Since the advent of generative AI and contemporary chatbots, there's been endless debate about the ethics of using them in gamedev. But how does AI measure up through a purely pragmatic, business-minded lens? According to a blog from Game Oracle written by market data analyst Ross Burton, stigma around the technology can ward off prospective players.
Game Oracle's methodology involved taking a sample of 9,879 games released between Jan. and Oct. 2025, "filtering out spam and purely commercial releases," as well as free-to-play games (granted, this could exclude some relatively popular free-to-play games and those which have been accused of using undisclosed AI art, like FragPunk, which is both). Of the sampled games, 17.9% disclosed AI use.
Taken as a whole, AI use was correlated with slightly less enthusiastic reception: games without AI had slightly more reviews, fewer of them had no reviews at all, and "when focusing on games that received at least 100 reviews," the median rating was...
English (US)