Google exec claims 90% of game developers already use AI but won't tell players about it

'Players don't realise that their favourite games right now were already built with AI', says Google exec making AI tools

Apparently you'll change your tune when you "realise" it's giving you more innovative games. The gaming industry is in a bit of a shambles right now, and everyone from developers to gamers would agree. AI's infiltration into the gaming industry is the latest scare for players and devs alike, but it's also a solution according to others. Just yesterday, we reported that Jack Buser, Google Cloud's global director for games, views AI as a salve for the industry's problems. Well, in an interview with Mobilegamer.biz, that very same Jack Buser states that more game studios are using AI-powered tools in development than are willing to publicly reveal. "I think what players don't realise is that their favourite games right now were already built with AI," Buser says. "Those games have shipped. We did a survey around Gamescom last summer with studios all over the world. Roughly nine out of 10 game developers told us, yeah, we're using it." He explains that, when we've seen reports like 50% of developers believing generative AI to be bad for the industry -- a dramatic increase over the past few years -- "that gap is basically the developers' willingness to tell you whether the fact of the matter is it's being used." Given the very quick, strong reactions towards AI right now, he suggests some studios aren't willing to take the risk in disclosing it. Right now, Google Cloud's AI tools like Gemini and Nano Banana Pro are, in Buser's words, removing "the drudgery and repetitive, low-value work". For example, he cites Capcom, which has used these tools to "rapidly generate...countless ideas" (such as "pebbles on the side of the road") and "curate" them before the art director can get the team working on making them for real. It's worth noting that Capcom hasn't been shy about its use of AI in game development, though where it draws the line is unclear. It "will not implement assets generated by AI", but it does use it to "enhance efficiency and boost productivity." Buser believes that the dislike and distrust of AI tools in games will soon shift once players realise it's "actually helping me get my favourite games faster", and with "more innovation in the industry because there's more room to take risk". I agree with Buser's summary of the state of the industry -- rightly pointing out burgeoning budgets and more players are sticking to older games -- but I'm less convinced that AI is the golden ticket.

"I wish artists would take notice that this is a great time to learn some form of AI" - Dead Space creator Glen Schofield doesn't think controversial tech will replace human talent, but still believes it has its place

Game developer and studio founder Glen Schofield has shared his thoughts on AI, and while he doesn't believe it will replace human labour any time soon, he thinks artists should take the time to learn some form of the technology now, before it is too late. "I hear people saying soon you'll be able to make a AAA game with 20 people because of AI. I want to believe it, but when I'm working through one of my levels, I'm always going, 'Move that pixel over. That should come down. I want more wires. I want two blue ones there. And I want this exactly here'. And then we're sitting there adjusting the camera. We're doing this day in and day out, all the time. Now imagine that with the code, the art and everything else. It's about being nuanced to hell," Schofield - who is known for the likes of Dead Space and more recently The Callisto Protocol - said in conversation with Eurogamer's sister-site GamesIndustry.biz. However, while he doesn't believe that AI as it is now is capable of the same nuance as human intervention, he wishes "artists would take notice that this is a great time to learn some form" of the technology. "In five years, people will be coming out of school who know AI, while artists sit back saying, 'I'm not doing it'. People said the same thing about performance capture and motion capture," Schofield said. "I even had a couple of people quit because they were against it, which is the same thing I'm hearing now. They say it steals artists' work. Too late! It's out there now." "All I'm hearing is that we have to make development cheaper. We have to spend less money and we have to do it with fewer people. One word I don't hear in any of that is 'creativity'... You have to be creative 99 percent of the time," Schofield continued, noting a new game needs characters and assets to bring it to life, and to create these, developers need to have the tools to do so. "That's what [AI companies] are making, tools to make my characters faster and animation better and all that. I'd like to see the integration of all of it, hopefully within one of the big engines," he said. "That's a lot of work, to integrate all these freaking tools that are going on. And these tools, will they make us more creative? Yes, in some ways they will. But do you think the animators are now gonna go home after four hours because their job is faster? No! We're gonna be putting more and more stuff into these games, because we have more time." But then, what of the cost of these tools? Schofield reasoned he is "a gamemaker, not a toolmaker", so he will have to either buy or rent the necessary tech. "Do you think they're gonna give away the tools for free? No freaking way! They're gonna be freaking expensive," he expressed. "Everyone is gonna want their money back, and they know they have a short window to get it back because some of these AI companies are gonna fail. "And then we're gonna need to hire AI people to implement everything, and they're gonna be expensive too." Schofield was executive producer on the first Dead Space game in 2008. He went on to develop spiritual successor The Callisto Protocol at Striking Distance Studios in 2022. However, Schofield left Striking Distance in 2023 after the game flopped. In July of last year, Schofield wrote about his struggles in the industry post-Striking Distance, admitting: "It's tough out there."

