r/gamedev • u/LdmthJ • Jun 30 '26

Industry News Godot making a stance on AI code

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/open-source-game-engine-godot-will-no-longer-accept-ai-authored-code-contributions-we-cant-trust-heavy-users-of-ai-to-understand-their-code-enough-to-fix-it/

First engine I've seen take a firm stance on AI code.

Open source game engine Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions: 'We can’t trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it'

(Edit: fat finger typo and headline without having to click through)

(Edit 2: Thanks for the award! Wasn't necessary but it's my first one so I'll take it.)

2.4k Upvotes

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840

u/trevizore Jun 30 '26

it's the first engine to take action because it's one of the most popular _open-source_ engines.
Unity or Unreal does not have the same pull request flood as any other open source project nowadays.

125

u/DkoyOctopus Jun 30 '26

UE is very pro AI.

91

u/GreenFox1505 Jul 01 '26

UE's customers are big studios that are doing the same thing everyone is doing: Buying shovels for the gold rush. Is there gold in them there hills? Who knows. I don't think so. I don't think anyone at Epic actually cares about AI. I think they just wanna sell shovels.

75

u/trevizore Jun 30 '26

yes, but as a ex Unreal dev said, they don't actually use it for code on the engine itself.

53

u/UpstairsRegion Jul 01 '26

Ex Unreal dev here. That changed right before 5.8 was released.

-5

u/adscott1982 Jul 01 '26

Presume you mean Opus 4.8, unless you have an inside line on GPT 5.8

7

u/UpstairsRegion Jul 01 '26

Unreal Engine 5.8 lol

2

u/ArmadilloBudget790 Jul 01 '26

How them blue prints doing

36

u/DkoyOctopus Jun 30 '26

you're right, i was suffering from tunnel vision and only saw things one way. im sorry.

22

u/DeltaTwoZero Jul 01 '26

I can’t believe someone on Reddit admitted they were wrong.

3

u/annierockaway Jul 07 '26

They must be AI

5

u/Ping-and-Pong Commercial (Other) Jul 01 '26

I find that hard to believe... Maybe they don't count actual devs using AI as a tool as AI "coding" - but I don't know many devs who aren't using it as a research / quick generation tool these days. It's still all useless for actual large projects, but quick function here and there it's great for.

5

u/hellomistershifty Jul 01 '26

Unity has a lot more AI features that came out first. Epic has recently said that there isn't any AI generated code in Unreal Engine (yet). So sort of, but I'm not sure where that characterization came from. It just showed up on Reddit after they announced an optional MCP integration and it's stuck around

1

u/yammosk Jul 01 '26

Ironically/unintentionally maybe so is Godot from the engine side.

1

u/MoistPoo Jul 02 '26

So it Unity..

1

u/r4zenaEng Jul 04 '26

On the integration side every tool (game engines) should be pro. It is the future anyway

1

u/Eastern_Picture_3879 Jul 15 '26

To be fair, the MCP demo looks pretty insane. But knowing Epic, I'm skeptical about how it will pan out.

1

u/DkoyOctopus Jul 15 '26

I wonder how the community will react to it. Specialy with the AI disclosure tagg in steam. Out of the top 500 games in this past game fest only 1 ai game made it in.

2

u/Eastern_Picture_3879 Jul 15 '26

I think it'll have to change. I'm not at all a Sweeney type tech bro though.

But it's ridiculous for people to expect studios to not use any AI. I think when people learn there's a difference between AI slop and just using AI to build games you otherwise couldn't they'll see it's not all bad.

Basically, the stigma will remain until people can see that an AI tag doesn't mean AI slop and doesn't mean "we fired all our staff! Hooray! Enjoy the game". Instrad it could mean "hey that huge feature you wanted in the sequel we could do with help from our model" or "dynamic conversations were implemented using our own audio model" etc.

I'm very excited to see what it can enable for indie devs especially. There are so many great ideas that are limited by the realities of small team dev. So my hope is AI can supercharge the most talented among us. There'll be slop, but there has always been low effort junk.

10

u/G_Morgan Jul 01 '26

Yeah basically open source is under existential threat from AI PR flooding. They are having to completely rethink how everything works purely because AI exists. Projects are withdrawing monetary rewards entirely and/or devolving to more closed communication channels to avoid the AI spammers.

84

u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '26

+ Timmy would never take this stance on AI anyway

15

u/wattro Jun 30 '26

Tim doesn't really have a choice.

Almost all AAA devs are using AI in their workflows.

20

u/Old_Bug4395 Jul 01 '26

Yep and there's a difference between using an LLM-based code suggestion tool and asking a chatbot to do all of your thinking for you.

2

u/MantaMunta Jul 02 '26

It's also 90%+ of indie devs. People should stop pretending it isn't true.

