Gaming Industry Splits Over AI Use as Arc Raiders Success Sparks Heated Debate

As the CEO of Arc Raiders publisher Nexon says AI is everywhere, game devs call 'bullshit'

Arc Raiders' use of AI tools continues to create divides in gaming. The CEO of its developer's parent company, Nexon, recently claimed that generative artificial intelligence tools are everywhere in game development -- plenty of game developers say otherwise. Nexon CEO Junghun Lee recently told Japanese outlet Game*Spark (and translated by Automaton), "I think it's important to assume that every game company is now using AI." Nexon's studios, like Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios, have been utilizing AI in development, with Lee saying, "AI has definitely improved efficiency in both game production and live service operations." He went on to ponder, "if everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive? I believe it's important to choose a strategy that increases your competitiveness" and indicated Nexon's stategy is "human creativity," even as it has adopted the use of AI. This isn't the first time Nexon or one of its studios has championed AI use. When Arc Raiders, the latest extraction-shooter-of-the-month, launched, it stirred up controversy due to its use of AI voices. Essentially, Embark Studios hired real flesh-and-blood voice actors to record lines for the game, and used text-to-speech software to implement generated voice lines based on the recordings, like it did for 2023's The Finals. As Arc Raiders is an ongoing live service title, Embark argued this process will allow it to swiftly include voice lines for new and future items without the need to bring voice actors back to record. However, indie game developers have been quick to call the claims that AI is widespread in the industry as "bullshit" and its use as unnecessary. Strange Scaffold creative director Xalavier Nelson Jr. responded to Lee's comments in a post on Bluesky Tuesday night, writing, "We don't use generative AI at Strange Scaffold and I can confirm that a *lot* of other studios are not -- whether indie or AAA. Get outta here with this normalization bullshit." Nelson called AI "the thing already making our medium worse." Several more developers waded into these waters with anti-AI messages and assertions that their games, like Strange Scaffold's, don't use AI tools. Promise Mascot Agency developer Kaizen Game Works commented there's "no genAI" in its games, calling its work "All pure, human nonsense and love." D-Cell Games producer Chi Xu said no AI was used in the development of the upcoming rhythm adventure game Unbeatable, writing, "relinquishing creative choices to tools makes your work empty, vapid, and meaningless." Necrosoft, the developer of the upcoming tactics RPG Demonschool offered up a blunt statement on the matter: "Hello, not only do we not use AI we would rather cut off our own arms than do so." Of course, not everyone is against the use of AI in game development. In response to Eurogamer's review of Arc Raiders, in which the outlet criticized the game's use of generative AI, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said, "Political opinions should go into op eds folks," in a post on X. Someone questioned how an opinion on AI is "political," and Sweeney followed up by saying, "views on whether this is a net good and should be rewarded, or bad and should be fought against, are speculative and generally distributed along political lines." He continued, arguing, "Game developers compete to build the best games in order to attract gamers. When tech increases productivity, competition leads to building better games rather than employing fewer people." Nelson from Strange Scaffold had touched on that, calling reliance on AI a "skill issue" in a post on Bluesky. "And one other thing: we're being told that AI is the only way to make games cheaper and faster, to pull us from this precipice of production nightmares the industry has found itself in. That it's necessary. We put out roughly 3 motherfucking games a year, not touching the stuff. Skill issue." Polygon spoke to Nelson earlier this year where he elaborated on how the studio is able to put out hits at a rapidfire rate. (Strange Scaffold published Clickolding, I Am Your Beast, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown in ten months' time from July 2024 to May 2025, for example.) Polygon reached out to Nelson for comment and received the following statement, which we've pasted in full below: In the most charitable read, there are five major reasons a game developer is using AI right now. They are being forced to by their management, they genuinely believe it will help them make a new type of video game, they are afraid of being left behind, it lets them do things they otherwise did not have the budget or time to create by providing results that are decent enough to sell, or it helps them address a quality and precision gap in their processes. Those last two are especially dangerous. If your game design and world building processes are so broken and last-minute that you cannot incorporate time to get a voice actor to record lines, or writers and engineers to build the format and ideal vision for those lines ahead of time? An AI solution steps in with something that's "good enough" to exist in the project, but provides no path for those processes or the player experience that may be harmed by them to be identified and fixed. If a publisher wants to put together seasonal cosmetics, but has neither budgeted for the time or cash required to pull those together, AI can perhaps generate an image that's "good enough" to modify and sell, but again, a broken process that's resulting in a worse player experience gets protected rather than pointed out as an explicit problem to fix. The use of generative AI in game development paves the road to gradually not just harm player trust, but fill games with "good enough" band-aids to deeper fundamental problems that it's hard to see the human skill and creativity that lies underneath. And players deserve better. Representations for Nexon did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Ex-Square Enix suit says you can whine all you like, but 'Gen Z loves AI slop' and everyone and their grandma is already using it

