cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49263187
Tim Sweeney claims it’s a “Scarlet Letter” which makes players “try to kill the game”
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has criticised rival Valve for forcing studios to disclose when they use AI in game development.
Epic recently showed how it was integrating AI into Unreal Engine 6.
Time Sweeney said:
“If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you’ve got to put it on Steam so people can wish list it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game.
“I think it’s really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn’t do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.”
Which is totally ignoring the factor that the user should know about the purchase it makes and be able to decide for themselves. Transparency for the player is not a bad thing.
Hilariously, the example cited in the article doesn’t seem to actually count towards steams ai policy. Sweeney, you’re just so very full of shit.
Fuck you Tim Sweeney. Valve is right for putting that info up so people can make informed purchases.
I don’t think it matters anyway. Epic games is an epic failure
I would be unsurprised if they went bankrupt within the next 10 years
I mean, they’ve been around for 35 years and they do something like 5 billion USD a year in revenue. I think they’re going to be fine.
I don’t necessarily want this iteration of Epic to be fine, but I’m sure they will be
Disney uses the hell out of Unreal Engine tho, they used it extensively for the filming of The Mandalorian.
I wish they’d go bankrupt but they will be fine off of Unreal royalties alone.
how about Tim Sweeney disclose of these nuts?
BofA
Bank of America?
Gottem!!!
Wouldn’t competition that does also have the same requirements to publish on steam? Wtf is he talking about
Indie games like Stardew Valley and Undertale don’t need generative AI, skill issue much?
What next, it’s “irresponsible” to mention the system requirements because people won’t buy games that are too advanced for their device, which is depriving devs of sales?
Maybe being anti-consumer isn’t the best strategy to bring those “consumer” things to your marketplace, Tim.
Stardew Valley and Undertale
Games developed before generative AI was widely available and usable for software development.
TBF I believe indie games will benefit the most from generative AI. Letting a model have to worry about quaternions definitely makes things easier.
TBF I believe indie games will benefit the most from generative AI.
This is the one point where my opinions on GenAI split:
On one hand, art assets can be a lot of effort and time to create manually, which may hamstring games with interesting concepts and mechanics whose devs don’t have the skills or time to wrap them into suitable aesthetics. Voice acting is also a difficult point that can fill a world with life (like background chatter in villages), but isn’t always trivial for smaller teams or solo developers, particularly if they aren’t good at voice acting themselves and don’t have the money to pay someone up-front.
For those reasons, I think using GenAI to handle creative aspects is understandable if the devs themselves can’t shoulder that burden.
On the other hand, I feel like there should be better solutions. This reasoning to justify GenAI might be leveraged to justify not hiring artists or VAs. Sure makes your studio look smaller, and also leaves a larger margin of profit. Who’s gonna be able to tell whether you even looked for people to help you instead of just taking the shortcut?
I assume it comes down to economic and competitive pressures too. I’m sure there are plenty of artists or VAs that would lend their time and craft to an interesting game for the promise of a cut once the game releases, if they didn’t have to worry about paying bills right now instead of an uncertain future income.
I find myself returning to the topic of Universal Basic Income, or at least shorter working times for equal income: Imagine how much art people could create if they had the leisure to, instead of maximising profits for some money addicts’ “number go up” fix.
“We must do X at any cost to the user because others will do it and get the money”
This mentality has driven the games industry to become psychologically manipulative, subscription battleass and absolutely proprietary.
Maybe the irresponsibility is in ourselves for giving those game companies money.
I’ve done my part and closed my account. Those freebies were nice, but I’m not supporting that wanker.
Not only the game industry. This is a widespread problem: greed.
Maybe the irresponsibility is in ourselves for giving those game companies money.
Speak for yourself. I haven’t paid real money for any game since the 90s.
Real money?
“Think of the game-devs needing to make money” says a fat cat talking about a tool forged from game-dev’s labour without compensation and disregarding any social contracts (i.e. copyleft software licenses).
