When "Made By Humans" Becomes a Selling Point, Something Has Gone Very Wrong

Ubisoft laid off 1,500 people in the same year Tencent is wiring them €1.16 billion for a new studio. On paper it’s “AI is now ubiquitous, we’re getting more efficient.”

Then Nexon’s CEO said something that made the whole thing click: “People should just assume every game company is now using AI.”

Arc Raiders? Had to add an AI disclosure to their Steam page because players are now asking before they buy. The devs clarified they use text-to-speech for world-building, not generative AI for content but the fact that they had to explain themselves at all says everything about where player trust is right now.

That’s the quiet part out loud. And the reaction was immediate.

Indie studios started responding publicly. The team behind Demonschool said: “We would rather cut off our own arms than use AI. Demonschool is 100% human made.”

Rogue Eclipse’s devs said they’ve added anti-AI clauses to their contracts. Studios like Necrosoft, Aerial Knight, and Strange Scaffold all came out swinging against the idea that AI is just “the new normal.”

And then this: The games people are actually getting excited about? The ones proudly stamping “AI FREE“ on their pages. One dev launched their game with “Proudly no AI” in the headline. Another created a free “No Gen AI“ seal any indie can use. These aren’t fringe cases; the AI-free thread on r/gaming hit nearly 8,000 upvotes.

So you’ve got two completely opposite bets being placed at the same time.

One commenter I saw put it perfectly: “Give me a transformative experience that redefines the medium through AI and I will embrace it. Use the same tool to blatantly increase your profit margins at my expense and I will find it offensive.”

That’s the whole tension in one sentence.

Because here’s the thing: AI as a tool isn’t the problem. Using machine learning for drone locomotion or placeholder art during pre-production? Most players don’t care. But when AI becomes the excuse to fire 1,500 people while telling investors it’s “ubiquitous”? That’s not innovation. That’s cost-cutting dressed up as progress.

And players can tell the difference.

So who is all this AI integration actually for? The quarterly reports? The “efficiency” metrics that look great on paper but hollow out everything that makes games worth playing?

The irony is brutal: the industry is betting its future on a technology its audience is somewhat rejecting.

And it all reminds me of what infamous hacker George Hotz said on how this all might “end.”