In October 2026, the Video Game Industry Went All-In on AI
I keep a running list of game developers that use AI in any capacity. It’s a list that has grown to over 85 developers including development studios, publishers, individuals, game storefronts, and graphics card makers. The original version took months to put together, and I’ve been keeping it updated sporadically throughout the year.
In October 2026, the floodgates broke open. Almost every day, often multiple times a day, there was a new announcement from a studio saying they were going to start using AI, or an outburst from an AI bro, or a new AI-powered service released dedicated to making gaming worse. That’s not an exaggeration, here’s a timeline of the month:
October 3: Capcom is going to use their RE Engine to train AI to “help” employees make games faster.
October 5: PlayStation introduces seemingly mandatory AI upscaling to base PS5s.
October 7: Unity announces Spark, which will let people generate entire “games” from a text prompt.
That same day, Google announced Playground, which will also allow users to make whole games from a text prompt.
October 9: Antstream announce Slice, which will also do the same thing as Spark and Playground. And Peter Thiel is on their advisory board. Not relevant to this blog, but seriously, what the fuck?
October 12: News broke that Epic were forcing the developer of an unannounced Disney shooter to only use genAI to finish the game.
That same day, Hori Yuji released a game that is 100% AI generated, bragging about how he* made it in half an hour.
October 14: Epic announced they’re going to be “vibe coding” future Epic Store updates, stating so in such a way that it was obvious they were trying to “trigger” people.
That same day, Microsoft announced whatever Xbox Labs is.
October 17: Paolo Pedercini announces that his next game will use AI to generate voices and write some code.
October 20: Xbox Senior Business Strategy Manager Brandon Stirrup invents a straw man to argue that every game developer uses AI and that they shouldn’t have to hide it anymore, even though they already don’t.
October 23: Tim Sweeney doubles-down and announces that Epic is pivoting to AI.
That same day, Creative Assembly VP Roger Collum says that the recently released buggy, AI sloppy Total War: Shogun 2 wasn’t their fault, and that CA uses AI.
Also that day, Paolo Pedercini posts another blog, saying that AI was removed from the game, but that its now worse without it, and has a breakdown in the process.
October 24: Sweeney triples-down, saying that gamers don’t have the right to know when AI is used in games, and that Steam’s AI disclosure policy is political.
October 27: Zero Escape writer Uchikoshi Kotaro complains that his next game fell apart because he wasn’t allowed to use AI, and implies that his employees complained too much, which wouldn’t have happened with AI.
October 28: Valve tells indie developers that AI slop flooding Steam isn’t their problem, and that maybe they should try smiling more.
October 29: The Oliver Twins again defended their use of AI, this time for a new Dizzy collection.
October 30: Roblox Corporation announces that over 80% of its players are using AI tools to “assist” in game creation. They also announced two new initiates titled “Roblox Everywhere” and “The Universal Player.” The former will allow Roblox victims to port their creations to other storefronts (using AI, of course), while the latter will enable developers to port their games into Roblox (also using AI).
There are over 85 established developers using AI, and many of them are lashing out against even the mildest criticism. I didn’t bother documenting the countless individuals who make AI clones, or 100% AI slop games nobody cares about, or the growing number of AI-powered de-comps and fan remakes and translations.
Well, I’ve finally reached my limit. I can’t keep doing this anymore. I gave up media made after 2022 because of the proliferation of AI slop. Why would I keep subjecting myself to this? I want to keep bringing awareness to the proliferation of AI slop in the games industry, but not at the expensive of my mental health.
I hate to give anyone “credit” for being the straw that broke my back, but I do want to talk about this. It was a combination of things. First, three separate companies (Antstream, Unity, and Google) all creating AI slop machines that can generate entire games out of a text prompt. Throw in Roblox and their “Roblox Everywhere” slop exporter on top of that, and we’re staring disaster in the face.
The influx of these text-to-game AI tools means that it will soon be impossible for gamers to find a decent game, and for honest developers to sell their game. Marketplaces will be flooded with zero-effort slop. In fact, that’s already happened. More than once. And it’s not going to stop anytime soon. Or possibly ever.
The final knock-out blow was Steam. Seeing their representatives take the stage at an indie conference and shrug was a real slap in the face. It’s not our problem, they said, it’s the media’s fault for reporting on the influx of AI slop. It’s up to you indie devs to put in even more work to stop extortionists from ripping you off. Did you know Gabe Newell donated over $20 million to OpenAI? Silly me, that was years ago. These days he's busy with his $500 million mega yacht and weird Elon Musk-esque brain chips.
It’s bad enough when people ignore a problem. This feels like everyone sees the problem and are actively doing everything they can to make it worse. I apologize, but I cannot cover this anymore. Hopefully someone with more mental fortitude than I picks up the torch, and if so, I wish them well.