"The upcoming generation of gamers are Bane in Dark Knight Rises saying 'You merely adopted the slop, I was born in it.'" Dismayed by the profusion of AI-generated slop in videogames? No, you aren't. Or if you are, then you aren't representative of the broad gaming audience. That's my takeaway from recent remarks by Jacob Navok, former director of business at Square Enix and current CEO at Genvid -- a media company specialising in "a unique mix of a streaming show and video game" -- on X (via GamesRadar). Navok reckons that, for as much as people like me bang on about AI being the labour-sucking death of art, "it appears consumers generally do not care" when the tech manifests in their games. To be fair, he's got receipts. Navok summons the recent examples of Arc Raiders and the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot to back up his points. Arc Raiders, of course, makes prominent use of AI voices, which did little to stop it peaking at 480,000 concurrent players last weekend. Steal a Brainrot, meanwhile, "had 30m concurrents or approximately 80x the ARC Raiders concurrents," says Navok, "and is named after/based on AI slop characters. (All the brainrots are just 3D models of AI slop.) "Gen Z loves AI slop, does not care. The upcoming generation of gamers are Bane in Dark Knight Rises saying, 'You merely adopted the slop, I was born in it,'" continues Navok. And besides, he reckons all sorts of studios are already using it, some more quietly than others. "Activision isn't shying away from AI, neither is ARC Raiders. Tipping point has been reached. "In-game art and voices are merely the tip of the spear. Many studios I know are using AI generation in the concept phase, and many more are using Claude for code." Sooner rather than later, "it will be hard to find a non-indie title that isn't using Claude for code," says Navok, and if that doesn't irritate you because it's not gen-AI art or writing, well, that just "shows that a lot of AI sentiment is being driven by emotion rather than logic." Which, look, I just don't know that I buy that, chief. I think it's telling that the most full-throated defences (and the most timid equivocations) around AI come from C-suites. Meanwhile, actual workers -- artists, writers, and so on -- are the ones leading the charge against it. It's a labour issue wrapped in an artistic one, and I think attempts like this -- by execs trying to pitch the pivot to AI as inevitable -- are more about furthering the disempowerment of the workforce than they are about anything else. Ultimately, what will determine the shape and extent of AI use in videogames probably isn't whether consumers will swallow it, but whether workers are organised enough to stop it in its tracks.

Arrowhead CEO wades into the messy Arc Raiders AI debate: 'Would it have been better if Arc Raiders failed and it didn't use AI?'

Jorjani pushes back against extreme reactions to AI and wants a more nuanced discussion. Another week, another flare up in the AI discourse. Spurred on by Eurogamer's fascinating, polarising Arc Raiders review (penned by PC Gamer contributor Rick Lane), Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani gave his take on the game's use of AI, the broader discussion surrounding the technology, and how it relates to Helldivers 2. Speaking on The Game Business Show, Jorjani tries to find the middle ground, even though Helldivers 2 doesn't use generative AI or machine learning. "We're waiting for the courts to decide what is fair use and not," he says. "There may be some similarities to the whole 'It's so over, we're so back' black and white takes, and I find that anything that is AI related debate in the games industry ends up being on both ends of the spectrum. "Either we have Square Enix executives talking about 77% [the actual number it gave was 70%] being automated through QA, or we have developers who feel that their livelihood or the very fabric of their being is being threatened, and therefore all AI is bad AI. Could it be that reality is somewhere in the middle?" Jorjani also makes a comparison between AI and more conventional middleware "that automates loading and other assets that used to be made by hand before", noting that it didn't cause a massive outcry. Though he acknowledges that it didn't have the same scale as AI use. On Arc Raiders specifically, Jorjani thinks "it's an interesting use case that actually makes gaming better". Jorjani is referring to Arc Raiders' use of AI to generate raider voices for players who don't want to use their own voice in proximity chat, though most criticism levelled against Arc Raiders is aimed at its use of AI in generating voice lines for NPCs. Any discussion of Arc Raiders' use of AI is also inherently fuzzy because Embark's statements on how AI has been deployed have muddied the waters, with the developer frequently contradicting itself. Even as someone who mistrusts AI, or at least the way that it's used to sidestep creatives or scrape the internet for art, I agree with Jorjani that this, specifically, is a good use of AI. "I don't do voice in games because I'm Swedish," he says. "Communicating directly with people I don't know is very scary, I don't want to put my voice out there with my accent or whatever it is. I think this allows more people to connect with each other, which is ultimately a good gaming thing." I don't think many would disagree, especially given how toxic videogame communities can be. If you've got a feminine voice, for instance, there's a good chance you're going to deal with harassment just for existing. So yeah, good stuff, but not what people were criticising Arc Raiders for -- including the Eurogamer review. "Let's just make sure people are paid for their work," Jorjani adds. "Surely there's a middle ground here. Come on." The discussion then moves onto the cost -- both in terms of the human cost of AI, and how it puts creatives out of a job, but also the cost of game development, and how studios can save money by deploying AI tools. "Would it have been better if Arc Raiders failed and it didn't use AI," Jorjani asks. "That's maybe a false comparison, but on some level it's... progress is what progress is." He also pushes back against the idea that some developers are completely against AI. "Like anyone who's in any level of production, you're always looking at ways to create more efficiency, reduce the stuff you don't want to do, so you can do more of the stuff you want to do." The problem with the AI debate is that people frequently come at it from completely different ideas of what AI is. When I criticise AI, I'm usually tackling stuff like art generation or replicating voices, instead of paying artists and performers. Because not only is it insulting to creatives and putting jobs at risk, it's also usually pretty bad. The voice acting is wonky, the art is full of errors and hallucinations. The same goes for AI-generated articles. We end up with nonsense. That's very different from what we traditionally referred to as AI in gaming, which started out just as enemy or NPC AI, but then grew to include stuff like AI upscaling, which has been used by both modders and developers for years (with mixed success). I also use AI to transcribe interviews for me, because that cuts out hours of work and is good enough now that it's better at doing it than I am. But I still conduct the interviews, they're still my questions, and I'm still writing the article the quotes are going into. "That nuance is lost," Jorjani claims. "Sometimes we don't end up with 'Let's remove the stuff that nobody wants to do,' and instead it's like 'All AI is bad AI.' And we have a very similar approach. We don't put any AI in the games, but if it can allow me to do my receipts, then that's more Helldivers for everyone." Jorjani is approaching strawman territory here, because I've never seen anyone in the industry seriously suggest that every single use of AI is bad. Nobody is coming to take Jorjani's accountancy software away from him. Regardless, it's an interesting chat, even if it mostly just goes to show how we haven't really figured out how to discuss AI yet. It means so many different things, and so many of them are completely unrelated, that there's no obvious way to debate the use of AI without filling the debate with a million caveats. At least this will all be resolved if the AI bubble bursts.

