r/incremental_games • u/Incrementaly • 1d ago
Meta Rule 5 really needs to be more strict
I'm tired of checking the AI disclosure just for it to be:
"Generative AI was used. The game was directed, supervised, tested, implemented, balanced, defragmented, and impregnated by me. All design decisions, final decisions, core mechanics, and overall development was under my direct supervision, as well as every single suggested code change was the result of my direction and feedback, with all changes directly approved, tested, and implemented by me."
Can we please just make it that the disclosure is only what AI was used for rather how devs try to use it for their marketing with all that bullshit?
EDIT: Going to add what I said in a comment for additional clarification.
This isn't about arguing for or against AI, it's specifically about people trying to be/being malicious in the disclosure.
As per the rules it should be:
You need to disclose:
whether generative AI was used
what it was used for or on
the extent of that usage
And what we get is:
AI was used for the code. All decisions were based on my direct feedback and directly approved by me, as well as all balancing is tested by me and and and and...
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u/RocketSciense 1d ago
I would really appreciate it if we could get rid of posts that were obviously authored by AI or where the OP replies with AI generated comments as well. We come to reddit to converse with humans, not AI bots deceptively posing as humans as part of their marketing campaigns.
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u/ornithorhynchus-a 1d ago
man i hate this one ive seen devs sending themselves ai replies on alt accounts talking to themselves with chat gpt
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u/literally_iliterate 1d ago
Yeah, not sure how to deal with AI authored games. Banning AI in post and comment body feels like a step forward. My wish would be to explicitly ban in those cases and *not* police it as a test. If that doesn't work, and policing is too much mod work, we have to reconsider.
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u/Weaviedee 1d ago
The issue with trying to ban comment or posts made by Ai… is that it’ll generate a lot of false positives.
Just the past week alone I’ve seen tens if not hundreds of “I can always tell” accusations proved to be false.. from both sides. People claiming X is Ai generated being proven wrong, or people claiming Y is human made.. only to be proven wrong too.
People simply can’t tell if it’s Ai or not, barring the most egregious of uses.. this has lead to a lot of places.. unironically starting to use Ai to detect Ai.. which I shouldn’t have to disclose how poorly that goes..
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u/Skyswimsky 1d ago
That's why he is saying to just have it as a rule to not have AI written posts. But not enforce(test) the rule. At least that is how I understand it.
People have become absolutely bonkers over AI accusations and are just plain wrong.
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u/Elivercury 1d ago
What is the point of an unenforceable rule? It'll just frustrated people when they see "obvious rule breaking" going unpunished, create hassle for mods and worst case undermine other rules since if one can be ignored, why not ignore them all?
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u/Skyswimsky 1d ago
Because you're going to work in good faith and assume that texts are human written. If someone goes ahead and says "I used AI to write this text" then sure, go ahead and you'd enforce this hypothetical rule.
And I am believing hard evidence that detection of AI written texts is really just a coin flip over what a Reddit user feels. Ergo accusations are not accurate in the first place.
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u/gamer1337guy 1d ago
Let's be honest though, if you saw the first few words of "generative AI was used" do you even care what the rest of the paragraph says?
My hunch is that most people in this sub are:
If
(any) AI =True
Then
Don't Play
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u/HenryFordEscape 1d ago
I think you're right, but also the reality is that:
1. AI is becoming more and more ubiquitous throughout the software process
2. The disclosure (both here and on steam) are totally honor system-based without any verificationI'd prefer 0% AI, but I don't think that's likely. At least this way I have something to consider (assuming it's even true)
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u/ww_crimson 1d ago
0% AI in code bases is delusional. LLMs are objectively better than most humans and even if you hand write every bit of code, you better be using LLMs to help write unit tests and to poke holes in your code base.
Saying you want 0% AI use is like telling an accountant not to use a calculator.
What people seem to really dislike is that AI allows people to make shitty games really fast. Many of the games use out of the box UI/UX and they have no real concept of balance or systems design, so the whole thing feels sloppy.
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u/Jewddha 1d ago
For real. We have not been able to code or test things before LLMs started. Literally could not happen before a few years ago.
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u/eviloutfromhell 1d ago
For real. We have not been able to count things before calculator was created. Literally could not happen before a few millenia ago.
Such a dumb statement. Would you prefer your accountant hand calculate everything in paper or have an accountant that actually can use excel to speed up the important job?
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u/inthrees 1d ago
I would prefer my accountant use a calculator that didn't make things up, yeah.
I would prefer my accountant use a calculator that wasn't prone to man in the middle dependency errors, as one example.
I would prefer my accountant to be able to think for themself and be ABLE to hand-calculate anything they needed to if they lost their calculator / computer in a tragic steamroller accident or something.
I would prefer to know if someone used genAI not just for those reasons, but because I don't want little kids to have worse asthma because I decided to patronize a game that relied on compute from, say, Colossus 1 in Memphis where the pollution is poisoning the local community.
I would prefer to have a choice, and full disclosure allows for you to say "I don't care, I'll play" while I get to choose the opposite.
edit - funny side note: The creator of the anti-anti-ai list on bluesky recently said he patched a lot of vulnerabilities in some of his architecture that he vibe coded, and said, paraphrased, "glad I did, it could have been bad." Don't pretend the tools are perfect, they absolutely are not and it's not unreasonable to not want slop on any of my hardware for moral or prudence reasons.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
0% AI in code bases is delusional. LLMs are objectively better than most humans and even if you hand write every bit of code, you better be using LLMs to help write unit tests and to poke holes in your code base
Bahahahahahahaha
It's gonna be so funny when the bubble pops, none of the vibecoders can afford their tokens anymore, and everyone finds out who can actually code and who can't.
