The feeling that there are too many interesting video games to keep up with has never been stronger. Gamescom 2026\u2019s Opening Night Live showcase has only added to the overload, but generative AI is casting a shadow over some promising games at the same time that it\u2019s fueling a big new tax on gaming. This tension was on full display during Geoff Keighley\u2019s latest event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is no secret that video games and the video game industry is changing and evolving,\u201d the host said on stage this week. \u201cOn one level that\u2019s exciting, but on another it\u2019s kind of scary. It feels like there isn\u2019t a week we don\u2019t see headlines about layoffs and studio closures, and on top of that, the larger electronics storage and memory crisis means that acquiring game hardware is more expensive than it\u2019s ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that increased expense isn\u2019t happening in a vacuum. It\u2019s being perpetuated by some of the very companies Keighley allowed to promote their games on his global stage.<\/p>\n
Some of the games featured during Gamescom ONL were already known to include genAI. The developers of Crimson Desert<\/a> apologized to players for that game\u2019s usage of genAI and promised to remove the offending assets in later updates. After players caught genAI in 1666: Amsterdam,<\/a> its developers also said they would make changes. Sega doesn\u2019t seem to give a shit that the usage of genAI in Crazy Taxi: World Tour<\/a> has muted the return of a well-loved classic, and Zoopunk<\/a>\u2018s genAI usage is for its user generated content tool that\u2019ll let players create in-game assets.<\/p>\n The only reason we know about AI usage in some cases is because of Steam\u2019s disclosure requirement. Project Zeta, Aion 2, Train Sim World 7, Like or Die, and PUBG Ded.Net followed those rules and feature store pages that list varying degrees of genAI usage. One game, Aniimo, doesn\u2019t have a disclosure on its Steam page, but the developers admitted in a post on Discord<\/a> that they are using genAI in some ways during the development of the Pok\u00e9mon-like RPG.<\/p>\n AI will NOT be used to design our Aniimo, nor will any AI prototypes be used in Idyll. AI is now helping us in several ways (e.g. testing) but it\u2019s not imagining the world of Aniimo for us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n PUBG: Ded.Net is one of the games featured at ONL that has disclosed genAI usage.<\/p>\n Gamescom was a two-hour show. What about the rest of the games shown off throughout? Here\u2019s where things get tricky. Some games shown don\u2019t expressly disclose genAI usage and might not feature genAI at all, but because their publishers have full-throatedly endorsed genAI with massive investment in the technology or usage of it in other titles, they end up falling under a similar cloud of suspicion.\u00a0<\/p>\n It sucks that such vigilance is required, and that genAI-free games may get tarred by suspicions or accusations. But we\u2019ve already seen several examples of developers not disclosing genAI usage on Steam until they\u2019ve been caught<\/a>. Road Kings, for example, was developed by Saber Interactive, which just went through a whole dustup over its usage of genAI in another title, usage<\/a> that was not initially disclosed on its Steam page<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the investment side, Hoyoverse, which is developing the ONL-featured Nodus Fall, invested $14 billion in in-house genAI tools<\/a> that will power AI NPCs, among other applications. Krafton, the publisher of Tarae: The Unbound, is making similar moves, announcing that it will be an AI-first company with its own suite of in-house AI tools. And NetEase, which publishes both Ananta and Sea of Remnants, has boasted about its AI usage, saying in an earnings report that the technology<\/a>\u00a0\u201chas become a foundational competency for our development and operations.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point, it feels quaint to call out Keighley for trying to play both sides, calling attention to rising hardware prices and widespread layoffs while showing off games that are embracing a contributing factor to those issues. As long as the checks are good, and we know they are<\/a>, it doesn\u2019t seem like he cares that the events he hosts perpetuate genAI sanewashing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The casual spread of genAI has even seen some developers be perceived as guilty until proven innocent. Strategy game Humankind 2 was revealed during the Gamescom pre-show to viewers who immediately accused its live-action trailer of being AI slop. The developer was promptly forced<\/a> to clarify that it was filmed at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia, and said it would be releasing behind-the-scenes proof soon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think in the current system that we have, it\u2019s just a plagiarism machine that makes people lose their jobs,\u201d Talos Principle 3 narrative designer Jonas Kyratzes said in a recent interview with Game Informer<\/a>. \u201cBut I want to have hope that it\u2019s a good thing. It\u2019s very troublesome to me.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that so many of these games\u2019 genAI disclosures feature some version of the message \u201cwe promise we only used genAI in the ideation process and everything in the final game was created by human hands\u201d means they know that gamers<\/a> (and devs<\/a>) hate this shit, and we know that these mealy-mouthed declarations are attempts to mitigate any reputational damage. So it serves those of us who care about the craft of video games to be loud when the technology quietly pops up after attention has moved elsewhere. Because it feels like the people with the biggest platforms, who have the most power to take a stand and say \u201cno, I won\u2019t be party to this\u201d and have it mean something, won\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The feeling that there are too many interesting video games to keep up with has never been stronger.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1027118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[410771,7684,158,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1027117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gamesccom-2026","tag-genai","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117166741423670377","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n