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[WRITE-IN] Game Companies Sure Seem to Love Their AI Controversies... | Firelink Podcast (Patreon)

Published:
2026-10-15 18:52:09
Imported:
2026-10

Content

It has been a wild week of a bunch of game companies continuing to step in it with AI controversies. Will they just keep pushing it until its accepted, or will the market actually tell these companies this is something we truly don't want?

We discuss on tonight's episode of Firelink.

Send in your thoughts, questions, or topics you'd be interested in us discussing! We won't have time to read and discuss everything, and please keep posts topical, safe for work and not huge walls of text.

Files

Game Companies Sure Seem to Love Their AI Controversies... | Firelink Podcast

This week on Firelink Nick, KC, and Marty chat about just how many times game companies can step in the AI pile in one week. Apparently, it's a lot. Keep up to date on the standings of our Firelink Fantasy Critic Draft -- https://www.fantasycritic.games/league/6093c943-c06e-4f44-8206-157e410d7914/2026 If you dig the podcast, considering supporting us over at Patreon -- https://www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup Check out our excellent selection of merch over at our DFTBA store -- https://store.dftba.com/collections/second-wind

Comments

Steady Goblin Wood

Communities like ours are informed on the subject, so we will always push back on the use of AI in games. My fear is that casuals in the long run simply won't care enough to stop it. But how do you convince a massive chunk of gamers to protect the art when typically that isn't the aspect of games they care about?

Big Goss

It's a game of attrition, like everything else. How many times has Congress tried to pass an internet "safety" bill. Unfortunately, history has shown that we as a population can only get really outraged a set number of times before we get tired

Andy Hunter

It’ll be interesting to see if the average Joe has forgotten that Epic laid off a thousand employees earlier this year. “We aren’t using AI to do more with less staff” my butt.

MayaTheDog

A little off topic but been thinking about for a long time now Its been on my mind for a while now, and I wanted to talk about devs celebrating their games. I'm not talking about cool promotional events, like fortnight crossovers, or a cool new feature in game. I am talking more about celebrating the art and community of video games. I bring this up because of the Zenless Zone Zero 'Hyper commission' and Fes Stage Performance. While yes, you can say that is is till promotion or advertisement, wanting to get people to play the game. They felt different to me, more showing all the incredible diverse music they have created, from dubstep to J-pop, K-pop, jazz, chill beats, rock, metal, and even French opera. Having them bring in all the singers and performers from overseas to play play onstage with cosplayers felt like a genuine celebration of the art, character, and music. It makes me miss the day of early Riot Games with the 'Summoner Showcase', a weekly show where they would highlight art, cosplayers, music, and even cool gameplay. They held competitions and giveaways prizes, make jokes at their expense; it felt like an actual community that I feel that made League of Legends so popular in the first place. Now, all effort is spent on making skin trailers and music videos, trying to sell you a product. I just feel like they have lost their heart somewhere along the way. I recently got to go to the Tokyo Game Show and blast, meet some really cool Devs, play some cool games. But there was a sense of trying to sell me a product, even if there was still genuine love and care put into these displays and demos. I can only speak of my own personal experience, but I just feel as games become bigger and more expensive; there is less room for celebration these days, which just makes me a little sad.

Fuzzy Freestyle

AI is fully embraced by the normies. The amount of Generated AI content I see every day isn't slowing down. I fear the sensible crowd warning everybody of the dangers is in the minority here. We all know the problem is money, so until AI is not "financially lucrative" it's going to continue to grow.

Brian S

I'm operating under the assuption that, save for a few exceptions like FromSoft or GTA6 (and I may be wrong in those cases as well), all AAA games have AI because these companies suck ass, so I'm just not going to buy them. I'll stick to retro games and old AAA games until either I just stop playing or we can all verfiy that AI hasn't been used. With that, it's time to start a new Elden Ring run.