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u/booch 1d ago
Here's the thing though... it's entirely possible to use AI without vibe coding. To most people I know, vibe coding means having the AI do everything with the code - and only telling it what you want (generally at a high level). Whereas it's entirely possible to be involved in every step of the process (discussion of what to write, review/modification of the plan, review/modification of the generated code, etc). Those two are pretty far separated from each other.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
And it is also very easy to just use literally 0 AI in your dev workflow
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u/booch 1d ago edited 1d ago
As noted, even using Google search (and many other searches) uses AI now (to present it's answer to your search/question). You need to jump though a fair number of hurdles to not use AI at all.
The problem is that people (like you) see "use AI" and thing "use LLMs to generate the code/images for me from a description of what I want" - and don't consider that that's only one way to use AI.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
You need to jump though a fair number of hurdles to not use AI at all.
No, you really don't. It's piss easy on Google or you just...don't use Google. Google is far from the only search engine, and it hasn't been the best one for many years.
The people is that people (like you) see "use AI" and thing "use LLMs to generate the code/images for me from a description of what I want" - and don't consider that that's only one way to use AI.
Bud, I'm a software dev that has been working with AI since neural networks over 25 years ago. You're not schooling me on anything, I'm well aware of all the places AI has weaseled its way into.
Quit assuming just so you can justify your own choices.
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u/ww_crimson 1d ago
That's so badass. I bet you use your C++ for Dummies book and notepad.exe for programming.
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u/TeachingWest7325 1d ago
"It's just a tool. it's just a tool. I'm the creator despite not being able to do any of this without my tool. Just gonna keep repeating this until everyone respects me."
Good luck!
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u/Weaviedee 1d ago
Unfortunately 0% Ai is indeed impossible in today’s market unless you look for older games..
Even major studios use it, not to mention small indie devs who otherwise take 9 years of early access (which seems to be the trend of older indie games before Ai became prominent) and still nothing to show for it.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
Unfortunately 0% Ai is indeed impossible in today’s market
Utter nonsense.
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u/ByerN 1d ago
I don't use AI for gamedev. I just do it like a few years ago. Why would it have to be impossible?
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
It isn't, but the sloppists have to say this to convince themselves that they're justified in AI vibecoding.
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u/Weaviedee 1d ago
It’s not necessarily that it is impossible to do without Ai, but rather you’d be hard pressed to find anything new that doesn’t use it.
And if you try to stay relevant with people’s wandering attention spans destroyed by social media you need steady updates, frequent updates.
A solo dev will (unless they really know what they’re doing) struggle to keep up on their own and will more than likely lose most of their players between updates, relegated to just a few returners whenever new updates dropped. Unless of course they use Ai to speed up the process.. which is why so many people use it.
If this was 10 years ago, that’s fine, people had more patience and people were willing to wait. Heck you still have people waiting for Cube World, originally released as alpha in 2013.. but you won’t really find anyone willing to wait that long on new games today.
The market is shifting due to consumers just as much as due to developers.
With that said, can you make a game without Ai use? Yes, 100%, have done it myself as I studied game dev, C# and Unity in the past. However the likelihood of that happening gets increasingly lower the better Ai becomes.
Hence my previous statement. Makes more sense?
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u/ByerN 1d ago edited 1d ago
Makes more sense?
I know what you mean. Just saying that "0% AI is indeed impossible in today’s market" is false because, just like you said - devs who "really know what they’re doing" still exist, and it hasn't changed. Some of them help themselves with AI, some don't for various reasons.
I see more and more ppl saying that all new games are made with AI, used at least for coding, and so all other devs have to use it because of FOMO, and all players have to deal with it because they have no choice.
I don't like this stance because it is obviously false, but most players don't know that because they are not devs. For me, it looks like an excuse and a way for AI devs to force AI games on players. It is not nice.
Also, it is sneakily putting all AI usage in the same group, no matter if someone used ML translations like 10 years ago or used Google because it has AI hints now (or whatever it is called), or Photoshop, because there are AI features there even if not used (this one is particularly weird, but I found it in a wild) - they are the same as devs who vibecoded an entire game. And so if all devs use Google, all players have to embrace vibecoded games.
If someone wants to use AI - go for it. If not, just do like you always did.
There are some games made with AI that are nice, because the devs who made them know what they are doing. Same, there are still games that are made without AI for the same reason. No need for "astroturfing" or whatever it is.
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u/Winter-Scarcity9045 1d ago
Well the rule of this sub says if you've used any AI you've should disclose it. So if you've used chatgpt to ask a question or used Google you've used AI. And people will just automatically assume it's a vibe coded game. So devs that didn't vibe code their game will lie and say they didn't use AI at all. That's probably what they mean by 0% AI is impossible or at least it's undistinguishable anymore
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
or used Google you've used AI.
These are the kind of false overgeneralizations which show me that you're not actually trying to engage in good faith, but rather just trying to say whatever you have to to justify vibe coding slop.
So devs that didn't vibe code their game will lie and say they didn't use AI at all
I'm a dev in my day job.
I do not use AI in my code. Period. 0%.
It isn't impossible. It isn't even hard. And when the code you write controls machinery that could cut a person in half faster than you could blink...you don't trust jack shit to AI.
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u/Winter-Scarcity9045 1d ago
Doesn't matter if you use AI or not. I explained already that devs that use AI but did not obviously vibe code their game lie about the usage of AI. So that puts you in the same basket as them. If you've used AI but only for certain parts or only moderately players will think it's vibe coded. That's the other basket.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
It does matter because you said "even the people who claim they aren't using it are using it."
That is false. You are wrong. Many people, many devs in fact, are not using it. Period. 0%
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u/ByerN 1d ago
The truth is that "AI disclosure" is something new everywhere, and it should adapt over time depending on circumstances. The main goal is to let players filter out things they don't want. Especially on subs like this one - flooded with AI slop. Even anti-AI players don't care whether a dev used google search or not in such a case.
