The Growing Fear Of AI In Games
Generative AI is everywhere right now and that has made players a lot more suspicious about how games are being made. Any slightly off looking face, awkward line of dialogue, or strange texture can lead to the same accusation: this looks like AI slop.
The indie SNES style RPG Shrine's Legacy has landed right in the middle of this cultural moment. Its developer Positive Concept Games recently had to publicly defend the team after a Steam reviewer claimed the game was made with ChatGPT and called it AI slop. The problem is not just that the accusation hurts. It also shows how hard it has become to prove that something was made by humans when AI tools are so common and often invisible.
On social media the developer posted a strong response. They explained that Shrine's Legacy took years of work and that every part of it from the writing and coding to the art was created by real people. They also stated clearly that they do not endorse generative AI and will never use it in their games.
Despite that clear statement the argument did not end there. Players started digging through old posts and debating every screenshot and line of story like detectives in an AI courtroom.
How A Single Review Sparked A Controversy
The spark was a Steam review that did more than just say the reviewer did not like the game. It called the story a mess and then doubled down by claiming the game was made in ChatGPT. That kind of language instantly frames the whole project as low effort and dishonest which is a brutal hit for a small indie studio.
Other players took notice and began leaving reviews focused less on the actual gameplay and more on the AI accusation. One reviewer even bought the game purely to investigate the controversy. Instead of playing it for fun they went in looking for evidence of AI use. They described odd details in character art and said the story felt like it was generated by a machine, basically arguing that the game gave off an AI vibe.
The developer pushed back, even suggesting that this second reviewer might be an alternate account of the original critic. For Positive Concept Games the situation must have been incredibly frustrating. They insist no AI tools were used at any stage of development and from a quick look at the trailer and screenshots there are none of the obvious AI art giveaways like warped hands, broken text, or bizarre lighting that often show up in machine generated images.
Still, once the idea is planted that something might be AI powered it can be hard to shake. People go in expecting to see patterns and usually find them even if they are just normal quirks of human made art.
Why Gamers Are So Suspicious Of AI Right Now
This mess around Shrine's Legacy did not appear out of nowhere. Larger studios have already damaged trust around AI by sneaking it into games and only admitting it after players spotted it.
There have been cases where big developers used AI generated art as placeholders or background assets and only quietly touched them up once the community complained. Ubisoft is one example that caught backlash when fans noticed AI art slipping into an upcoming game. Moves like that teach players to assume the worst and to treat every slightly strange asset as proof that AI has invaded another title.
The other issue is that it is genuinely hard to tell what is AI generated and what is not. A Microsoft study found that people can only correctly guess if an image is AI created about 62 percent of the time. That is slightly better than random guessing but still means we are wrong often enough that confident accusations are on shaky ground.
At the same time AI tools themselves are far from perfect. Another study covered by Ars Technica highlighted that AI powered search engines give incorrect answers at an alarmingly high rate. So we have a strange mix of unreliable tools and humans who are only slightly better than chance at spotting them. Put that together and you get a lot of noise, a lot of suspicion, and not much solid proof either way.
For indie teams this is especially dangerous. A single review calling your game AI slop can spiral into a public debate that overshadows your actual work. Instead of people talking about the combat system or the story they are arguing about whether the pixels were drawn by a person or a model.
There is also a broader culture shift happening. AI has become such a common insult that some players use it as shorthand for anything that feels cheap, generic, or badly written. A flat joke becomes AI humor. A bland dialogue line becomes AI text. Even when there is no real claim that tools were used it becomes an easy way to dismiss a game.
What This Means For Players And Devs
For gamers the Shrine's Legacy situation is a reminder to be careful before throwing around AI accusations. Disliking a game is completely fair. Leaving a negative review about story, art style, or mechanics is part of how the ecosystem works. But accusing a team of secretly using AI without evidence goes further. It questions their honesty and can seriously hurt a small studio that spent years on a project.
For developers the current climate shows how important communication has become. Some teams are starting to list their stance on AI directly on store pages, websites, or social media so that expectations are clear from the start. Others are being more transparent about what tools they use in their pipeline, whether that is AI assisted or not.
Ultimately the industry is still figuring out where to draw the line between acceptable automation and generative AI that players see as replacing human creativity. Until that settles down we are probably going to see more cases like Shrine's Legacy where vibes and suspicions matter almost as much as what is actually on screen.
If you are curious about the game itself Shrine's Legacy is available on Steam. You can play it and decide for yourself how it feels rather than relying only on the AI drama surrounding it.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/rpg-dev-pushes-back-against-steam-review-ai-accusations-we-poured-years-of-our-lives-into-this-game-and-only-worked-with-real-human-artists-on-everything/