Google claims 90 percent of developers use AI to create games but are not telling players

A bold new claim from Google suggests most of the games you're already playing are powered by AI, whether players realize it or not. Speaking recently, Jack Buser said that "roughly nine out of ten game developers" are already using AI-powered tools, based on an internal survey conducted during Gamescom 2026. According to Buser, the gap between that figure and other industry reports stems from developers' reluctance to publicly disclose their usage. The comments position AI not as a future shift but as a technology already deeply embedded in modern game development. The claim stands in contrast to widely cited reports such as the GDC State of the Game Industry, which places adoption closer to 50 percent. Buser argues that the discrepancy reflects underreporting rather than reality. "When there are technological revolutions in this industry, oftentimes you have a reaction from the player that's like, hold on, I know what my favourite games are, and I'm worried about change," Buser said. "Am I going to like the games of the future? Because I sure like the games I'm playing now. And I totally get that reaction." "I think what players don't realize is that their favourite games right now were already built with AI. Those games have shipped. We did a survey around Gamescom last summer with studios all over the world. Roughly nine out of ten game developers told us, yeah, we're using it. Now you'll see other surveys from other organizations that have that more around like 40-50%. And you might ask yourself, well, that's still a large number. It's still almost half of the developers out there. What's the gap?" He also pointed to companies like Capcom as major users of AI tools, though Capcom has publicly stated that its use of generative AI is focused on improving workflows in graphics, sound, and programming, not on creating final in-game assets. Buser described AI tools used to rapidly generate and filter ideas during pre-production, allowing teams to focus more on high-value creative work rather than repetitive tasks. "That gap is basically the developers' willingness to tell you whether the fact of the matter is that it's being used." Still, the framing raises questions. Many of the examples given resemble long-established workflows rather than entirely new AI-driven breakthroughs, and critics argue the claims may overstate the impact of current tools. With companies like Google Cloud actively promoting AI solutions, skepticism remains warranted. One thing is guaranteed: AI is already part of game development, but how much it shapes the final products will vary from studio to studio. But it's more than likely being used a whole lot more than expected.

Google executive responsible for AI has a solution for the game industry's problems, and you're not going to believe this but it's AI