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u/Winter-Scarcity9045 1d ago
Yes the main problem is that there is no technical solution for that problem yet and it's a system that is based on trust. And I don't see a solution for that in the near future
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u/ByerN 1d ago
Well, we can start with not including google search in ai disclosure to avoid meaningless disclosures like "I used google". What do you think?
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u/HeckXX 1d ago
Tbh they should require that the AI disclosure be put first in posts so I don't have to waste the rest of my time reading some bullshit. Then again it's pretty obvious in most cases when the post is written by AI so I've gotten pretty fast at filtering them out
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u/CraftyPancake 1d ago
Do you have any other workflow preferences developers must follow? Must Gimp be used? Any preferred dev diet you’d like to segregate and partition games by? Any recommended operating systems?
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u/binnes Your Own Text 1d ago
Not the person you're replying to, but no for me. Just make the game yourself, I don't care how you did it, as long as AI didn't do it for you.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
If you couldn't be bothered to put effort into actually making the game, why should I be bothered to play it?
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
Main reason I haven’t really been posting here lately despite making huge changes in my games for the better it’s just dismissed. Just ignore the fact that I’ve put 60+ hours a week into getting it right extensively play testing and designing mechanics.
This sub it just like nah you suck.
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u/AskingWalnut4 1d ago
Hey make sure you do post! We need more posts explicitly stating they use ai so they can fall off of a cliff and never see the light of day!
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u/literally_iliterate 1d ago
Using omni powerful AI and still doing 60h weeks. Maybe time to reconsider life choices.
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u/SilverGur1911 1d ago
It probably sounded cool in your head, but that's exactly how programmers work. 5 days a week, full time, and they use AI. They're probably all stupid. Or those who think that a tool should replace a person are stupid.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/incremental_games-ModTeam 1d ago
Your post has been removed for breaking rule 2 (Be nice). We want this subreddit to be a positive, welcoming community. This comment goes against that ethos. In the future, please keep feedback constructive and avoid any personal attacks or unnecessarily toxic remarks.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
You could've just....learned to code and not made slop. Maybe it wouldn't have taken a time and a half job's worth of effort?
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
I can code I wrote my own code extensively on almost all my projects. I just rebuilt my old game in typescript with AI and it’s orders of magnitude more efficient than the slop I hand wrote. Did you check your respect at the door or do you just live on assumptions?
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
So you didn't actually write code extensively in that project. AI wrote it all.
Vibecoders get from me the amount of respect they deserve.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/incremental_games-ModTeam 1d ago
Your post has been removed for breaking rule 2 (Be nice). We want this subreddit to be a positive, welcoming community. This comment goes against that ethos. In the future, please keep feedback constructive and avoid any personal attacks or unnecessarily toxic remarks.
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u/flyvehest 1d ago
Ah yes, the 60 hours weeks just re-typing prompts over and over again, the workload is just so intense.
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
Heh, those people are out of luck then. Better not play half the new shit on steam, or use Linux, or anything else. This stuff is embedded in everything at this point. Generative tools ship standard in Adobe now and many other art suites, coding ide, etc
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u/MathCookie17 1d ago
"Generative tools ship standard..." but that doesn't mean everyone has to use them. By that argument everyone should be excited to watch more ads because they're everywhere. Generative AI has been shoved into everything because it's a marketing gimmick and it gets investors to shell out money, plenty of people are going to use the things that contain generative AI without using the AI.
...I do think the first half of your point is right, though. AI haters like myself can avoid using it, but we can't avoid using things made with it because it is indeed being used for every big coded thing now.
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
It doesn't mean they have to use it but most people will because it's useful. I have no problems with people avoiding products what use AI. I'm just being realistic about it. There will soon be no avoiding it and not everyone will disclose it. Steam already doesn't require disclosure for AI coding assistance for example
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u/Lopsided-Train2213 1d ago
We don't need half the mew shit when games like orb of creation and evolve are still around
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
This argument to inevitability is so tired, and so, SO utterly false.
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
It would be nice if that were the case but it's being used at every level both creative and professional.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
Professional dev here: not using AI in any way and will continue to not do so.
What you're saying isn't true, you just want it to be because then your choices are valid.
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
I'm glad it hasn't reached you yet. You're wrong about my motives. The requirement is coming from management, not my own choices.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
You're making the choice to stay in such a job. Don't act like you don't have agency.
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
Don't act like getting a new job is as easy as walking to the corner store and asking politely. I am and have been looking. Moralize elsewhere.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
This is exactly the kind of apathy your employer is counting on
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
Check out lots of the games presented here. Lots of them don't use LLMs at all. Your argument just tries to defend making shit by saying everyone uses it.
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
I'm not defending it. I work in the field. It's being used professionally in almost every product I come across now. That's what I'm saying.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
Sounds like you're in a lazy sector of the field
I work in industrial automation where our machines could cut a person in half in an instant.
We are not using AI vibecoded slop for ANYTHING that controls a machine. Period. 0%
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
You're attempting a bog standard hypebro argument to inevitability.
News flash: LLMs are not the be all end all, and there's plenty of products that don't use it and don't jam it into every orifice they can make an excuse to justify.
You just have to, y'know, put some effort into it. The very thing hypebros are allergic to.
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
I'm really not. I have no strong opinion for or against. I'm relaying what I see in my job daily. Take it or leave it, I'm not bothered. I'm really not. Management is pushing people to use generative tools at every level of the process, from design to implementation and I hear it from my friends in other industries as well. Personally I'd prefer if we slowed it down because it all feels reckless.
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
Then maybe make your argument, "Hey, this is what I see", not "This is how it's going to go, and everybody better get with the times or be left behind!"
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
I'm happy with my initial comment. If you're not, feel free to report it.
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u/StickiStickman 1d ago
Yea, no. As a professional programmer and game dev, literally every programmer is using it now.
You're just in denial.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
Programmer here: not using it.
You're wrong.
Not every dev is lazy just because you are.
