It’s a different story for the more established studios with an existing following and previous titles. Game Oracle found that the use of AI by these studios resulted in a significant 40% to 60% drop in sales.
That’s a huge difference. AI stigma seems to hit competent developers with a lot to lose the hardest, and I’m not sure that game studios are ready to accept it.
The problem I have is “using AI” could be something as simple as coding autocomplete. Or documentation help. Or scaling sprites. Things like that.
It could be done completely locally.
Hence the term isn’t really fair. It’s not even in the same class as shipping sloppy shovelware, or burning tens of thousands of dollars of tokens making junk, or encountering gross or broken stuff in game.
I think Valve should avoid a term as overloaded as “AI” and more clearly define it as “vibe coding, or gratuitous use of generated assets in game.”