Jack Buser is Google Cloud global director for games, a role in which he "enable[s] transformation of game industry developers, publishers and platforms with AI and cloud solutions." And from that lofty perch he has devised a solution for the woes plaguing the videogame business. Can you guess what it is? I'll tell you: It's AI. In an interview with GamesIndustry, Buser said the videogame business is "finally returning to revenue growth," but at the same time profits are declining, games are being cancelled, and layoffs continue to sweep the industry. The only real growth is coming from Roblox and China, and if you're not in one of those categories, "odds are you're struggling to some extent." "Once you start to look underneath the surface of what's going on in the industry, you realize like, oh my gosh, we are in trouble," Buser said, referencing the decimation of the game industry that kicked into high gear in 2023 and hasn't eased up since. "This is not a sustainable business model. We have to transform as an industry to meet this moment so that we can drive into the future. And so that frames up why this is such an important time in the industry." Thus, AI: Buser said aspects of the business including marketing, business strategy, and analytics are being "accelerated radically with AI," and he also believes that embracing AI will reduce development times and costs, and enable smaller studios to compete more directly with the major players. "A general trend we're seeing is the very large game companies are thinking about their development pipelines, reducing iteration time," Buser said. "But we're seeing the long tail, as well as the sort of torso of the industry start to realize that with AI, they can punch way above their weight, way above their weight, and they can actually compete with some of these larger budget games by leveraging AI." Buser said AI is rather like Iron Man's suit -- "put it on and see what types of superpowers it's able to grant you" -- but he gives up the game a little bit near the end of the report. After saying the game industry is "broken," which is why we've seen tens of thousands of layoffs over the past few years, he explicitly positions AI as the solution to the problem -- for the business. For the people who work in it? Well, not so much. But that's not the fault of AI! "For somebody who's in a studio worried about their job, the existential nature of the games industry right now is putting a lot of pressure on these studios, and that is outside of anything to do with AI," Buser said. "If anything, AI is going to help us right-size these business models. It's going to help us create a healthier industry, not just for the big players, but for small players as well. And I think if we have a more nuanced understanding of how it's actually being used and refine our language a little bit about how we discuss these things, it's easily one of the most important things we can do as an industry right now." The giveaway is of course Buser's use of "right-size," a euphemism for laying off even more people -- defined by the Cambridge dictionary as "the process of making a company or organization a more effective size, especially by reducing the number of people working for it." The goal, in other words, is not to protect people, but to protect profits -- understandable from the perspective of a Google executive, I suppose, but not a solution I have much interest in. Buser's previous gig was "global director for all games business development activities for Stadia," and we all know how that turned out: An overhyped promise of a bold, accessible future for gaming that never went anywhere except, eventually, away. It's not hard to see parallels with the relentless push for AI-driven game development, which we're repeatedly assured is an inevitable future: Yes, it may be useful for specific tasks like software debugging, but it has yet to come close to delivering on the hype. (I'm still waiting for an update on Elon Musk's promise to release "a great AI-generated game" by the end of 2026.) I do agree with Buser that the conversation would be helped immensely by using better, more precise language in place of the catch-all of "AI": Technological advancement has always been an essential part of game dev, and that that's going to continue to be the case moving forward. He might even be correct in his broader thesis, to the extent that maybe the videogame industry as a whole can start making more money with less effort by leaning heavily into AI garbo: After all, if there's one thing we've learned from the advent of reality television, it's that creative bankruptcy will not prevent you from making serious bank. Sure, we all end up playing Courtroom Chaos Starring Snoop Dogg, and that'll suck, but at least the money guys will be alright.

Former director of famously successful Google Stadia says the whole games industry is "in trouble," but don't worry, AI will help by letting small teams "actually compete" with AAA