Mopman43

Not what I'd hope for Total War to end up on Firelink for. Seems like they farmed the remaster out to a 3rd party. Though obviously the fact that Creative Assembly approved it isn't any kind of good look for them. I don't think this is necessarily any indication towards what the Total Warhammer 40K launch will look like, that actually has their people on it, but still not a good look. At the very least, the community was quick to make their thoughts heard and CA responded and took the remaster down and put the old version back up. CA makes fuck-ups every now-and-then and gets forcefully corrected by the community response. It got real bad with Total Warhammer 3 for a bit, but they've corrected to a pretty good place with that game since then.

Lugaliguori

I'm an Angular developer (web apps) and this your seeing in the gaming industry was already embraced in the "normal" software developing industry, you basically have engineers give a ticket to an Agent (Claude code for example) that talks to other agents to do the task, review it and even push, this "no hand writed code" epic is trying to push is more normal than you think, i absolutely hate but is really an embrace it or get left behind situation. I personally have some tough choices to make about my future carrer in this industry. Sorry for the rant and keep doing the good work

Alpha Aquilae

Honestly, I don't know how realistic this is, but it feels like one of those things that'll get worse before it gets better. General audiences embrace AI, studio heads can justify it that way, AI will get used in games, those game will be worse than human-made art, and the reaction hopefully will lead to it not being used as much as we're seeing it already. Yeah, that doesn't sound realistic.

Nosk

Does this just lead us further down the road where triple A makes games at a massive scale but feel heartless and stretched thin and now with AI enshittification and smaller creators keep making more bespoke smaller experiences? I feel like it’ll be the same as the current landscape but more pronounced

Inverse Skies

It’s even hitting the recompilation space with projects like donkey Kong 64 recompiled having to state they aren’t using AI and aren’t associated with a project that IS using AI to recompile the game.

Riley Lemon

It might not be a classy take but I like when big AAA games flash the cash and put it all on screen. Creating blockbuster spectacle at a scale a less resourced developer could only dream of is kinda what I want from the big companies. The idea of AAA as the space to use AI to do more with less, save money, or turn around games quicker is them kinda misunderstanding their UPS to me.

ii

it is upsetting for me as strategy fan how hard the premier franchises in the genre seem to be pushing AI - whether it was Anno 117 or now Total War Shogun 2 CE. Part of it might be that it's more niche genre and there isn't much choice out there, so what can customer really do? But what makes me dislike it how both aforementioned cases is how they tried smearing honey around the mouth of their customers. In former case promoting the artbook with how hard artists worked on it, when it was actually just AI art which feels insulting. In latter case they had whole bit about how they hired artist with woodblock art experience to do cutscenes and so on, when it's kind of clear they are AI generated too besides the awful upscaling. Using AI is one thing and it'd still look bad, but I wish they were at least honest about it rather than lying through their teeth, which I find much more upsetting because it's clearly trying to scam people.

Adam Seidel

Gen AI in games development feels like the antithesis to the idea that games are art that really took off with Shadow of the Colossus. My partner and I both work in the arts and she lost her job (E-Commerce photo editing) last year and it’s left her doubting making art as a career. Generative AI only serves to replace workers and I fear its implementation in the games industry will one day destroy it when there’s so few workers left to actually develop ideas that prove games are art like Shadow of the Colossus because their won’t be passionate people left.

SMhobo

Really feels like a AAA bubble bursting. Studios getting split off to become independent or fail AAA "refocusing" on major I.P.'s wich we haven't seen put out a generational game in forever or are just old and tired and now A.I slop focused production Idk how this all works out but I hate how long its going to take cuz I'm tired of hearing sony and Xbox falling down the stairs.

ii

As devops engineer myself, I am more afraid if there will be any possible career in this industry in the future heh

melchar

There really should be a differentiation between the slop generative AI being ground out - and step-saving AI that compiles the art that is being produced & can be used for some visual linking of scenes. In the one case, AI is seeking to replace artists - while in the other AI can be another tool in an artist's hand to do number-crunching. Maybe call it ASS [Artificial Slop Synthesis] & AW [Artificial Workarounds]?