Helldivers 2 Boss Says Arc Raiders’ AI Use â€~Makes Gaming Better’

Arrowhead Game Studios CEO thinks there are â€~extreme takes’ about AI in game development The CEO of the studio behind Helldivers 2, the wildly successful third-person shooter that recently came to Xbox, weighed in on the video game industry’s increasing use of AI and how he believes it “actually makes gaming better.†As reported by GamesRadar, Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani was on an episode of The Game Business Show when the conversation shifted to the use of AI in game development. The host, Christopher Dring, brought up the “industry moment†around Arc Raiders, the recently released extraction shooter that’s been a breakout hit for developer Embark Studios, and the center of a conversation around using AI in game development. For Jorjani, opinions on the controversial topic are too black and white. “Maybe, could it be, that reality is somewhere in the middle? Could it be?†he asked. He believes that, rather than developers using AI to “remove the stuff we don’t want to do,†people jump to “let’s never actually use AI, all AI is bad AI.†“We don’t put any AI in the games,†Jorjani says. “But if it can allow me to do my receipts faster, that’s more Helldivers for everyone.†It was recently revealed that Embark hired voice actors for Arc Raiders, then used AI to flesh out in-game voice lines rather than having “someone come in every time we create a new line for the game,†according to an interview with PCGamesN. This sparked a heated debate about the use of AI in game development and even negatively affected Eurogamer’s review of the game (which awarded it two out of five stars). “I find that people jump to extreme takes,†Jorjani says of the response to Arc Raiders’ AI use. “I think it’s a very interesting use case that actually makes gaming better.†But as Dring brings up during the interview, Square Enix recently revealed it wants to eventually have 70 percent of its quality assurance work done by AI. QA work often serves as an entry-level role in game development, and this could be a huge hit to the industry’s workforce, which is one of the main points of contention people have with implementing AI. Junghun Lee, the CEO of Nexton Co. Ltd (which published Arc Raiders), said in a November 12 interview with Japanese gaming site Gamespark that “it's important to assume that every game company is now using AI.†But with the video game industry plagued with layoffs and studio closures, what does that mean for the future of its workforce? The ideological split is only widening. Brendan Green, the creator of the wildly successful battle royale PUBG, told Eurogamer he was “really heartened to see the community revolt against AI stuff.†PUBG is published by South Korean company Krafton, which recently announced a massive “AI-first†mandate for the entire company while also announcing the option for employees to voluntarily resign if they felt they were not in line with its “direction of change.†Elsewhere, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 publisher Activision recently came under fire for using AI-generated content for some of its artwork. “Like so many around the world, we use a variety of digital tools, including AI tools, to empower and support our teams to create the best gaming experiences possible for our players. Our creative process continues to be led by the talented individuals in our studios,†Activision told Kotaku on November 14. AI in game development seems to be here to stay, but just how it will be utilized going forward, and how developers, voice actors, and players will feel about it, remains to be seen.

Most gamers aren't actually bothered by gen AI in games, says former Square Enix exec: "Many studios I know" are relying on it, and art or voices like Arc Raiders' are "the tip of the spear"

