Godot Game Engine Maintainers Struggle With Flood of AI Slop Pull Requests

Godot maintainers struggle with 'demoralizing' AI slop PRs

Rémi Verschelde, a maintainer of the open source Godot game engine, is the latest to complain about the impact of "AI slop PRs [pull requests]", which he says "are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for Godot maintainers." His post was prompted by a comment from Adriaan de Jongh, game designer and director of small gaming company Hidden Folks, who said that LLM-generated PRs for Godot are a "massive time waster for reviewers ... changes often make no sense, descriptions are extremely verbose, users don't understand their own changes ... it's a total shitshow." A comment noted that the Blender 3D design project is facing the same issue and has recently proposed an AI contributions policy, following others including the Linux Foundation, Fedora, Firefox, Ghostty, Servo and LLVM. Verschelde appealed for "more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop," and also spoke of the conflict between being welcoming to new contributors to let "any engine user have the possibility to make an impact" while also dealing with the onslaught of useless PRs. "I don't know how long we can keep it up," he said. GitHub itself is to blame, according to some comments, since the company is a big AI advocate. "This platform incentivizes this kind of behavior," said one; and another that it "is just exhausting to watch all this play out and GitHub promoting this, not fighting it." Linux distro Gentoo is in the process of migrating from GitHub to Codeberg thanks to "continuous efforts to force Copilot usage for our repositories." One project, the self-hosting toolkit Coolify, has created an Anti Slop GitHub Action, which its developer claims "could have closed 98 percent of slop PRs." The developer is not opposed to AI itself, and stated that "AI is one of the best things to ever be released and when used with experience and properly according to project guidelines it will pass all checks." GitHub director of open source programs Ashley Wolf acknowledged the problem of "what happens when low-quality contributions arrive at scale" last week, though choosing her words carefully so as not to blame AI itself. According to Wolf, "maintainers have always dealt with noisy inbound." Nevertheless, GitHub is introducing features to make AI slop easier to deal with, including PR deletion from the GitHub UI (user interface) which she said is coming soon. Wolf also mentioned relevant features that have already shipped, including the ability to limit PRs to collaborators or disable them entirely. And maintainers can enforce temporary interaction limits for specific users. Further refinements are under consideration. Wolf mentioned criteria-based gating, such as requiring that a PR be linked to an existing issue, or defining other rules that contributions must meet. There is also the inevitable suggestion that AI can be used to fix the problem it created, via automated triage. Wolf's post follows the creation of an official GitHub discussion on the subject earlier this month, as we reported. A GitHub product manager contacted us to state that "we don't think counting AI-generated PRs is the right metric," showing again the tension between the company's strong promotion of AI and the evidence of the damage it is doing to open source. ®

Open-source game engine Godot is drowning in 'AI slop' code contributions: 'I don't know how long we can keep it up'

Open-source software development -- the open, collaborative contribution of knowledge in the name of problem solving, bug fixing, feature development, and ongoing support -- is a borderline utopian idea. But the advent of generative LLMs has forced the maintainers of projects like open-source game engine Godot to face a deluge of AI-generated code from would-be contributors who might not even understand the changes they're submitting. In a Bluesky thread (via Game Developer), Rémi Verschelde -- one of the primary maintainers of the Godot Github repository and co-founder of major Godot backer W4 Games -- says the problem of "AI slop" pull requests, or requests to merge code changes with the project, is "becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for Godot maintainers" as they're now forced to deliberate the trustworthiness and human authorship of an onslaught of LLM-generated contributions. Honestly, AI slop PRs are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for #Godot maintainers. If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of: fund.godotengine.org -- @akien.bsky.social ( @akien.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-02-17T21:25:12.382Z "We find ourselves having to second guess every PR from new contributors, multiple times per day," Verschelde said. "The description is verbose LLM output; is the code written at least partially by a human? Does the 'author' understand the code they're sending? Did they test it? Are the test results made up?" Even if Godot's maintainers are able to identify AI-generated code or description, Verschelde says that's often just the first of compounding complications. "Is this code wrong because it was written by AI, or is it an honest mistake from an inexperienced human contributor?" Verschelde said. "What do you do when you ask a PR author if they used AI because you're suspicious, and they all reply 'yes I used it to write the PR description because I'm bad with English'?" Verschelde says Godot "prides itself in being welcoming to new contributors, letting any engine user have the possibility to make an impact on their engine of choice." But navigating the accelerating rate of PRs that could jeopardize the project's health with faulty code or incomplete understanding is overtaxing the maintainers' finite capacity. "Maintainers spend a lot of time assisting new contributors to help them get PRs in a mergeable state," Verschelde said. "I don't know how long we can keep it up." Godot's maintainers are discussing and investigating solutions, including potential automated detection options -- but Veschelde said it "seems horribly ironic" to have to turn to run AI-based solutions to "detect AI slop," because he's "really not keen on feeding the AI machinery." Godot is also weighing the possibility of moving the project to another platform where there might be less incentive for users to "farm" legitimacy as a software developer with AI-generated code contributions. But moving to a less popular platform could run the risk of alienating legitimate contributors. In January, Github acknowledged the "increasing volume of low-quality contributions that is creating significant operational challenges for maintainers," and said it's exploring both short- and long-term options for triaging the plague of AI PRs. The first of those rolled out last week, as Github now allows maintainers to limit pull requests to collaborators or disable them entirely. But given that Github is owned by Microsoft -- one of the world's most shameless AI boosters -- one does wonder just how incentivized it truly is to curb the acceleration of AI-generated code flooding onto the platform. Verschelde said that, ultimately, the best way to support the ability of projects like Godot to weather the flood of AI-generated pull requests is with financial support: "If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of."