The games industry has been in a spot of bother for a while now. Layoffs, canceled projects, and underwhelming returns have become commonplace, and a higher-up at Google believes AI, of all things, could be crucial in facilitating a turnaround. Jack Buser, now the global director for games on Google Cloud and previously the global director of games on Google Stadia, discussed the state of things with GamesIndustry.biz. "Once you start to look underneath the surface of what's going on in the industry, you realize like, oh my gosh, we are in trouble," he says, touting rising development costs and a stat suggesting more than half of players are happily enjoying games over six years old. "This is not a sustainable business model," he continues. "We have to transform as an industry to meet this moment so that we can drive into the future." His solution? AI, something Google Cloud's been pushing hard for some time now, pitching its usefulness at this year's GDC. "Divisions like marketing, business strategy, and analytics, all of these departments that support that development team are being accelerated radically with AI," he states. "Making sure that you're more effective in your marketing communications," he adds, "making sure that you can actually communicate with your audience at the pace at which the community is moving is very difficult using traditional manual processes." He points to Series Entertainment, a company that managed to raise $28 million from a number of investors in 2024 that prominently uses gen-AI, as an example of an outfit that's handling bigger workloads thanks to AI. "We're seeing the long tail, as well as the sort of torso of the industry start to realize that with AI, they can punch way above their weight, way above their weight, and they can actually compete with some of these larger budget games by leveraging AI," he explains. What he's talking about is already happening. Several studios, including Activision, have been accused of using generative assets in games, and EA has reportedly integrated chatbots across the business. Buser's pitch may sound good on paper, but it doesn't look at the qualitative reality, which is that output is generally more questionable when AI is involved than not. Audiences can spot a generative AI asset pretty easily, and finding one will cause backlash. Recently, we saw that exact thing happen with Crimson Desert and some questionable paintings, which developer Pearl Abyss apologized for letting slip into the final release (there's since been a patch to remove them, too). There are clear systemic problems within the industry right now, and just like any other complicated problem, they won't be solved by taking advantage of fancy new tech.

"Roughly Nine Out of Ten" Game Devs Are Already Using AI, They're Just Not Telling Players, Claims Google Cloud Games' Boss

Buser even went as far as to claim that players just don't realize that the games they are enjoying and love to play "right now" were made with AI-powered tools, and that other surveys that report less AI-tool usage only do so because studios are unwilling to disclose the fact that they are using them. "When there are technological revolutions in this industry, oftentimes you have a reaction from the player that's like, hold on, I know what my favourite games are, and I'm worried about change," Buser said in an attempt to explain what players are feeling about AI and, more specifically, Generative AI-powered tools. "Am I going to like the games of the future? Because I sure like the games I'm playing now. And I totally get that reaction." "I think what players don't realize is that their favourite games right now were already built with AI. Those games have shipped. We did a survey around Gamescom last summer with studios all over the world. Roughly nine out of ten game developers told us, yeah, we're using it. Now you'll see other surveys from other organizations that have that more around like 40-50%. And you might ask yourself, well, that's still a large number. It's still almost half of the developers out there. What's the gap?" "That gap is basically the developers willingness to tell you whether the fact of the matter is that it's being used." Buser specifically cites Capcom, as a major studio that is a "big user" of Google Cloud's AI tools, though it's worth noting that Capcom should not be mixed into the category of companies that are not disclosing their AI tool usage. Last month, Capcom publicly told its investors that it will use GenAI tools " to improve efficiency and productivity in the game development process," specifically calling out graphics, sound, and programming as areas where GenAI tools could be utilized. In that same meeting, Capcom also specified that it will not use those same tools to create assets and materials that will end up in their final products. After citing Capcom, Buser goes on to describe an example as how Google Cloud's AI tools are being used, claiming that "one of the big problems that they have is they're building these massive worlds and they've got to fill it with content. Just coming up with all the ideas for every pebble by the side of the road, every blade of grass, and having all those art reviews, the manual labour just starts piling up in pre-production." To clarify, Buser does not seem to be specifically referring to Capcom in this moment, and the problem that 'they' have is more likely referring to major studios across the industry. Buser continues, "What they're doing is they're using Nano Banana and Gemini to rapidly generate just countless ideas, and then they're talking to Gemini to actually go through those ideas and curate them...and of these thousands of things, here are the ones that are probably most interesting to you as the art director. And then the art director takes that and then gets the art team going on these items, the AI is already pre-filtered and pre-selected the probably really good looking pebbles on the side of the road - and then all their creative energy gets focused towards the high value creative task, the main character, the big enemies, the main scene, objects, that kind of stuff." The problem with Buser's framing of how Google Cloud's AI tools are being used is that they are presented as new ideas that anyone who has been around the industry understands to be old hat. Art directors and artists haven't been bogged down by the look of individual pebbles or trees for years. There are already widely accepted tools to make trees and pebbles, and if Buser is trying to suggest that the artists hired by major studios, like Capcom, can't quickly create a good-looking pebble, then Buser sounds uninformed on the artistic skills required to create pebbles. It's also worth noting that Buser simply presents these claims and attempts to disparage other surveys, like the GDC State of the Game Industry Report 2026, without anything beyond a vague comment. Though he doesn't call out GDC's survey, it does in fact say that a majority of studios are already using GenAI tools, with the results from its respondents coming in at 52%. GDC's survey doesn't cover the entire industry, but at least we know those figures are coming directly from workers within the industry, and there's a publicly available report we can all analyze and criticize, not opaque 'rough' ideas. Buser's also not the first, and likely won't be the last, executive to claim that developers simply aren't being truthful about their usage of AI tools. A claim that should inherently be questioned if you work for a company that looks to profit from game developers using your AI tools. Yes, it is clear that the video game industry cannot sustain production timelines that last over half a decade, and yes, everyone in the industry, specifically the biggest publishers and developers, are trying to find ways to make games faster while spending less without sacrificing quality. But Buser's framing that GenAI tools are already accomplishing this is by no means proven, and to try to pin inflated development costs on countless art reviews ignores the other glaring issues causing industry instability and unsustainable development timelines.