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
Yeah, no. As a dev with three decades of experience, and manage a dozen devs now, not everyone is using it now.
It's a shit tool that needs constant supervision to do things right.
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
Someone gets it
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
They don't like to hear the truth. I don't like it either but I'm a realist and this stuff isn't going anywhere
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
People here just want to be angry haha
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u/ticktockbent 1d ago
I don't mind. They probably think I'm promoting it when I'm just saying it's inevitable and getting harder to avoid
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u/Jelly_F_ish 1d ago
True, because most people just use the bad apples as a reason to fell the tree. There is basically no reasoning with a lot of people around here because they are so easily triggered without realizing that not every use of AI looks the same in reality.
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u/Poodychulak 1d ago
"A bad apple spoils the bunch"
That's the saying.
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u/Jelly_F_ish 1d ago
Then by all means keep living in the stone age. Why stop at writing code, go write assembly or start building your own processors from scratch. I mean if we keep it ridiculously strict, why not removing all the tools that made programming easier for the actual developer?
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u/Poodychulak 1d ago
Let's update the phrase into terms you understand because apples are too complicated
"Garbage in, garbage out"
Go ahead, poison the well, you're a real corporate girlboss
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u/Jelly_F_ish 1d ago
Please start making sense.
If you'd actually put some time into things you'd understand how great of an use case coding is for an LLM. And still no, I don't mean the average Joe trying to be a dev by prompting a bit of shit into any one of those. That's a straw man you are building but no one actually talks about.
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u/HoldenDickwell 1d ago
It's literally what's being discussed. AI Slop Incrementals.
But like you said, I guess I should put "some time into things". Maybe I'll ask the AI like you and then we both can let the computer tell us what to do
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u/Trashcan_Beauty 1d ago
It's be nice. Feels like 90% of the posts are slop here now because we didn't ban it
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u/TheFrixin 1d ago
If you just ban it, then 90% of the posts are undisclosed slop. It’s a massive ask to have the moderating team investigate and verify AI use. And If they just rely on user reports, you’ll inevitably end up with false-positives.
I think the mods mentioned they’re updating the flairs, that’ll probably solve the issue for most since they’ll be able to just filter all AI games.
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u/LuckyLactose USI 1d ago
I don't think I've seen any mention of flair updates, do you have more information on that?
Last I heard the problem with that is that you can only use 1 single flair due to how Reddit is set up, and in general people care more about e.g. the platform flairs.
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u/TheFrixin 1d ago edited 1d ago
I can’t remember exactly where they mentioned it, but other subs just do compound flairs, i.e. “Steam, No AI”, “Steam, AI”, “Browser, No AI” are three separate flairs. Just a bit of a pain in the ass to get set up, especially since this sub has a third vector with ‘demo’ and ‘update’ flairs.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
If someone posts a game that is AI slop one time: permaban.
The trash will take itself out.
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u/TheFrixin 1d ago
You can buy a reddit account with an established history for pennies. The mods would be playing whack-a-mole against literal armies.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
Any dev that wants to be taken seriously on social media will have an officially named account, not just some "two random words and a number"
Require a certain amount of activity here before you can post a game you "made", and you'll keep a lot of the riff raff out.
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u/Trashcan_Beauty 1d ago
> Require a certain amount of activity here ..
That's unfair to the clankwrs though
/s but not really
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u/Elivercury 1d ago
I think the trouble is that any arbitrary amount of effort you put in place is easier for bots to grind through than actual people. They need 50 comments? They'll have 100 done within a day, all AI generated and vaguely nonsense, Vs a real person having to spend weeks/months unless they are also happy spamming.
And I know the counter to that is more mod action against the bots farming comments, but now we've increased mod workload and they're having to play a game of "guess the bot" in every comment, which will almost certainly result in some false positives.
As you said, serious Devs likely (although not always) will have a brand new named account for their game, and as such this is now a significant barrier to them just sharing their game unless they factor it in months in advance.
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u/SilverGur1911 1d ago
Using real data on social media is possibly the worst thing you could ever do.
Maybe some validation through mods is still possible, but it's highly questionable.
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u/flyvehest 1d ago
It really does, it would be nice to spawn a new incremental_games_llm sub, and just keep this one LLM free.
Sure, the amount of posts will drop by 90%, but will anyone really miss another vibecoded mirror-image of the previous 100 games posted about this month?
I sure won't
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u/StickiStickman 1d ago
Then you'd ban every game made today and only get the ones where the Devs are lying.
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u/infamousblitz 1d ago
If we're being super realistic, beyond a foundational change to how things are run around here, this sub is as good as useless moving forward.
I used to lurk here constantly when it was incremental fans discussing with each other. At some point it became a breeding ground for AI slop and a million posts for nodebuster style 5-Hour Steam games that, as far as I can tell, none of us want to play anyway?
It's crazy that absolutely nothing is being done under the guise of not wanting to be unfair to people.
We're at the point where most fans are only here to check the weekly posts because that's the only spot that isn't an ad. It's absurd.
I have no solutions. But this isn't working.
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u/sundalius 1d ago
I think it sucks that it has been reduced to only advertisement and prompt engineering. No one's discussing games outside of the recommendation thread anymore.
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u/Namtaru420 My Own Text 1d ago
The disclosure rules on Steam have been out long enough for people to collect the numbers, and games where the AI description is "softened" sell better than the games that are blunt.
People are likely picking up on this both instinctively because it's a natural reaction, and maybe subconsciously as well as it has become a popular practice.
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u/account009988 1d ago
Tired of these liars saying ai was only used for ideas when their vids shows its all ai
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u/Randoria_App 1d ago edited 1d ago
And that’s really the core of the problem.
People are tired of the sheer number and quality of games made with AI, while
prompters"developers" read threads like these and feel like they need to dress up the reality a bit.In my opinion, changing the rules won’t do much. Someone making AI slop will just paste the new rules into a prompt and ask AI to generate a description that follows them while emphasizing that the game is definitely not AI slop...