Indie Game Engine Maker Calls AI Code Bombardment A Shitshow

According to Rémi Verschelde, project manager of Godot Engine and co-founder of the platform’s financial backer W4 Games, the never-ending wave of “AI slop†pull requests on Godot’s GitHub is becoming “increasingly draining and demoralizing†for its maintainers, to the point that over 4,600 pull requests are currently open on the engine's GitHub page. As spotted by Game Developer, Verschelde’s comment on Bluesky was made in response to a post by Adriaan de Jongh, the developer and publisher of the 2017 indie puzzle hit Hidden Folks, which stated that Godot’s GitHub has been overrun with countless undisclosed AI-generated pull requests. “Changes often make no sense, descriptions are extremely verbose, users don't understand their own changesâ€|It's a total shitshow.†In reply, Verschelde noted that the problem has become such an issue that Godot’s GitHub maintainers are being forced to “second guess every [pull request] from new contributors, multiple times per day.†Although he stated that Godot prides itself on “being welcoming to new contributors,†Verschelde also doesn’t see a way out of the situation, beyond further donations to help pay more maintainers. “Maintainers spend a lot of time assisting new contributors to help them get PRs in a mergeable state. I don't know how long we can keep it up.†A cursory glance at the closed pull requests on Godot’s GitHub page proves that this isn’t an exaggeration, as dozens of pull requests have been denied or reported as spam by Godot’s maintainers within the past month alone, with comments left by maintainers pointing out AI-written code appearing on a daily basis. Godot has been used to ship a bunch of hit indie games over the last few years like Brotato and Until Then and is a valuable alternative to proprietary game engines like Unity, which have been rolling out their own genAI tools. While Verschelde stated that paying more maintainers would be the simplest option, he also stated that Godot may have to raise “the barrier to entry†for its contributors instead. When quizzed about the possibility of automating the process, he replied that it “seems horribly ironic to have to run an AI on our CI to detect AI slop.†Chet Faliszek, writer for several Valve titles including Left 4 Dead, Portal 2, and Half-Life 2: Episode One, believes that the onus to fix the system should be on GitHub instead. “Really is just exhausting to watch all this playout and github promoting this, not fighting it.â€

Devs failing to make games with AI won't stop flooding the Godot game engine with slop requests, and its project manager has had enough: "Does the 'author' understand the code they're sending?"

You can now count "using the game engine Godot" among the many things generative AI doesn't know how to do, along with fry an egg and mean the words "I love you." It's really stressing out the engine's project maintainer and co-founder of W4 Games, which helps support and finance Godot, Rémi Verschelde. In a Bluesky thread (spotted by Game Developer), Verschelde expresses his frustration with nonsensical pull requests - a GitHub feature that lets you formally ask for changes to a project folder, or repository - he says are clearly "AI slop." "Honestly, AI slop PRs are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for #Godot maintainers," the manager says in response to developers using AI to code, a trend Hidden Folks game director Adriaan de Jongh calls "a total shitshow." "Godot's GitHub has increasingly many pull requests generated by LLMs and it's a MASSIVE time waster for reviewers - especially if people don't disclose it," de Jongh says. "Changes often make no sense, descriptions are extremely verbose, users don't understand their own changes..." Verschelde agrees with firsthand experience, saying maintainers "find ourselves having to second guess every PR from new contributors, multiple times per day: The description is verbose LLM output, is the code written at least partially by a human? Does the 'author' understand the code they're sending? Did they test it? Are the test results made up?" But, hey, good luck to all the major developers like Ubisoft committing to "player-facing generative AI." It seems like a good idea if you want to ruin a game engine maintainer's day.