Video Game Companies Keep Trying To Bait And Switch Us With AI, And It Sucks

September 2, 2026 - 21:58

Over the past few months, several high-profile game studios have found themselves in an awkward position. Titles like 1666: Amsterdam, Blood of Dawnwalker, and a handful of other upcoming projects have all issued statements insisting that AI-generated assets did not end up in the shipped versions of their games. On paper, that sounds like a reassuring commitment to handcrafted art. In practice, it reads less like a promise and more like a carefully worded escape hatch.

The core issue is that these denials are getting narrower and narrower. A studio might confirm that no AI-made textures or character models made the final build. But they stay quiet about AI-assisted code, AI-upscaled audio, or procedural generation tools that lean heavily on machine learning. Even more telling is the timing. These statements almost always come out after a leak, a fan investigation, or a sharp-eyed forum post spots something that looks off. Rarely does a studio volunteer this information before being asked.

Players have grown tired of the game. Every time a company says "we did not use AI in the final product," the follow-up question is always the same: what did you use it for in the development process? And what about the marketing materials, the key art, the trailer voiceover? The silence on those fronts speaks volumes.

The real frustration is not that AI tools exist. Many developers use them for mundane tasks like sorting bug reports or generating test data, and nobody cares about that. The problem is the bait and switch. A studio will show off gorgeous concept art and promise a handcrafted world, only for players to later discover that the NPC dialogue or the background scenery was stitched together by a model. Then the studio issues a statement that is technically true but deeply misleading.

Until studios start giving a full accounting of every AI tool used at every stage of production, these denials will keep ringing hollow. And honestly, the more they insist that AI never touched the final game, the more players will assume it touched everything else.