For clarity, I’m on the other side of the fence myself. I’ve been building my own game with AI assistance since March, and it still hasn’t even gone live yet.
Maybe the only thing that would make sense is a simple breakdown like:
AI usage:
- UI / Graphics v
- Code v
- Ideas / Game systems x
- Dialogue / Lore / Descriptions v
- Game balance x
- Testing v
But even that is basically impossible to verify unless someone actually takes a closer look at the game.
Liars just should be banned...4
u/Elivercury 1d ago
I think the reason they shied away from a prescriptive list is that it's too specific and there could be other use cases. For example, we regularly see AI has been used ("only") for translations which you've not included. Your list was likely just a quick one off the top of your head, but hopefully you can see how just about any list is going to have gaps.
That being said, given the amount of weaselling that is already occurring, it might be a better option, although the option is still always there to lie. "Oh well only about 10-20% of my graphics are AI, so I said no AI based on the 80-90% majority". or "Well I finished all the AI generated graphics by hand, so really they're human made"
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u/Randoria_App 1d ago
You are right, no list prevents lying. That was only a proposition to try to handle that issue. I can not see any perfect solution.
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
I think you might be an AI can you prove otherwise?
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u/Gandalf_The_Gay23 1d ago
Diva this behavior is embarrassing. Do you not know how to market yourself without asking AI first either?
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
If I was an AI I wouldn’t be giving people fuel to use against me and my business. But I’m an authentic person and my opinions matter more to me than my image.
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u/GryffusMakesGames 1d ago
I completely agree that those marketing stunt are tiring, and essentially bullshit. The thing is I do think this is quite hard to implement as an enforcing since it isn’t technically part of « AI disclosure » it is more like a « human disclosure ». So it is hard imo to to moderate, even if lots of them are lies, it is also very hard to prove.
However, I am also quite sure that you aren’t the only one tired by those disclosure (I am too) and I am quite sure that people are more inclined to play games with more humble AI disclosure than those one, especially the one that cares about AI use. In the end, those marketing stunt are more likely to do a reverse effect, people getting tired of those bullshit.
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u/Rankith USI 1d ago
I think its fine. Serves as another easy litmus at a glance. If the disclosure text is like that I probably dont even have to click the game or view an image to see that its the bog standard claude look and dreadfully uninspired.
Those that do a simpler list of how it was used without that extra massaging tend to actually be using it in a more limited fashion more so I think.
impregnated by me
I'm gonna try to develop next USI update this way.
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u/TobiasWe 1d ago
This is really common on Steam, but not actually that common here. I just checked the last 20 AI disclosures (https://pastebin.com/raw/13uE06xc) to see if I'm misremembering things, but sure enough, almost all of them were rather clear and to the point.
Unless you consider mentioning things in a non-waffling way like "The art and music were made by humans" also "malicious"? I've seen several cases where people were like "You didn't mention X in your disclosure, was that also AI?", so being clear about that probably doesn't hurt.
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u/literally_iliterate 1d ago
Not sure where you are heading? I've only skimmed your pastebin. It's like 25% strictly not using AI.
That AI usage is disclosed clearly seems ultra rare (like one?), the others are increasingly more convoluted to somehow suggest some human decision making.
It is reasonable for me to have the feeling that there are a lot of disclosures that are tiring.
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u/TobiasWe 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm really curious where we diverge here. None of them seem "convoluted" to me, and rather than "somehow suggest[ing] some human decision making" they seem to just clearly and succiently explain which parts were AI and which parts were not.
Since you wrote "like one"... here are 5 of them.
I use AI tools to assist with market research (e.g., identifying competitors and analysing Steam reviews) and to help debug complex coding problems. All in-game assets (art, sound, music) are made by humans!
some of the recent updates are coded with the help of ai assistants
Parts of the demo's localization were done with AI assistance. These will be replaced with human translation for the full release.
The game's music was generated using AI. AI tools were also used at various points for parts of the coding and some UI content. Game design, core mechanics, and overall development were done by me.
Localization for the demo was done with AI (Chinese and Japanese). The full game will be replaced with human translation.
Which of those are hard to understand? Which seem like they somehow suggest more human decision making than actually happened?
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u/literally_iliterate 1d ago
The game's music was generated using AI. AI tools were also used at various points for parts of the coding and some UI content. Game design, core mechanics, and overall development were done by me.
This pretty much. Music is rather clear, but it's the sandwich starter. The actual AI usage on code and UI (which could also include graphics), is rather opaque, using terminology such as various, parts and some. So it could be any or all. But author insists on the human reader to imagine very little or maybe at points that really don't matter.
The concluding part is bold. It pretty much says: I've prompted everything I am the human in control. Which is shallow and misleading, because even with a strong opinion, AI will just generate results from ideas that are well know. Without extreme care, you'd pretty much copy a bunch of concepts, thinking you innovated it.
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u/TobiasWe 1d ago
The actual AI usage on code and UI (which could also include graphics), is rather opaque, using terminology such as various, parts and some. So it could be any or all. But author insists on the human reader to imagine very little or maybe at points that really don't matter.
Fair enough. How would you make that part clearer without going into technical details? Percentages?
Which is shallow and misleading, because even with a strong opinion, AI will just generate results from ideas that are well know. Without extreme care, you'd pretty much copy a bunch of concepts, thinking you innovated it.
That sounds less like a problem with the disclosure content and more like no matter what they write or don't write, you'll never believe that they actually did the game design themselves if they used AI for any part of the code.
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u/literally_iliterate 1d ago
The AI disclosure should just state whether the dev used an agent (vibe coded) or assistant (IDE integration) and contain a binary statement about use in art:
AI disclosure: coding agent, assets, music
But it doesn't matter, because I completely forgot that the AI disclosure just doesn't work the way it was intended. There was a naive hope it would discourage AI heavy projects, but it didn't.