"Activision isn't shying away from AI, neither is ARC Raiders," reckons Jacob Navok Championing, or certainly at least defending, the rise of generative AI use in game development, former Square Enix business director Jacob Navok argues younger generations of gamers don't share many concerns around the technology, reckons most gamers "do not care" in general, and insists he personally knows multiple studios using gen AI even from the "concept phase." Navok discussed gen AI in games in a Twitter post weighing in on discussion of Arc Raiders, which is famously - infamously, even - stuffed with AI voices. "I should add that in-game art and voices are merely the tip of the spear," Navok says, "and many more are using Claude for code." The thrust of Navok's argument is that, "For all the anti-AI sentiment we're seeing in various articles, it appears consumers generally do not care." This claim is firmly couched in Arc Raiders, which has sold millions of copies throughout an explosive launch despite developer Embark Studios - which undeniably has the resources to hire real voice actors - making highly visible use of gen AI. Navok also points to Roblox hit Steal a Brainrot, which he estimates had "approximately 80x the ARC Raiders concurrents" and "is named after/based on AI slop characters." Younger gamers, in particular, seem AI-agnostic, he reasons. Or as he puts it, "Gen Z loves AI slop, does not care. The upcoming generation of gamers are Bane in Dark Knight Rises saying 'You merely adopted the slop, I was born in it.'" "It will be hard to find a non-indie title that isn't using Claude for code, and ignoring Claude's AI use because it's code while focusing purely on art shows that a lot of AI sentiment is being driven by emotion rather than logic," Navok concludes, alluding to more widely accepted applications of AI, such as one Valve engineer using ChatGPT to form a Deadlock matchmaking algorithm. (This very morning I spoke to a game developer who said they use ChatGPT as a search engine for light code references.) "Activision isn't shying away from AI, neither is ARC Raiders. Tipping point has been reached," Navok says. Gen AI has proven divisive among the people who make and play games. On the pro-AI side, just today the CEO of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead argued "there's a middle ground" on gen AI, supporting Arc Raiders and insisting the tech "actually makes gaming better." When we pressed Embark on its reliance on gen AI, co-founder Stefan Strandberg explained "we use a combination of recordings of real actors and [text-to-speech]" for voices and simultaneously claimed "there's no end goal in replacing any actors." Dead Space creator and ex Call of Duty boss Glen Schofield has also been bigging up AI, calling it the "right investment" for game studios and advising others to "make your own rules on how you want to deal with it," offering his stance of using his own works as ammo for prompts. Yet there are still many, many folks - coincidentally, often folks who don't reside in C-suites or own yachts - pushing back against gen AI in many forms. I follow roughly a zillion game devs online and each day my feeds are filled with anti-AI sentiments. Less anecdotally, huge groups representing major names in anime and games, from Studio Ghibli and Toei to Square Enix and Bandai Namco, have called on AI companies to avoid unauthorized use of their IP. The idea of AI-generated games, in particular, prompted a strong response from Palworld developer Pocketpair's publishing boss John Buckley, who said, "If you've played even one game then you've a rudimentary [understanding] of games mechanics, so you know this absolute horseshit." "I think you're huffing pure copium if you think this is going anywhere," he added.

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney wades into the Arc Raiders AI voice debate with an imaginary scenario predicting 'infinite, context-sensitive, personality-reflecting dialog based on and tuned by human voice actors'

Sweeney says productivity increases driven by technology will lead to better games, not reduced employment. Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has waded into the furor over the use of generative AI for videogame voices, saying the technology presents an "opportunity for in-game voice and voice actors," with games that could potentially have "infinite, context-sensitive, personality-reflecting dialog based on and tuned by human voice actors." The exchange began with a comment on Eurogamer's Arc Raiders review, written by freelancer Rick Lane -- also a contributor at PC Gamer -- who took issue with the game's "inexcusable" use of AI-generated voices. "Political opinions should go into op eds folks," Sweeney wrote, seemingly overlooking the fact that reviews very much are opinion pieces. In a follow-up post, Sweeney doubled down: "This technology increases human productivity in some areas by integer multiples, and views on whether this is a net good and should be rewarded, or bad and should be fought against, are speculative and generally distributed along political lines." I'm not sure that's accurate -- my perception is that the divide isn't along political lines so much as it is between billionaires (like Sweeney) who tend to view generative AI as a way to crank out more content with less expense, and pretty much everyone else. But he went on to share some other thoughts on the matter, explaining why he thinks criticism of generative AI is misplaced. "Since the author [of the review] states the pessimistic case, I'll put the optimistic one here," Sweeney wrote. "Game developers compete to build the best games in order to attract gamers. When tech increases productivity, competition leads to building better games rather than employing fewer people." When another user pointed out that the rise of generative AI is in fact depriving voice actors of work, Sweeney said there's "an even bigger opportunity for in-game voice and voice actors" in the future of AI than there is in simply acting. "Instead of games having a few dozen or hundred lines of pre-recorded dialog, how about infinite, context-sensitive, personality-reflecting dialog based on and tuned by human voice actors?" he wrote. "I've always found pre-written lines of fixed dialog super limiting. It was painful to write text dialog in ZZT in 1991 after writing more dynamically-composed text adventure games in the 80's! AI dialog generation + human personality and tuning could totally transform gaming." I suppose it could, but Sweeney's argument strikes me as, well, flimsy. What is "tuning," as opposed to training, something voice actors have furiously opposed because of the threat it poses to their livelihoods? What happens when that "human personality" is no longer viewed as an essential part of the formula? And of course there's the fact that all of this is entirely hypothetical, what-if stuff that doesn't address the actual criticism but merely brushes it off. It's fair to say that generative AI isn't ready for prime time just yet, but it's definitely moving in that direction, and that movement has provoked a range of responses: Pocketpair Publishing boss John Buckley, for instance, stated flat-out in October that Pocketpair won't publish games built using generative AI, while Junghun Lee, CEO of Embark Studios parent Nexon, seems to be embracing AI just because everyone else is. Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson, by comparison, has effusively high hopes for AI-powered game development, saying in 2024 -- after the bong rip hit -- that EA is "AI-native" and he envisions a future in which "3 billion players around the world" are set to "creating personal content and expanding and enhancing the universes that we create," using -- of course -- EA's own AI technology. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has a somewhat more measured take, saying that AI can be a powerful tool for business but is inherently "backward looking," which means it's fundamentally unable to actually create anything. Sweeney's remarks, to my reading, aren't too far off Zelnick's: Humans create, AI manipulates. But the cavalier dismissal of criticism of generative AI as it actually exists right now, and not how it might be in some imaginary future, isn't great. Ironically, Sweeney seemed to acknowledge those concerns in another reply tweet: When X user doubttom, whose post began the exchange, wrote, "Progress marches on but haven't we seen it enough times in the past where we can do better for the people being affected now?" Sweeney replied simply, "Yep." On that point, at least, I have to agree.