“Think of the game devs needing to make money”
Says the former dev whose biggest success, Unreal Tournament, had little to do with Epic itself.
- Digital Extremes made the weapons and many of the default maps.
- Fan mods made most of the success of the first three games.
And Fortnite started as a Pubg clone.
Well, Fortnite started as Fortnite: Save the world, which is still alive and kicking. Battle Royale is the trash they made later.
And Fortnite started as a Pubg clone.
It actually started as an MMO PvE co-op thing. The BR was an addon jankily tacked on, and it just took off because BR was the hot new shit everyone wanted to play, and got bigger than the original concept.
Also Sweeney “why do people like Steam more than the Epic store?”
Truely a mystery. It’s one of lifes great unknowns…
Another choice quote from the original IGN interview that this is from:
Sweeney: […] The only way that we can hope for new games coming into the market to be able to succeed when there’s so much Metcalfe’s Law at play and so many captive audiences in the really big games – you know, Fortnite, Roblox, PUBG Mobile, and a few other really huge ones – it’s got to be that those games get momentum by connecting to the economies in other games. I think that can really reinvigorate the market if people are constantly looking to new games and sources of new items that they can earn everywhere and be able to really easily move together with their friends.
Guy got talked into the whole blockchain NFT crap so hard that he’s still trying to make it happen, as if it was ever a desirable thing that the best way to get some kind of gear or cool cosmetics in game A involves playing game B instead.
If I’m understanding his comment, it doesn’t make sense at all. He wants people to discover new games…by playing the same big 4 games that everybody already plays, and aren’t unknown.
What?
I don’t even know where to start, to the point that I’m assuming I’m missing something here. Thats how little sense it makes. I’m at a point where the only logical conclusion is that I’m misunderstanding his statement.
Because otherwise…where do you even go from there? If you heard this guy saying these things on the bus, you’d just assume he’s mentally unwell.
He saw how big Roblox market share was and decided that he wanted it. That’s why Epic is integrating UE6 into the Fortnite ecosystem. All so he could collect his 63% from each sale (potentially more with UE6 fees). It’s not about making new games easier to find, it’s about becoming monopoly.
Remember when the Epic Games Store was so bad that anti-virus software was identifying it as a threat?
Was?
That bad?
Epic are currently trying to make a push into mobile after preparing the way with all those lawsuits, but their mobile app store shows they learned absolutely nothing from how poorly EGS was received.
How bad is it? So bad it doesn’t even have a library. To know which games you own, you have to browse the list of all apps on the store and find the ones that have their price replaced by a download icon.
That’s a terrible way of doing it.
Tim Sweeney, the pedophile (protector) who insists that pedophiles aren’t using Roblox to commit pedophilic crimes by preying on minors? That Tim Sweeney?
Yes. Yes I do believe they are one and the same.
He also says that stopping ai generated csam is “gatekeeping”.
Whenever I say this his apologists magically appear.
Okay, lol. To start with, that’s not what the term ‘gatekeeping’ means – he’s not even using the term correctly.
If a group of real csam producers was trying to keep ai csam producers out of their group, that would be gatekeeping.
…gatekerping csam? Or gatekeeping AI?
Because both are rediculous statements, but for entirely different reasons.
And this, Tim, is why I spend most of my money at Steam.
This may shock you, but proudly parading that you want to fuck over consumers at every opportunity is not good incentive.
Epic bad Steam good imma right fellow gamers?!??!
I mean, yes…? Generally…?
The best thing about Tim Sweeney is that he consistently has the most wrong take on any issue. He’s like the Lou Gehrig of being an idiot.
I have yet to read a headline where is not being dull doorknob licker
right but look on the bright side, at least we have a useful idiot against google. speaking of that, did any good come out of that?
Technically, Epic won, but functionally it didn’t change much. And what they won didn’t help anyone else or the inherent structural issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Google