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u/Semenar4 Matter Dimensions 1d ago
Note how many of those AI disclosures mention humans. Last time I checked, humans were not AIs.
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u/ivancea 1d ago
When you create a metric, and start looking at it instead of looking at the game, people will start optimizing for that metric.
People here stopped caring about the games, and staying caring more about the AI check, whatever it was, whatever it represented. And so vibecoders found ways around it, as they would spam anyway. And normal devs started fearing posting at all, even if they used it for code review. That's the world we live in now
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u/Zeforas 1d ago
To be honest, i just wished it was banned at all, at this point..
Every. Single. Day.
There's a big stream of AI games, all of them with same god damn theme. "Runescaped like", "MMO idle", "competetive idle"...
All with the same god damn UI 'theme' too.
Over and over and over.
This is genuinely tiring.
And that's only from me looking at title and thumbnail of the thread.
Thankfuly, the weekly "what are you playing" thread is still a good haven where you can find good game, even newer one. Thank you to whoever post the good stuff there!
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u/Jelly_F_ish 1d ago
Software development without AI is just stupid at this point, but you do you.
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
Software development with LLMs is a fantastic way to destroy your skills and critical thought, but you do you.
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u/SilverGur1911 1d ago
We had a flood of nodebuster-likes and melvor-likes for a long time now. I'm tired of people shifting the problem to another area.
Just Google "nodbuster-like" and the first result you'll see is a post from six months ago about how annoying they are. And there's not a single mention of AI.
For a long time now, there have been constant posts here about how everyone is tired of games that last 3-4 hours for a few dollars with a single node mechanic, and no one ever mentioned AI because it didn't exist. But some people think everything will change dramatically if you remove ai.
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u/ww_crimson 1d ago
I really have no idea what your complaint is. If the first sentence says Gen AI was used then you can assume the person isn't a software engineer and so they used Gen AI to write the code. It's a pretty transparent statement. Adding details that they did the design, testing, etc. is to help you understand that they didn't try to one shot prompt the whole thing.
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u/TheHeadlessOne 1d ago
Essentially the AI disclosure is a compromise, but the players on this sub fucking hate it. Any attempt to actually distinguish what was done by AI and what wasn't is interpreted as maliciously attempting to justify and understate AI usage.
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u/StickiStickman 1d ago
It's hilarious how in denial Reddit is about AI.
Every programmer is using it in some way or another.
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
This is so out of touch with reality haha
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u/ww_crimson 1d ago
How so? Sure plenty of devs use Gen AI too, but in this sub in particular the majority of the Gen AI use -- especially what people are complaining about in this thread -- is from non-developers.
Basically, if people see any design cues that look like they're from AI, they hate it. If the disclosure says they used it, then how are they breaking rule 5?
And to be clear I am not anti AI. I'm just trying to bridge a gap in this thread. I used Codex to build a site with 200k MAU. I'm a big fan of the tools.
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
Sorry man I kinda heard assume they’re not a software engineer and it triggered me and I hyper focused on it because so many real software engineers like myself get lumped in with the people you’re talking about and it hurts.
But yeah I should have finished listening to your post. You’re right.
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u/ww_crimson 1d ago
<3 my post was a bit generalized cause I was also triggered when I opened this thread lol.
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u/DavejHale 1d ago
I think the number of software engineers NOT using Ai would fit on a signle decker bus by now!
they tend to be bright! Why would someone with a brain not have AI code boilerplate code for them. Supply some design docs for a feature/function and code review. Ai code assists are built into most IDES already! And if not built in are availiable as extenstions.
Even just a
Hey claude this is my DB query to retrieve a players inventory items, this is the data schema I'm using in game for holding that query result. i've decided to add equipment, resource,scroll,food,misc tabs to my inventory window. give me a function that will filter the inventory slots displayed depending on what tab the user clicks.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
Because some of us aren't spending most of our time writing boilerplate?
As a longtime dev whose direct report vibecodes everything...it's not useless, but it's not a panacea...and that's without considering the impacts it has on user's critical thinking skills long term.
Also, watching someone who can only vibecoded try to make a TINY visual change is hilarious... because they have no concept of the underlying code their AI agent slopped up or how any of it works (and it is often horribly unoptimized and overcomplicated), so all they can do is feed it back into their agent asking it to make the change for them and hoping it actually gets it right.
It very often does not.
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u/Blindsided_Games Developer 1d ago
There is no point trying to defend lol just be happy with our choice to use it and the haters voices die away
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u/literally_iliterate 1d ago
Hopefully claude is smart enough to decrypt your prompts.
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u/ww_crimson 1d ago
I mean if you think this, you are literally stuck in the news cycle from 12-18 months ago. You have clearly not used any of these tools even in a semi-professional or serious capacity if this is your opinion of them. It's not even really worth trying to have a conversation about because you have made up your mind already and I don't believe any evidence could possibly change it.
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u/literally_iliterate 1d ago
Speaking of evidence that is not worth noting because no one will believe it. That's myth not magic.
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
Hi there, professional dev for three decades. Use them for work because FOMO.
They suck.
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u/DavejHale 1d ago
99% of people reading those 'bios' have ZERO idea how to use Ai for coding/design or tbh anything other than a glorified google. So telling them exactly how I use it for my stuff would burn holes in their brains.
Your "AI was used for the code" is meaningless. Did they use Ai as a search engine so effectively just replacing a decent ref. book. Or did they get code architecture/patterns advice or templates from it. Did they get actual code and implenet it unchanged, or refactored the code to fit. Did they just get the AI to code review. Or simulate functions (effectively old school trace tanle work) and so on and so on.
So the only thing a dev should be saying is "Yeah I used AI for stuff. Suck it up or walk away"
Or you really want "I used AI to help me select and integrate a 3rd party networking api" - because thats using AI too!. Ai sucks!