Arc Raiders Publisher Says Generative AI Is A Matter Of Survival

Arc Raiders is a great game with a complicated legacy thanks to its use of generative AI to voice NPCs. It's the same strategy Embark Studios used with The Finals, and the CEO of publisher Nexon now says fans should get used to it. “First of all, I think it’s important to assume that every game company is now using AI," Junghun Lee told Japanese outlet Game*Spark, according to a translation by Automaton. "But if everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive? I believe it’s important to choose a strategy that increases your competitiveness.†He believes generative AI will increase the capabilities of game studios across the board, thus increasing the "average" quality. " AI has definitely improved efficiency in both game production and live service operations," Lee said. His comments come after fellow South Korea game publisher Krafton revealed an "AI first" plan to invest roughly $70 million in GPU clusters and related resources to build out an infrastructure for deploying agentic AI across the company. Krafton happens to own the makers of PUBG, Hi-Fi Rush, and Subnautica 2. But the deployment of AI in games remains controversial and confusing, as proved by Nexon's own Arc Raiders. “Arc Raiders in no way uses generative AI whatsoever,†design director Virgil Watkins claimed during a new interview with PCGamesN. But in addition to using machine learning during the development process, the hit Steam extraction shooter also uses text-to-speech models to voice all of the NPC barks for every random item and situation. "[Text-to-speech] allows us to increase the scope of the game in some areas where we think it's needed, or where there's tedious repetition, in situations where the voice actors may not see it as valuable work," Embark Studios CCO Stefan Strandberg told Eurogamer last month. "So it's a wide umbrella, but the experience of the game doesn't use any generative AI." Others disagree, including Eurogamer's own review which became a flash point on social media this week after it critiqued Arc Raiders use of AI voices. "[Machine learning] is an interesting technology, and the effects it produces during matches are undeniably convincing," wrote Rick Lane. "The same cannot be said about Embark's generated voice lines, which are aggressively mediocre and a stain on the experience." There are also those who take issue with Nexon's CEO's assumption everyone must be racing to embrace generative AI more generally. "Hello, not only do we not use AI we would rather cut off our own arms than do so," wrote indie team Necrosoft Games. "Demonschool is 100% human made."

Nexon CEO Claims We Should "Assume Every Game Company Is Now Using AI," Game Devs Respond: "No."

Blanket statements are rarely a good idea for several reasons, chief among them being that they can often be disproven almost immediately. That's the situation Nexon's chief executive officer, Junghun Lee, finds himself in after an interview with Game*Spark (translated by Automaton), where, while discussing the controversy surrounding ARC Raiders and Nexon's subsidiary Embark Studios using generative AI, he claimed, "It's important to assume that every game company is now using AI." Whether it's "important" to make that assumption largely depends on where you're sitting. If you're the CEO of a big games company, then perhaps it is important if you're concerned about staying ahead of competitors. But for that to work, you'd also have to consider using AI and generative AI technology as an advantage over your competition. Which Nexon and its subsidiary, Embark Studios, certainly do, not just because Embark has used it in both of its major titles, ARC Raiders and The Finals, but also when Embark was founded back in 2018, it was done so with the promise of leaning on advanced AI technology to make games. The full quote from Lee, per Automaton, reads, "First of all, I think it's important to assume that every game company is now using AI. But if everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive? I believe it's important to choose a strategy that increases your competitiveness." We also know that Nexon and Embark are not alone in considering it an advantage, as other major companies, like Electronic Arts and Blizzard, have not shied away from using generative AI, forcing it into their developers' work pipelines. Nexon, EA, and Activision Blizzard are some of the bigger companies in the video game industry, and we know they're all using generative AI. The rest of the industry, though? Well, a quick perusal through the responses to Automaton's report confirms what we already knew: it is absolutely not true that every game company is using AI and generative AI technology. To highlight a few of the many, many responses, Strange Scaffold founder (the studio behind I Am Your Beast, Clikcholding, El Paso, Elswhere, etc.) Xalavier Nelson Jr. replied, "We don't use generative AI at Strange Scaffold and I can confirm that a lot of other studios are not -- whether indie or AAA." Indie developer Neil Jones (maker of Ariel Knight's Never Yield) replied, "We don't use Ai in our games. Ai isn't and hasn't ever been needed been needed to make a good game and CEOs like this don't know what the f*** they are talking about." Rogue Eclipse developer Huskrafts replied, "I'm happy to confirm Rogue Eclipse is AI FREE and in fact NOT USED as a part of our process AT ALL! We discourage the use and have ANTI AI USAGE clauses in our agreements!" Goodbye Volcano High developer KO_OP responded with a simple "No." Necrosoft Games, the studio behind the upcoming Demonschool, said "Hello, not only do we not use AI we would rather cut off our own arms than do so. Demonschool is 100% human made." So, no, it's clear that not every game company is using AI and generative AI technology. From a player's perspective, it's arguably more important to assume the opposite of Lee's statement, that the majority of game developers are not using generative AI, because they see their own artistic ability and commitment to their craft as their real advantage over their competition. We can assume that the major companies that have talked about using generative AI, like Nexon and EA, are using it. For everyone else, however, the responses to Lee's comment suggest the rest of the industry aligns with what Starfinder: Afterlight developer Epictellers Entertainment told Wccftech this past October: "There is no point in using AI for any creative endeavor."