Google Cloud's Jack Buser: AI Is the "Iron Man Suit" Game Developers Need Right Now

Over the past year or so, several game developers have started sharing thoughts on the potential benefits and downsides of using AI in game development. As with all things AI, the conversation is quite polarized at the moment: some have already embraced it, while others have sworn not to touch it with a tentpole, mainly for ethical reasons. Veteran industry executive Jack Buser sits firmly in the first camp. Buser, who worked at Dolby, then at Sony on PlayStation Home and PlayStation NOW, and finally at Google on Stadia first and as Google Cloud's Global Director for Games now, believes AI is the equivalent of an Iron Man suit that developers have to put on to face the issues of an otherwise unsustainable industry, between rising production times and budgets. Here's what he told GamesIndustry.biz: You can see a massive transformation going on behind the walls of these games companies starting in game development, trying to get that iteration time down. You have to get the time from you having an idea to it being in a production game down. Time in a development pipeline is highly, if not linearly, correlated, with cost. The days of spending five, seven, 10 years to build a video game and spending hundreds of millions of dollars is just not sustainable. Can we return to an industry that's much healthier where we can spend potentially tens of millions on a game and get it out in a few years? A general trend we're seeing is the very large game companies are thinking about their development pipelines, reducing iteration time. But we're seeing the long tail, as well as the sort of torso of the industry start to realize that with AI, they can punch way above their weight, way above their weight, and they can actually compete with some of these larger budget games by leveraging AI. The games industry has seen tremendous job loss over the past few years because the business of video games is broken. And there aren't many tools that can help mitigate those threats to our industry and those threats to the games that we love that are as powerful as AI. One of our messages to the industry is to embrace AI like Iron Man's suit. It's right there. It's for you to put on and put it on and see what types of superpowers it's able to grant you. If anything, AI is going to help us right size these business models. It's going to help us create a healthier industry, not just for the big players, but for small players as well. And I think if we have a more nuanced understanding of how it's actually being used and refine our language a little bit about how we discuss these things, it's easily one of the most important things we can do as an industry right now. It's definitely a fitting metaphor, especially since the Iron Man suit, as popularized in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, features a built-in AI called JARVIS. However, the jury is still out on Jack Buser's highly positive outlook. Some developers remain outright hostile to AI tools, and yet the industry's long-standing issues cannot be denied. Either the games will have to become much smaller and possibly less polished, or developers will have to embrace external help in the form of AI-powered tools.