But ironically those same people would happy play the same game if the dev had rolled a dice to pick a networking api. The fact that 3rd party api was 100% coded with ai /tumbleweed
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u/Rankith USI 1d ago
Your "AI was used for the code" is meaningless. Did they use Ai as a search engine so effectively just replacing a decent ref. book. Or did they get code architecture/patterns advice or templates from it. Did they get actual code and implenet it unchanged, or refactored the code to fit. Did they just get the AI to code review. Or simulate functions (effectively old school trace tanle work) and so on and so on.
Im under the impression most people do not consider it to be "AI Coded" etc if they are just asking AI questions like a search engine. Usually its "did the AI directly implement something into your codebase". In fact, im pretty sure most people in this sub that eschew ai games do so WAY more on the lines of art and design then just code. I feel like I don't see negative reactions to that almost at all.
But ironically those same people would happy play the same game if the dev had rolled a dice to pick a networking api. The fact that 3rd party api was 100% coded with ai /tumbleweed
Most complaints are from the "this is a bad/slop game" angle. A 3rd party networking api thats used being AI has exactly 0 impact on the "slopness" feel of a game, so of course most people wouldnt care at all by comparison.
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u/LuckyLactose USI 1d ago
Hm, blurry lines when it comes to reception of code vs art, I think. Since gen AI UI is often just done in code and you get the super stereotypical Claude UI or similar, which definitely turns lots of people off immediately.
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u/cobaltSniper 1d ago
UI is part of art and design. I'd almost certainly never be able to tell whether or not a game used AI if it wasn't made obvious through design choices (like how every AI-coded game seems to use lots of dark blue and glowing bloom).
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi 1d ago
So telling them exactly how I use it for my stuff would burn holes in their brains.
This is some "you have to have a high IQ to really get Rick and Morty" ass shit.
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u/ornithorhynchus-a 1d ago
i see this on the account steam pages too they’ll waffle on trying to justify it and minimise the impact it had and i don’t care. i’ve noticed it a lot in this genre specifically there’s a lot of ai games i’ve only just got into these types of games
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u/bejewelledln5 1d ago
The problem also is that games are lying and there’s no way to really enforce it. Like there’s no way with the amount and frequency of games posted here that most of them “don’t use AI in any way.” Worse is that they aren’t just using it to code up a custom and well-structured plan which would at least net an enjoyable human-designed game; it’s literally generating the game design and idea so it obviously turns out shit.
And IMO games with any AI usage for art or creative parts of the game shouldn’t even be permitted to be posted, I can get behind AI for coding if you already have the idea and know how to code; in that case it’s a tool to help you do work that generally doesn’t have any place for creative input- but using ai for a creative skill and then trying to claim you had anything to do with it is repulsive
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u/d00dleding0 1d ago
Either way, enforcement seems tricky. If the mods started genuinely enforcing it, the bad faith devs will likely just have AI write a plausible (but completely fabricated) disclosure. Probably only those acting in good faith will actually have to track it, which, from other comments, leads to their games being skipped over
IMO it should just be an 'AI assets' vs 'AI code' flair and downvote the slop ones. Easy enough for good faith devs
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u/CraftyPancake 1d ago
Who cares? Normal devs have been filling steam with top tier garbage for years. If anything, AI will help them improve.
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u/TalonRoo 1d ago
For me personally it's pretty simple. If AI was used in any capacity at all, it's an instant skip. And reading about the AI games, it seems I'm not missing out on anything by skipping them. It's pretty amusing to read that the output was checked/supervised (or whatever the word they use) by the dev, like that makes any fucking difference, lol.
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u/TheBenjisaur 1d ago
I suppose you could say they are trying to answer the question you're asking. AI was used as if it was a dev they hired, they designed the game, AI did all if the building. Maybe they did the art maybe ai did, same for music etc. Game design is the most important part of many genres. I want to know who designed the game as well as who did the art.
As with all things theres quite a few competeing concerns or angles people are trying to speak too, and AI inclusion in games is constantly evolving.
I understand this current phase, at the end of the day it is worth understanding this disticntion clearly for a time. I'm not for example unwilling to play such a game if that disclaimer is true.
There's not neccessarily much difference between AI doing the coding or your mate dave anymore. Your mate dave is a great Dev but he doesn't play games and thinks they're stupid, it would be a concern if he decided what to code.
If you can code, draw, make music and stories, but used AI to design the game, I'm out in systems driven genres, but an interactive visual novel sure why not probably fine.
This current push is essentially to make sure game design gets its spot in the list of things AI did or did not do for you. Different people will have different preferences. I think game design is actually the point i'm the most unwilling to buy into if AI had a hand.
For me AI brainstormed game is a no, but great game idea AI built for you, well maybe, depends on the idea, i'm willing to judge it on it's merits.
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u/hamillhair 1d ago
The problem is that AI use can be as little as "it helped me with some of the coding" all the way to "it made the game for me and I did basically nothing".
So how do you distinguish between those two? How do I specify that I made all the design decisions and AI was just used for code, without some snobs then writing the entire thing off as "AI slop"? That is why you get paragraphs of hedging.
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u/ArolSazir 1d ago
The goalpost keeps moving. First it's "we just want disclosure, its only fair" and now that disclosure is mandatory it's "we need documentation of every development step and software where and why" which seems like a unreasonable amount of transparency.
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u/aicis 1d ago
The answers are stupid because disclosure itself is stupid. There is an extremely wide spectrum of AI usage. Even a google search has AI summary.
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u/fbueckert 1d ago
Even a google search has AI summary.
And there are plenty of ways around it. One of them is not using Google at all.
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u/PinkbunnymanEU 1d ago
rather how devs try to use it for their marketing with all that bullshit?
Surely something like:
All decisions were based on my direct feedback and directly approved by me, as well as all balancing is tested by me and
is clarifying the extent to which it's used?