Helldivers 2 boss argues Arc Raiders' AI use "actually makes gaming better" and that "people jump to extreme takes" about the tech: "Surely there's a middle ground here"

"Let's just make sure that people are paid for their work," he says CEO of Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead, Shams Jorjani, has been speaking out about Arc Raiders' controversial use of AI, saying he believes it's "a very interesting use case that actually makes gaming better." Speaking on a new episode of The Game Business Show (below), Jorjani says he finds that any talk related to AI in the games industry ends up falling into one of two extremes, where on one hand we see the likes of Square Enix proclaiming it wants to automate 70% of its QA testing and debugging, and on the other "we have developers who feel that their livelihood... the very fabric of their being is being threatened, and therefore all AI is bad AI." He questions: "Maybe, could it be, that reality is somewhere in the middle? Could it be?" He clarifies that "we need to make sure that we're not stealing people's intellectual property and rights," but overall believes that "people jump to extreme takes. My thing with Arc Raiders is I think it's a very interesting use case that actually makes gaming better." Arc Raiders uses AI for certain voice lines - for example, player pings and callouts, allowing players to communicate sort of vocally by pointing out specific dangers and items without actually having to use voice chat, and also for some NPC voice lines. Embark has explained that real voice actors were hired for the game in addition to the devs utilizing a form of text-to-speech to generate certain lines - arguing that this system allows for vocal pings of "every single item name, every single location name, and compass directions" and "without needing to have someone come in every time we create a new item for the game" (thanks, PCGamesN), but not everyone is thrilled. After all, there's still an argument to be made that this has taken work away from real voice actors at a time when many are worried about AI replacing human jobs, but it's worth keeping in mind that real individuals were hired and paid for their involvement in this case. It's the use of the technology in Arc Raiders' player comms specifically that Jorjani praises, noting that he personally doesn't "do voice in games," as "communicating directly with people I don't know is very, very scary." Therefore, he argues: "I think this allows more people to connect with each other, which is ultimately a good gaming thing. Let's just make sure that people are paid for their work. Like, surely there's a middle ground here, come on." Jorjani continues, noting that he "would oppose this dichotomy that some say developers don't want to use AI. Anyone who is in any level of production, you're always looking at ways to create more efficiency, reduce the stuff you don't want to do so you can do more of the stuff you want to do." With that said, he clarifies, "we don't put any AI in the games, but if it can allow me to do my receipts faster, then that's more Helldivers for everyone. Not Helldivers specifically, but you get the point."

'Every game company is now using AI': Nexon's CEO defends the use of generative AI in game development in the wake of Arc Raiders' controversy

Arc Raiders has taken the gamers by storm, achieving more than 700,000 concurrent players over the weekend, beating Helldivers 2's player record, and just generally proving that extraction shooters can indeed be fun. But all of these successes have unfortunately been mired by Embark Studio's use of generative AI for its voice acting. To this end, Nexon's CEO Junghun Lee recently addressed Nexon's projects (which include Embark's The Finals and Arc Raiders) and his stance on using AI in making videogames in an interview with Game*Spark (via Automaton): "First of all, I think it's important to assume that every game company is now using AI. But if everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive? I believe it's important to choose a strategy that increases your competitiveness." The truth about Arc Raiders' use of generative AI has proved hard to pin down, shifting from claims that there's no AI-generated content in the game to defenses of the use of "machine learning" as an efficient way to get work done: "AI has definitely improved efficiency in both game production and live service operations," Lee adds. I do feel as if I can't go anywhere on the internet anymore without stumbling across weird AI-generated videos or getting jumpscared by images of my new sleep paralysis demon, Peter Thiel. But even still, I never just assume that studios are all utilising generative AI. If anything, I assume that studios are avoiding generative AI like the plague. Last year, Nintendo became the biggest gaming company to swear off AI during an investor call. CD Projekt has since said it will not use generative AI on The Witcher 4, and Pocketpair has been quite clear that its new publishing division will not handle games that use generative AI. This isn't to say that Embark and Nexon are the only ones using AI in their work. World of Warcraft devs have admitted to using machine learning to cut out busy work, and AI-accelerated frame generation has certainly proved itself as the way of the future. But using AI to make burdensome tasks easier is entirely different from using it to cut out the need for voice actors, as Arc Raiders has done. The idea that a studio that was acquired by Nexon for $96 million needs to cut corners by not paying voice actors to record lines is laughable. Using the excuse that voice actors wouldn't even want to come back to the booth to record short lines, as it's not seen "as valuable work," is also unconvincing. Richard Charles Lintern spent five hours recording just one speech for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. But I don't have to argue how important it is for companies to hold onto human-led creativity in an era where so many are taking shortcuts, because Lee does it for me. At the end of his short interview on the uses of generative AI, he settles on how "human creativity" is the answer to rising above the competition. It's a truth that makes Arc Raiders' use of generative AI all the more frustrating: It really is a stain on what is otherwise one of the best multiplayer shooters I've played in a very long time.