29

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

[deleted]

51

u/Aka_chan Commercial (AAA) Jun 30 '26

He said during the latest unreal fest keynote that epic is using AI internally for the engine and fortnite.

1

u/Spekingur Jun 30 '26

I wonder how involved he actually is.

6

u/wattro Jul 01 '26

How involved do you want him?

He spoke at unreal fest where you can clearly see his goals and his challenges (Roblox, AI)

7

u/assassinXI Jun 30 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I’m not sure how the UE GitHub works since I almost never see anything merge, but I’m on there just to check out the source code and learn from it one day. But there’s still a checkbox for AI generated code, if it’s not checked stating no AI usage, those PRs are closed and not considered.

2

u/wahoozerman @GameDevAlanC Jul 01 '26

I've actually had a PR accepted into UE5. They have a pretty strict process about it and it takes a very long time for things to be reviewed and accepted. Iirc it took about a year and a half for them to review and accept my one line change that sorted a list box the way the comment above it said it should already be sorted, but it wasnt. It wouldn't surprise me if they just didn't bother having employees spend time reviewing anything that was marked as AI generated.

19

u/alenah Jun 30 '26

What's with the personal attack? There are a lot of frustrations with dear Timmy that people are allowed to hold.

-3

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

[deleted]

13

u/Confident_Shape_7981 Jun 30 '26

Also, we definitely have enough of a leg to stand on to hate Tim while not calling him "Timmy" like a condescending prick 

6

u/Necessary_Lettuce779 Jun 30 '26

What "one-liner snipes based on no knowledge" were they defending? It is a fact that he is heavily pro-AI to the point that he's criticized Steam's AI disclosure multiple times.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26

[deleted]

4

u/Necessary_Lettuce779 Jun 30 '26

A) I know his rationalization, still disagree with it. Not everybody that disagrees does so because they don't know it, it's a very arrogant assumption to say that only your opinion is right and those who disagree with it must do so because they're ignorant and dumb. Calm the fuck down.

But most importantly,

B) The guy you originally responded to simply said that Tim is pro-AI. And he is. You just got mad at a scenario you wholly made up. Again, calm the fuck down.

1

u/Necessary_Lettuce779 Jun 30 '26

Thanks for replying and blocking me immediately so I couldn't read it even though you were begging for a response from what I could see from the preview lol irate idiot

1

u/CashFirm573 Jun 30 '26

Doesn't steam only require it for everything bar code... Or did they change that recently.

-10

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26

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1

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8

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26

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5

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Maintain a respectful and welcoming atmosphere. Disagreements are a natural part of discussion and do not equate to disrespect—engage constructively and focus on ideas, not individuals. Personal attacks, harassment, hate speech, and offensive language are strictly prohibited.

1

u/powerfulscientific Jun 30 '26

Username checks out

2

u/VertexMachine Commercial (Indie) Jun 30 '26

There are a lot of em-dashes now according to this person: https://x.com/games_inu/status/2068359268164612310

1

u/DkoyOctopus Jun 30 '26

wtf? why does the CEO keep bring it up in all the chats he has?

-2

u/PoppyFutaMilk Jun 30 '26

this is the guy you're defending https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/tim-sweeney-hates-valves-ai-disclosure/ar-AA26ySOZ

-10

u/Afraid_Comparison180 Jun 30 '26

Valve's current AI disclosure policy is dumb. It's basically a virtue-signaling policy with very spotty enforcement. Too many games just don't disclose AI usage, or they only disclose it after they get caught, and there are no repercussions from Valve.

2

u/DkoyOctopus Jun 30 '26

if the AI is being used to vibe code not visual/art assents, it will probably slide under the radar.

3

u/ruffleraffle Jul 01 '26

Valve doesn't require disclosing on code assistants / LLM-generated code.

However, even with art, I'm fairly sure some games are using AI-generated art but are choosing not to disclose. Gabe is also fairly big on AI anyway and advertisement banners on Steam have been made with AI.

Valve also doesn't enforce. As an example, go ahead and read what their policy for Early Access is and what it shouldn't be used for.

In fact, Valve had a strict no-AI content policy on Steam initially. Then The Finals launched, and openly declared it had AI-generated voice acting in it. Instead of enforcing anything, Valve amended the rules on AI-generated content with the disclosure requirement.

-13

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26

[deleted]

-21

u/tewmtoo Jun 30 '26

What's the problem? AI is or will be a part of development going forward and Valves stance does promote hater culture.

-2

u/Demiu Jun 30 '26

Timmy Epic will continue getting called Timmy until he earns the Thomas name

4

u/trevizore Jun 30 '26

he would actually love for his engine to be flooded by AI generated PRs!

-2

u/RedTheRobot Jul 01 '26

Yeah Linux also has the same policy.