cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53117760

Epic Games has reportedly delayed a shooter based on Disney’s Marvel and Star Wars franchises, with its developers told to use more AI. According to Bloomberg, the yet-to-be-named game was supposed to be released in March of 2027, but its launch date has been pushed back to an unspecified date. Aside from that, the company also told the people working on the project to switch to an "AI first" production model. One of the game directors was quoted telling staff that there will be “no more handwritten code” and that the game’s art would now be "generated with full AI workflows."

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[–] 14 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

When posting articles, I'd say it's probably a good idea to include... you know... a link to said article?

Just googling (actually no-ai DDG'ing, but yeah), I came across this. So it seems real. But without a source, this post looks like something you made up yourself.

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  • [+] [S] 1 point 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 8 points 8 hours ago*

    So, I'm not talking as a mod here or saying you're breaking any community rules or anything. This is just me expressing a little frustration in the hope that you'll take it into account in the future, but...

    Whether it's an original post or a cross-post shouldn't affect whether the criticism is valid, right? If OOP did something "wrong", it's not as if you didn't have the option of... instead of verbatim cross-posting the original... making a post to this community that didn't commit the same offense. In this case, going and finding a reputable article on the topic and posting that to this community instead of just copying a contextless, sourceless assertion with no reason for any reader to think it's true (without searching elsewhere for an article on the topic themselves). (Mind you, I'm not saying I'd put it past Epic/Disney to do such a thing. But plenty of rumors that sound somewhat plausible turn out to be false.) If the criticism is valid for OOP, I'd say the criticism that you shouldn't have compounded the issue by spreading it to another community is just as valid.

    The similarity with LLM-brained people saying "not my fault, I'm just telling you what the LLM said" or "not my fault, it's the agents that did it, not me" is a bit striking here. I mean... it is their fault for choosing specifically to act as a mindless conduit for what the LLM outputs. (Or perhaps their boss' fault if they were acting under orders to reverse-centaur it up like that.) Just like "not my fault; I was drunk at the time" isn't an excuse and a get-out-of-jail-free card for someone who just killed a whole family in a drunk driving accident. (The drunk driver made the decision to drive drunk, after all.)

    Edit: Oh. You deleted your comment while I was typing all this out. Heh...

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  • [–] 29 points 13 hours ago (1 child)

    Even if AI had good results, forcing the employees to use specific methods/tools against their will is always a sign of horrible management.

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  • [–] 120 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    If AI is faster, why is it delayed?

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  • [–] 89 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

    The fact that all these AI companies are so unprofitable despite this kind of nonsense happening just goes to show how big this bubble has gotten.

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  • [–] 19 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

    Our comp has a 100$ claude license. A colleague ran it in a loop one month. If it was tokens (instesd of subsidized subscription) it would cost 10k that month.

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  • [–] 17 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

    Some people are so shortsighted it makes me want to shake them. They are not only themselves becoming reliant on something they could never afford, they are adding slop into the organization that they can't maintain, and exfiltrating all possible trade secrets the org has to Anthropic in the process.

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  • [–] 26 points 17 hours ago

    Well now I'm not gonna buy their games even more!

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  • [–] 29 points 18 hours ago (9 children)

    How does Epic give away free games, give devs a bigger cut of earnings, and make game dev way more accessible, while still constantly making everyone hate them?

    Wtf are you buying all that good will for if you're just gonna make everyone hate you anyway?

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  • [–] 20 points 16 hours ago* (3 children)

    Free games all subsidised by the Fortnite cash cow, which as far as I can tell is from children spending pocket money so their parents can get some peace. Devs being given a bigger cut of earnings I don't believe is being done in good faith and would be reverted if they'd managed to challenge Steam. Besides which, what does it matter if you get 20% more of $0 in sales?

    Game dev more accessible = Unreal engine has a good ide? Or are you suggesting that slop coding makes game dev more accessible? Am not with you there.