Amidst ARC Raiders Success, Embark's Use Of Gen AI Voices Bubbles Over, Even Epic's CEO Joins the Fray

ARC Raiders is, at the time of this writing, one of the most popular games in the video game industry. There are currently more than 300K people on Steam alone playing it right now. Its developer, Embark Studios, just celebrated 700K+ concurrent players over the weekend and over 4 million copies sold since it launched less than two weeks ago. Embark is also a relatively small studio making huge waves in competitive genres, with its free-to-play first-person shooter, The Finals, and now with its third-person extraction shooter, ARC Raiders. In many ways, it's great to see a small to mid-size team have such an impact where historically only juggernauts can survive, and yet, a cloud of controversy hangs over the game, and conversation around that controversy has bubbled over in online spaces, thanks to debate surrounding a single review. In its review, Eurogamer gave ARC Raiders 2/5 stars, and specifically called out Embark Studios' use of generative AI voices for NPCs as a core criticism (it's worth noting that the same writer reviewed The Finals for Eurogamer, and gave it 3/5 stars, while also critiquing the use of GenAI voices). What has followed in the wake of this review is a large conversation across the video game industry about how we should talk about games that use generative AI, how we should review those games, and what should or should not go into a review. Game developers, players, YouTubers, and now, even Epic Games' chief executive officer, Tim Sweeney, have joined the conversation to give their two cents. Sweeney entered the conversation by first saying in a post on X (formerly Twitter) responding to the review, "Political opinions should go into op eds folks." While it's worth pointing out that a review is inherently a person's opinion (which other users point out to Sweeney), the point that Sweeney expounds on is his argument that falling one way or the other on GenAI is 'political.' Responding to a user asking him if it is political or not to dislike and critique GenAI within the context of a game review, Sweeney writes, "Yes. This technology increases human productivity in some areas by integer multiples, and views on whether this is a net good and should be rewarded, or bad and should be fought against, are speculative and generally distributed along political lines." He continues, "Since the author states the pessimistic case, I'll put the optimistic one here. Game developers compete to build the best games in order to attract gamers. When tech increases productivity, competition leads to building better games rather than employing fewer people." Sweeney further claims that he sees GenAI voices as "an even bigger opportunity for in-game voice and voice actors," and that he "always found pre-written lines of fixed dialogue super limiting. It was painful to write text dialog in ZZT in 1991 after writing more dynamically-composed text adventure games in the 80s! AI dialog generation + human personality tuning could totally transform gaming." It's difficult to understand how generative AI voices tuned by humans create "an even bigger opportunity" for actors, since those production pipeline models would inherently be designed to use fewer actors, resulting in fewer acting jobs available and ultimately less opportunity. Also, while any writer will tell you that writing can be a painful exercise at times, any writer worth their salt would rather work through those pains than let someone else, and even worse, something else, do it for them. Writing, like practically anything else in life, is a 'no pain, no gain' craft. All that aside, Eurogamer's review has clearly hit a nerve and sparked further conversation about using generative AI in games, particularly in ways that directly replace jobs historically done by humans. Last month, Starfinder: Afterlight developers told Wccftech that "there's no point in using AI for any creative endeavor."

Epic Games and Fortnite's billionaire boss Tim Sweeney plays devil's advocate in the Arc Raiders AI debate, argues the tech could create "an even bigger opportunity" for actors

"When tech increases productivity, competition leads to building better games rather than employing fewer people." Epic Games CEO and founder Tim Sweeney has butted into the debate around AI in Arc Raiders by arguing that the tech could, somehow, create more opportunities for actors rather than replacing jobs. To quickly catch you up, the extraction shooter's developer Embark Studios freely admitted to using text-to-speech tech in both Arc Raiders and The Finals with the consent of some human voice actors, which drew backlash from a subset of players who'd prefer to get their voice lines read by, well, real voices. Responding to a Eurogamer review that called out the disconnect between the game's reliance on "human sociability" and its AI-infused development, Sweeney says "political opinions should go into op eds, folks" in an online post. He then argues that opinions on AI are political because "this technology increases human productivity in some areas by integer multiples, and views on whether this is a net good and should be rewarded, or bad and should be fought against, are speculative and generally distributed along political lines." I'm not totally in agreement with Fortnite's billionaire boss for, err, a number of reasons, mainly because Eurogamer's review speaks about Arc Raiders' AI use within the context of the game itself (as in, the AI voices are jarring for a shooter that's so much about human interaction... and fighting big bad robots.) "Since the author states the pessimistic case, I'll put the optimistic one here," Sweeney continued in a follow-up tweet. "Game developers compete to build the best games in order to attract gamers. When tech increases productivity, competition leads to building better games rather than employing fewer people." Sweeney then said he thinks there's "an even bigger opportunity for in-game voice and voice actors" with AI tech, as he suggests a hypothetical scenario. "Instead of games having a few dozen or hundred lines of pre-recorded dialog, how about infinite, context-sensitive, personality-reflecting dialog based on and tuned by human voice actors?" The executive also called "pre-written lines of fixed dialog super limiting" and argued "AI dialog generation + human personality and tuning could totally transform gaming." It would be a very dark future for games, I think, if humans weren't writing the stories we've all fallen in love with like they have over the last few decades. While execs like Sweeney and EA's Andrew Wilson gush about AI tech - the latter after laying off hundreds of employees - voice actors have been more trepidatious about it. The Last of Us Part 2's Ashly Burch recently expressed concern that studios would use AI to replace minor roles - the sort of acting jobs that Burch and performers of her calibre cut their teeth on.

