cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49263187

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.

  • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net
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    15 days ago

    Transparency so customers can make informed decisions is “irresponsible”? What a garbage take.

    If using AI is a “scarlet letter” that makes people hate your game then don’t use it?! The willful ignorance to customer preference is staggering.

  • Kirp123@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Fuck you Tim Sweeney. Valve is right for putting that info up so people can make informed purchases.

  • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    “Oh no, informing people allows them to decide for themselves, we can’t have that! I, sweeney whiney, must protect the world from informed decisions!”

    • Tim Sweeney, wearing is burger king cardboard crown screaming in front of his mirror alone.
  • tabular@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    “We must do X at any cost to the user because others will do it and get the money”

    This mentality has driven the games industry to become psychologically manipulative, subscription battleass and absolutely proprietary.

    Maybe the irresponsibility is in ourselves for giving those game companies money.

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
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    15 days ago

    And this, Tim, is why I spend most of my money at Steam.

    This may shock you, but proudly parading that you want to fuck over consumers at every opportunity is not good incentive.

  • Mirror Giraffe@piefed.social
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    14 days ago

    I’m making a game and I just ai for parts of the code and and for assets currently. I make it because I’m 43 and been programming my entire life and yet never took the time to make a game.

    If I ever were to release it on any store, I’d replace the assets with human made and declare that I’ve had LLM assistance in coding, no matter if there’s a role about it or not.

    Basically I know it’s important to some people and I don’t want them to accidentally spend money on something they hate. It would be like sneaking meat into a vegetarian dish.

  • tabular@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    “Think of the game-devs needing to make money” says a fat cat talking about a tool forged from game-dev’s labour without compensation and disregarding any social contracts (i.e. copyleft software licenses).

    • justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io
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      15 days ago

      “Think of the game devs needing to make money”

      Says the former dev whose biggest success, Unreal Tournament, had little to do with Epic itself.

      1. Digital Extremes made the weapons and many of the default maps.
      2. Fan mods made most of the success of the first three games.

      And Fortnite started as a Pubg clone.

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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      14 days ago

      They give you lot of reasons to. For me it was a personal thing when I really started to hate Epic Games. 2019 Epic purchased the studio of Rocket League, when the game was in a hype phase and I played and enjoyed it very much on my Linux system. Shortly after they removed the Linux support for the game and then they also removed it from Steam as well. Due to an update of the game it was no longer viable to support it on Linux they said.

      This really really bugged me on a personal level. Today I think the game is playable on Linux, I don’t know exactly. But it requires Epic Games Launcher and probably account on them. To me the game is dead. And Epic killed it (for me).

  • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
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    14 days ago

    There is definitely an overreaction to AI use, when specifically games can make very good use of it. Smaller teams can create better games, and using smaller AI models to run on a GPU during playing could enable some amazing new features for dialogue or dynamic storytelling.

    If there is any place where an AI hallucinating and riffing isn’t a problem it’s gaming.

    • auzy1@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Completely missing the point… Given that Artists work was basically used to train AI, a lot of them in particular would be hesitant to pay for something which possibly uses some of their work they didn’t get paid for.

      Also, when I as a consumer see AI has been used, it is closer to suggesting they took shortcuts to make the game