    Gabe Newell and Tim Sweeney are both wealthy men. Gabe keeps on making decisions that challenge monopolies and are pro consumer choice; you may argue that that's ultimately in his selfish best-interest but for now Steam is the best store front for gamers. Tim is like a weathervane for spouting the tech-bro fascist quote of the day, props up monopolies and doesn't see any value in people that create games for the love of it. There is quite a difference between them.

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  • [–] 4 points 15 hours ago*

    I don’t believe is being done in good faith

    you may argue that that’s ultimately in his selfish best-interest

    These are corporations we are talking about, no shit nothing is done in good faith, if either company could make more money be squeezing devs harder, they would.

    Game dev more accessible = Unreal engine has a good ide?

    Its a hell of a lot better than what I used back in the day, and Epic puts it in front of so many people who might be intimidated.

    Or are you suggesting that slop coding makes game dev more accessible?

    Good lord no, they have templates and examples that will get you 90% of the way there and you'll end up with code you actually can maintain.

    If epic provides gen AI tools, I was unaware. I just knew Sweeny had said dumb shit about not wanting customers to be able to filter slop games.

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  • [–] 4 points 16 hours ago (1 child)

    you may argue that that’s ultimately in his selfish best-interest

    Also known as "Everyone good is bad actually, no I don't have anything useful to say, why do you ask?"

    Hate when people make that argument lol

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  • [–] 8 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

    It is in his best interests to not be a piece of shit because gaben knows full well what will happen if gamers turn on him. There will be no digital market anymore.

    Imagine a world where pc gamers all lose faith in the only service worth having faith, that makes us happy. People would pay for nothing. Literally nothing.

    That's the world that gaben knows before steam. And it will be the world again when steam exhausts its karma and peoples libraries are threatened or seem threatened. Gaben knows this all too well and puts his best efforts into appeasing the animalistic machine and unbridled freedom and power that is pc gaming.

    As a demographic, it's the richest and most entitled and most skilled at piracy and getting what it wants. That's the nature of the platform and the people drawn to the platform. It's literally the master platform where the gods that create live and work and play and breathe and die. I'm not joking. People don't develop on a ps5, they develop on a workstation pc for the ps5.

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  • [–] 12 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

    I’ve been using Epic for years, and my library is hundreds of games at this point. I have not given them one single dime and I never will. Like you said, all the good will in the world can’t make up for being a dog shit company.

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  • [–] 4 points 12 hours ago

    It's a good thing that this company also makes one of the most widely used video game engines!

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  • [–] 11 points 16 hours ago (1 child)

    Well that's wonderful news! Can't wait for Disney's AI slop to fail!

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  • [–] 18 points 18 hours ago

    If Cats could play epic games, they wouldn't

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  • [–] 3 points 12 hours ago
    [+] 17 points 18 hours ago (2 children)
  • [–] 8 points 16 hours ago

    disney what title

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  • [–] 7 points 16 hours ago

    That thumbnail is hilarious. They should just call the game "whoops! disaster!"

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  • [–] 11 points 17 hours ago

    Oh no! The shitty company is doing the shitty thing!? Who could’ve guessed that would happen?

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  • [–] 7 points 16 hours ago

    It’s a little surprising it wasn’t pure ai drivel from the get go given that a Star Wars/Marvel shooter game sounds like the kind of lazy IP mashup garbage that gets AI sloppers excited.

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  • [–] 13 points 19 hours ago
    [–] 2 points 17 hours ago

    We soon have more games than people on earth. Real task in future will be to find good ones among the slop. Oh and we burn the planet on the way there.

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  • [+] -32 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

    I get the use of AI is unavoidable but that's got to be so demoralizing to have a finely honed skill forcibly turned into vibe coding.

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  • [–] 39 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    It's avoidable if we stop having the fatalistic attitude that it's unavoidable. Support creators and businesses that don't use AI. Don't use it yourself. There's nothing AI can do that a human hasn't already been doing better for years.

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  • [–] -1 points 12 hours ago

    Musicians have been dealing with this forever. Player pianos to recording to samples and now the akai mpc breaks apart copyrighted songs into separate stems using gen ai. And it’s industry standard. Yall are just the people that cried about all of these things in the past.

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