After Arc Raiders AI voice actor controversy, owner Nexon says people should just assume "every game company is now using AI"

It's cool, man, everybody's using AI - including the developer of new shooter Arc Raiders, Embark Studios, which freely admits to using AI text-to-speech (TTS) in its dialogue. While some fans find that fact controversial, owner Nexon doesn't seem to mind. Its CEO Junghun Lee knows it isn't alone. According to an Automaton translation of a new interview Lee did with Game*Spark in Japanese, the CEO believes "it's important to assume that every game company is now using AI." Embark co-founder Stefan Strandberg himself acknowledges this in a recent conversation with GamesRadar+, telling us Arc Raiders' text-to-speech is a "studio strategy." That said, both Lee and Strandberg suggest that using AI tools is ineffective without human ingenuity. "If everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive?" Lee wondered to Game*Spark. "I believe it's important to choose a strategy that increases your competitiveness" - and he says he chooses "human creativity." For his part, Strandberg says "there's something fantastical that happens when you bring real actors in, and they are contributing to the lore, as well, of this game world." Like Embark's last free-to-play shooter The Finals, Arc Raiders blends TTS with human voice actor recordings. "There's no end goal in replacing any actors," Strandberg says. Fans of both The Finals and Arc Raider can't seem to agree on how important that is. Controversy, however, has not stopped Embark from apparently reaching a peak of 700,000 concurrent players across all platforms.

'Gen Z Loves AI Slop' -- Former Square Enix Exec Claims 'A Lot of AI Sentiment Is Driven by Emotion Rather Than Logic' - IGN

The CEO of Genvid -- the company behind choose-your-own-adventure interactive series like Silent Hill Ascension -- has claimed "consumers generally do not care" about generative AI in games, stating: "Gen Z loves AI slop." Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix director, evidenced his claim by reminding us that the biggest game of the year, Steal a Brainrot, "had 30m concurrents or approximately 80x the Arc Raiders concurrents, and is named after/based on AI slop characters." "For all the anti-AI sentiment we're seeing in various articles, it appears consumers generally do not care," he wrote on X/Twitter (thanks, GamesRadar+). "All the brainrots are just 3D models of AI slop. Gen Z loves AI slop, does not care. The upcoming generation of gamers are Bane in Dark Knight Rises saying 'You merely adopted the slop, I was born in it.' Arc Raiders has enjoyed huge popularity and big sales despite an online controversy around its use of generative AI to generate character voice. Streamer Shroud has suggested this AI controversy held Arc Raiders back from being considered for the Game of the Year award at this year's The Game Awards. Yesterday, November 17, we reported that Assassin's Creed publisher Ubisoft was forced to remove an image found within Anno 117: Pax Romana that contained AI-generated elements after fans complained, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 players promptly took to social media to complain about AI-generated images they had found across the game, following a trend of AI-Ghibli images from earlier this year. The Alters developer, 11 Bit Studios, and Jurassic World Evolution 3 developer, Frontier Developments, meanwhile, similarly faced fan backlash recently when they were caught using undisclosed AI images, which doesn't quite track with Navok's assumption that "consumers do not care." Suggesting that a "tipping point has been reached," Navok also stressed that because "Activision isn't shying away from AI, neither is Arc Raiders," the tech was here to stay. "I should add that in-game art and voices are merely the tip of the spear. Many studios I know are using AI generation in the concept phase, and many more are using Claude for code," he added. "It will be hard to find a non-indie title that isn't using Claude for code, and ignoring Claude's AI use because it's code while focusing purely on art shows that a lot of AI sentiment is being driven by emotion rather than logic." In Navok's defence, it certainly feels as though his comments ring true, at least across other big developers and publishers, too. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said AI is "the very core of our business," and Square Enix recently implemented mass layoffs and reorganized, saying it needed to be "aggressive in applying AI." Dead Space creator Glen Schofield also recently detailed his plans to "fix" the industry in part via the use of generative AI in game development, and former God of War dev Meghan Morgan Juinio said: "... if we don't embrace [AI], I think we're selling ourselves short." Conversely, Nintendo has bucked the trend, with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto previously stressing that the company would rather go in a "different direction" than the rest of the video game industry when it comes to AI.