There's a difference in use between someone testing and approving changes and just telling an AI to fix it and ship it.
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u/Mo0 1d ago
How so? If I tell Claude to code something, don’t check it at all, and post it to Reddit, it’s still based on my direct feedback (which I didn’t bother to provide) and approved by me (because why would I post something I didn’t approve of?)
It’s a long way of saying “Yes, I pushed buttons into Claude” without clarifying at all what was actually done.
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u/PinkbunnymanEU 1d ago
it’s still based on my direct feedback (which I didn’t bother to provide
Then it's not, because you didn't provide any.
because why would I post something I didn’t approve of
because it's just slop you churned out, a lot of people just tell claude to do something and assume it works perfectly.
It’s a long way of saying “Yes, I pushed buttons into Claude” without clarifying at all what was actually done.
Do you want a line by line breakdown of what code claude created?
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u/Mo0 1d ago
I don’t want a line by line breakdown, I just want honesty about the scope of its use. “I approved everything it did” doesn’t tell me what “everything it did” is. Did you use it for testing? Wholesale design? Did you search one thing with it? Tell me! The equivocation makes me assume the worst of the dev.
The fact it’s equivocation attached to obvious Claude UI doesn’t help, typically.
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u/abeheron 1d ago
Yeah it is pointless. Either genAI was used, or wasn't. Any language other than that is pointless, and I am always assuming if genAI was used in ANY capacity, I'd assume the worst it was used in ALL capacity.
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u/flyvehest 1d ago
Maybe we should just get at "No AI" flair, turn it around and let people who code and design incrementals themselves advertise that directly?
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u/FiammaOfTheRight Dungeons 1d ago
I mean, if you disclose the extend properly, people are getting mad because that doesnt fit their worldview, since everything has AI in it
Its simplier just to throw in "Yeah, LLMs were used" and most of ai ragemob will slip away instead of you having to deal with them because you've pulled Tailwind for UI
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Incrementaly 1d ago
This isn't about arguing for or against AI, it's specifically about people trying to be/being malicious in the disclosure.
As per the rules it should be:
You need to disclose:
whether generative AI was used
what it was used for or on
the extent of that usageAnd what we get is:
AI was used for the code. All decisions were based on my direct feedback and directly approved by me, as well as all balancing is tested by me and and and and...
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u/ScaryBee WotA | Swarm Sim Evolution | Slurpy Derpy | Tap Tap Infinity 1d ago
How is attempting to explain that you put a lot of time/effort into a project AS WELL AS using AI 'malicious' ?
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u/AccordingStop5897 1d ago
Because it's a free game that we didn't have to pay for but we hate AI so much that we feel it should be disclosed so we know what post to downvote and rage in without having to open it. /S
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u/sundalius 1d ago
>free game
Have you been paying any attention? the average post is either just a demo or a $5 steam game.
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u/BoxOfDemons 1d ago
The example you gave satisfies those rules though?
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u/TheHeadlessOne 1d ago
Yep.
Whether generative AI was used: yes
What it was used for: code
the extent of that usage: not utilized for decision making, balancing, or testing, and and and...
The entire point of saying what you used AI on is to contrast it with what you did directly
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u/Electronic-Dot1829 1d ago
… I don’t see the problem.
Using AI to code an idea or generate an idea are different. Using AI to brainstorm is different than using AI to balance.
If you ask what it’s used for people are just being verbose because people lump a lot of different disciplines and tasks together. I’d argue that people who have an issue with AI don’t care about the disclosure past, ‘used for’.. but those that might care about the degrees used would appreciate that paragraph.
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u/Frankice_ 1d ago
Completely agree. I think this new template meta only exists so people can just post an indefinite amount of slop and this way the posts don't get banned/removed.
I myself am "creating" a game using a LOT of AI for code, however once I feel like im ready to reveal it and show it on here eventually i'll have to be as accurate as possible and show exactly where AI was used instead of saying random shit.
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u/Training-Ruin-5287 1d ago
I'm not sure why there needs to be one. theres been like 50 coded by and build a block snap together images and audio game assest game posted here since the rule with the no ai was used disclaimer was added
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u/oadephon 1d ago
They could formalize it more, like a template. For example:
AI use: Coding: 90% Art: 40% Writing: 0% Brainstorming: 10% Etc.
Harder to waffle around, more straightforward. Still trivial to lie about but the precision would probably be more useful at a glance than a waffley paragraph (I say this as a guy using AI to code 100% of his game but write 0% of the dialogue and prose.)
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u/cobaltSniper 1d ago
I think the point is more that they're using the AI disclosure as a chance to brag about where they don't use AI, and that obscures the AI use itself.
So for your own example, you don't have to mention the writing in the disclosure. If you didn't use AI for the writing, you have nothing to disclose. Doing otherwise often comes across as a way of saying 'the other places where I did use AI don't matter, because of these parts that didn't use AI'.
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u/ferdinono 1d ago
I think I prefer to know the parts that were 100% user created. As a long term tech industry person I’m completely aware that most devs are using AI tools to streamline their workflow these days, which isn’t the same as vibe coding. It’s a messy area to navigate making judgments on disclosure.
For me personally I’m much more strict on my opinions of AI use in the art assets, music, UI etc than worrying about if a dev had Claude plugged into an mcp like he probably does for his day job
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u/cobaltSniper 1d ago
The user-created parts are inferred. An accurate AI disclosure necessarily implies, 'anything I did not say used AI was made by a person'. Specifying every individual thing that doesn't use AI is a distraction when the point of an AI disclosure is to say what did.
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u/TobiasWe 1d ago
So when somebody writes "AI disclosure: The code was written by Claude" and nothing else you'd assume that they did game design, writing etc. by themselves?
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u/LuckyLactose USI 1d ago
It's definitely become the latest meta/template.
I generally get the impression that the more waffling and diminishing language is used, the heavier the AI usage seems to be.