much? How can you be so confident it would be useless for them, isn’t this just speculation?

Anyway, this is all kind of beside the point. If it’s not useful, people won’t use it, and there’s no need to be angry about its use. If it is useful, it can be used to assist making games that are worth playing, and people shouldn’t be attacked for that.

“illegal = unethical” is a fascist take

That is not why I’m mentioning it, I agree that legality and ethics are separate. The point is that regardless of who is right about the ethics of this, applying vigilante enforcement to this kind of situation is unhinged, and signals about whether something is ok to do like legality do matter for that. If such popular enforcement is ever justified, it’s in situations where people are getting hurt where there is little ambiguity and clear malice, that’s absolutely not the case here.

I promise you, none of what I write here is AI, I’m against doing that

You’re kind of right, in that it’s not a total solution right now and you probably won’t be able to vibe code a whole game (except a really simple one maybe) with no knowledge. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t lower the skill floor for someone. I’m assuming the person in my scenario would be also using an engine like Unity or Godot, maybe asking the AI to walk them through how to do what they want, write simple scripts and explain/suggest syntax. That shouldn’t have too much risk of generating inadvertent backdoors, and I think LLMs are pretty good at explaining basic code. Game engines already enforce the basic design structure, which will make it easier to avoid big unfixable mistakes and do everything in small pieces a LLM is less likely to fuck up.

The same is true with using it for art; you’re right that a lot of AI art on Steam is obvious and looks the same, but really good AI assisted art isn’t. The amount of skill and effort required for that is not zero, but is less than it might be otherwise. There are probably a lot of games out there where you just can’t tell, and because there’s so much fear of backlash it just isn’t disclosed.

Games bring together a lot of different mediums and require a diverse set of skills. So for instance someone might be great at drawing, and have a great idea for a game that uses their art, but they have a hard time with coding, and use AI to simplify that part of it for them in a way that’s more flexible than some other more restrictive solution like RPG Maker, which might make it closer to their vision for the kind of game they wanted to make. I think such a game could be worth playing, assuming the person making it cares about what they are making and puts their own work into it.

I’m talking about the ethics

You’re talking about your supposed right to enforce your idea of ethics on people who don’t agree with you, in a situation where there is no universal consensus, there is no law backing you up, and all supposed harms are abstract, indirect, and essentially a dispute about market competition.

Just because they may have no ill intent is irrelevant, it only speaks to their ignorance on the matter.

“I’m sorry officer I didn’t mean to speed, I had no ill intent”. Ok, you’re still getting a ticket. Ignorance is no excuse.

It matters because it’s one clear reason why the people harassing them are assholes. Pretty different from a situation where someone has violated an established law very closely linked to putting people at risk of direct physical harm and that law is being enforced.

the models are absolutely trained on stolen art

Downloading isn’t stealing, and in this case the law doesn’t agree with you either, nor does Steam; games developed with AI are legal and allowed. You’re entitled to your opinion about the ethics of it, and I think it’s fine if people want to only buy games without AI, but this is an incredibly petty way to rationalize organized harassment against people with no ill intent trying to realize their dreams. The only reason anyone goes after them is because they are softer targets than any of the billionaires and corporations doing actually questionable things with the technology.

I don’t think using AI to help make a videogame is in any way nefarious or misuse, especially for smaller developers who wouldn’t have the resources to make the game they had in mind otherwise. They don’t deserve to get review bombed or have nasty messages left on all their social media by organized discord groups just because of that, and it’s understandable they’d be worried about it.