Does this address if the number of new games on steam has doubled or even tripped? My guess is that vibe coded slop games are skewing the stat quite a bit

Just means more games I won’t buy. Ez pz

That problem will fix itself once the extant GPUs give up the ghost. It's not like anybody can afford a new graphics card. Ironic, really.

I hate the phrase “Made with AI” for many nested reasons. Some of which:

• “AI” is a meaningless buzzword now.

• “Made” to what extent? That could be anything line autocompletion to spammy vibecoding, from invisible diffusion prototyping/editing to horrific in-game visuals.

• The tone is “Twitter accusatory.” It ropes in innocent, minimal tool usage with full-on spammers, with zero nuance.

• Its a red herring for the fundamental issue: waves of games being spammy slop, which was a huge issue even before “AI.”

• It also discounts the other ethical issues we were grappling with. If we are going to talk ethics, are we just going to forget what companies like EA or Blizzard and such have done?

This needs to be discussed like a spectrum, and whether the intent is malicious. Not as a purity test of “was any AI used making this game?”

AAA companies like EA are in massive debt, a reflection of their inability to make profit with these mass-appeal, minimally original titles over and over. AI is a reflection of that too. People are correct to think AI can do this too, but they miss the fact nobody wants to play mass-appeal, low effort games. The industry is turning over for sure, but only to turn it's back on a bunch of useless bullshit that's only ever been pushed by tools, to useful idiots who don't know any better.

The game market is already supersaturated.

Even triple A games have a smaller market. I won't live long enough to play through all the games in my steam library. And my nieces and nephew won't in their lifetime as well. That's why steam doesn't want you to pass down your account. Same with requiring an internet connection for everything. Shutting servers down to push another game. Looks like it's time to have to buy COD 999...

Badly.

AI is a tool at the end of the day. Like every tool in the hands of someone who knows that they doing it's great. But in the hands of a dumbass on the other hand.

Only half, I coulda sworn that number was higher earlier this year. Is it going down?

I'm going to save so much fucking money.

There could be a digital landfill with bad AI ET game packs

Honestly I feel like the games industry has had more of an issue with humanslop from large publishers making live service and derivative stuff over the past few years than indie devs using genAI today.

Because of how genAI works, it can't simply be the lead creative force for a game or the game will be identical to other games using AI for lead creative. You'd end up with lantern keepers everywhere.

But if genAI would allow for new or displaced devs to compete with the scale and production values of the larger studios for passion projects that take true creative steps forward or risks, then as a gamer it's a huge win and I'm all for it.

I want to see evolving tech move the medium forward, not just expand profit margins for large publishers with leadership that looks down on their players by downsizing staff and shrinking game scope to chase mobile and micro-transactions.

The industry is dying (without AI as a factor) due to how consolidation happened over the past few decades. Honestly the only possible way I see it getting saved is if something arrives that reduces production costs in a way that allows small independent teams to make games that compete at scale the way studios cropped up earlier on in gaming (1990s-2000s).

And this goes beyond just the development too. Legal, accounting, marketing, etc are all costs that are relatively much smaller for mega corps due to pooled resources than independent studios.

So we can either have: (a) no AI and large publishers buying up great talent to put on derivative BS like every major publisher did for the last decade, or (b) smaller studios that use AI to scale out both dev pipelines and business needs to compete against those large publishers as they prove themselves in the market to secure capital for expansion and future games.

Ultimately the market will decade, but my hopes are on the latter.

It isn't the industry that is currently pouring out AI slop. It WILL be though. Right now its indie / AI script kid slop. Wait till the Call of Duty made with AI comes out.

There is a place for AI in things - I think it will accelerate the current studio collapse. House after house is getting bought out and stripped. They all need to fall and then we can start getting games created by people who love to play them again.

I can accept vibe coded recomps, decomps and other derivative work. LLMs are pretty good in translating crap from one language to another, updating libraries and preparing the environment. But for creative work? No thank you

I have made a couple of games with AI. My kid was in hospital, I couldn't sleep. I had a couple of massive projects running that I absolutely could not hold focus on, and so I knocked up a reimagining of an old Amiga game called ECO, and a RPG shooter that has a few nods to Dragon Heroes: Shooter RPG. Had a few people play it and they think I should sell it, but I'm very aware it's just two more data points in a sea of "slop". Does it matter they were made with love? They were therapeutic and got me through a rough time? Does it matter that they were both games I missed, not because they were good exactly, but their mechanisms were different and not well covered by modern games, so I tweaked and I poked and I can't draw for shit or compose so I let the AI do that. So, no matter how much I care, they are worthless in the eyes of a lot of folks here - I can code a bit, I absolutely couldn't have done these without AI. I'm not going to sell them - but if you think me resurrecting long dead concepts with the shit bits taken out to bring a smile to me and my kids is some crime against joy, and identical to massive studios that put profits before the enjoyment of the very people they are supposed to serve - you can fuck right off. I will take a shitty, cobbled together indie concept riddled with AI and heart over some of the most (hand made), cynical profiteering shit that the AAAs were pumping out a couple of years ago, and will continue to pump out but with AI added.

The thing that reflects on the gaming industry is the big guys keep forgetting about the game.