AI controversy, trust, and the post‑AI economy for games
AI in games turned into a genuine minefield somewhere around mid-2024. Jobs disappearing. People convinced they're next. Copyright questions that not even the lawyers can untangle. Endless aesthetic debates that loop back on themselves. Steam drowning in stuff nobody asked for. And underneath everything, this nagging worry every creator has now: "am I actually making something here, or just... typing prompts?"
We run a platform. You learn one thing fast doing that.
Nobody likes feeling tricked.
These numbers surprised us
We figured AI adoption would grow. Not like this though. Here's where things landed by late 2025:
| What we tracked | 2024 | 2025 | The shift |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam games disclosing AI | ~1,000 | 7,818 | 7x jump |
| New Steam releases using AI | ~3% | ~20% | One in five |
| Devs who think AI hurts quality | 34% | 47% | Thirteen points higher |
| Devs who think AI helps quality | — | 11% | Not many |
| Revenue from AI-disclosed games | — | $660M | Twelve games broke 8 figures |
Sources: Tom's Hardware / Totally Human Media analysis, GDC 2025 Developer Survey, Unity 2025 Gaming Report
What actually happened to make players this skeptical
This didn't come from nowhere. Real things went wrong. And people remember.
Voice actors found out they'd been cloned — on launch day
Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered shipped with AI-generated versions of the original voice performances. The actors learned about it the same moment everyone else did. Launch day. The publisher eventually patched the voices out after legal pressure built up. That eleven-month SAG-AFTRA strike? This exact scenario was driving it.
"AI slop" became a thing people say now
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 quietly added AI disclosure to its Steam page. After it was already out. Players had noticed the weirdness — visual glitches scattered everywhere. One loading screen character had six fingers. "AI slop" turned into shorthand for anything that looks... off. Hollow. Like nobody cared enough to check.
An award nomination vanished
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 got its Game of the Year nomination pulled at the Indie Game Awards. The shipped game didn't use AI though. The problem was AI placeholders during development — internal stuff that never made it to players. Final assets were entirely human-made. Didn't matter. Weeks of arguing about where exactly the line should be.
Teams that never touched AI had to prove it
Chessplus and Peak both got hit with AI accusations. Neither used any. Both were award nominees. Both development teams ended up digging through old screenshots and layer files just to demonstrate their work was handmade. The Peak team put it best: "We might be slop, but we're human-made, locally-sourced artisanal slop."
Studios went in completely opposite directions
SNK — Discord moderators walked out after AI-looking visuals showed up in a Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer. Games Workshop — banned AI entirely across all Warhammer properties. Larian Studios — said they used AI only for very early concept sketches on Baldur's Gate 3, nothing in the final game. Tim Sweeney — declared Steam's AI labels worthless and said to scrap them. Valve — shot back that devs complaining about AI labels usually worry their work looks "low effort."
Finding games turned into a trust problem
Stuff gets made faster than anyone can properly evaluate it now. The questions changed:
What am I even looking at here? Who made this? Am I going to regret the time I spend on it? Does any of this match what the trailer promised?
There's probably no grand resolution coming. No definitive ruling on AI versus human-made.
What's more likely: filters, real transparency, and incentive structures that push toward honesty.
Small studios stuck in the middle of all this
Indie developers landed in a strange spot.
The upside is genuinely hard to dismiss: You iterate faster. Costs drop when four people are making everything. Solo devs can actually finish things now. Localization stops eating your entire budget.
The downside is just as real: Output that feels generic. Training data and IP concerns that lawyers won't touch yet. Shipping systems you don't fully understand — some people call it comprehension debt. Getting grouped in with the flood of low-effort releases. Nearly half of surveyed developers think AI makes games worse overall.
Unity's 2025 report says 79% of developers feel positive about AI tools. Sounds pretty definitive. The reality is messier. Teams doing this well tend to use AI for the boring parts — grunt work, rough passes, QA tedium. Creative direction? That stays human.
Where Cinevva lands: neutral on AI, strict on honesty
We don't turn games away for using AI. We don't give them special treatment either.
The rule is simple: if AI was involved, say so. Players decide what they care about. Filters actually work then.
Filters work better than arguments
The AI debate in games isn't reaching consensus anytime soon. Probably never will. But individual preferences? Those are clear enough.
Some players specifically want human-directed art. Writing that came from a person. Visible craft.
Others genuinely don't care. Fun is fun.
Filters let both groups find what they're looking for. Nobody has to win.
Payment models matter more than anyone's opinion
When revenue ties to playtime instead of unit sales, you make money by:
Getting players hooked fast. Keeping their attention. Delivering what your marketing said you would.
Quality becomes the obvious path. How you made it matters less.
Overpromise in your trailer? Players leave immediately. Retention tanks. Show them exactly what they're getting? They stick around. Playtime builds. Revenue comes. The economics sort themselves out.
What 2026 probably brings
More rules — EU AI Act keeps expanding. US protections for voice and likeness growing, especially after SAG-AFTRA.
Specialized tools — AI built specifically for small teams. Designed to keep humans steering.
Smarter labels — "Made with AI" is too crude. Expect distinctions between AI-assisted workflows and AI-generated final assets.
Audiences splitting — Some players will deliberately seek out traditionally-made games. Others won't give it a thought. Both groups are large enough to build for.
Platform competition — How storefronts handle transparency and discovery becomes a real differentiator.
What actually moves things forward
Arguing won't settle the AI question. What does:
- Players picking based on what genuinely matters to them
- Creators being honest about how they work
- Platforms building tools that help both groups find each other
That's the post-AI economy. Not warring camps. Trust holding the whole thing together.
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