"You Have to Be Creative": Glen Schofield Thinks "True" Creatives Can Save AAA Gaming While Asking Artists to "Learn Some Form of AI"

Glen Schofield, the Dead Space creator and more recently the founder of Striking Distance Studios, the team behind the Dead Space spiritual successor, The Callisto Protocol, is the kind of industry veteran who is almost always up for sharing his thoughts on what he believes the path forward for the industry is. Last year, while also admitting that the commercial failure that was The Callisto Protocol might have been the last game he gets to direct in his long career, he also talked about the current state of the video game industry and why it's so difficult for anyone looking to make their mark, particularly in AAA game development, because publishers don't want to spend what he believes is required to make those games properly. Now, in an interview with GamesIndustry.Biz, Schofield dug into what he believes can help save AAA game development, while also sharing a few more thoughts on the most controversial topic in games right now: Generative AI (GenAI) and its place in game development. For starters, the way to save AAA games, according to Schofield, is to have the right people in charge. Not exactly the most nuanced of opinions, but in the fallout that came after the COVID-19 pandemic and the rush of investment that the video game industry saw at the start of the 2020s, it's worth recognizing that the people in charge were perhaps not the ones who should've been leading the way. "During COVID, we couldn't make AAA games fast enough. Everyone wanted a big game, because everybody was sitting at home playing games. Billions of dollars poured into the industry. When you have that much money coming in, you inevitably give it to the wrong people," Schofield said. He clarifies that what he means by 'the wrong people' are just inexperienced leaders, adding, "I look at who they are (and some of them I know) and I think, 'he's ten years away, she's five years away from being able to do this.' They're handed a studio and a game at the same time. I've been doing that for a long time, so I've had the opportunity to work my way up to that." Schofield also doesn't just put the blame on leaders he felt were inexperienced. Fault also lies with investors who weren't careful enough to do proper due diligence, and follows that up with a shot at Bungie before expounding on how putting trust in "true" creatives is the path forward. "The due diligence by the people who are investing is terrible. Think of Bungie! They were overpaying, and they weren't paying the right people in many cases. All you have to do is find who the true creative person is, as opposed to the person who just says they're creative. There are a lot of people who copy very well. The non-creative people just have to scratch the surface harder to find some creative people that in turn will help them hire the right creative people." But while Schofield is adamant that you have to find the right creative people, he was also adamant in his wishes that those same creatives would "learn some form of AI." Though he doesn't exactly believe the pitch that AI (or more specifically, GenAI) will be the end-all-be-all solution its biggest supporters boast about it being. "I hear people saying soon you'll be able to make a AAA game with 20 people because of AI," Schofield says. "I want to believe it, but when I'm working through one of my levels, I'm always going, 'Move that pixel over. That should come down. I want more wires. I want two blue ones there. And I want this exactly here.' And then we're sitting there adjusting the camera. We're doing this day in and day out, all the time. Now imagine that with the code, the art and everything else. It's about being nuanced as hell." "I wish artists would take notice that this is a great time to learn some form of AI. In five years people will be coming out of school who know AI, while artists sit back saying, 'I'm not doing it.' People said the same thing about performance capture and motion capture. I even had a couple of people quit because they were against it, which is the same thing I'm hearing now. They say it steals artists' work. Too late! It's out there now." Of course, that's the biggest issue for those who are against using GenAI tools. It's here, and it's never going to be like it was before the GenAI pandora's box was opened. You can't un-ring this bell, and now developers have a choice between losing their jobs or using the tech. It's exactly the sentiment that the GDC State of the Game Industry Report 2026 described when respondents said "AI is theft, I have to use it, otherwise I'll get fired." But like other proponents of GenAI tech, Schofield is staunch in saying that GenAI tools could help make development faster or cheaper, but it cannot replace actual creativity. "All I'm hearing is that we have to make development cheaper. We have to spend less money and we have to do it with fewer people. One word I don't hear in any of this is 'creativity.' You have to be creative 99% of the time."