Gamers Are Extremely Mad About AI
In-game slop was bad enough. Now AI is driving up prices, too.

By John Herrman, a tech columnist at Intelligencer
Dec. 18, 2025

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But perhaps no group of fans, industry workers, and consumers is more intense about AI use than gamers. This week, after mentioning AI use in an interview, the CEO of Larian, the company behind Baldur’s Gate 3 and the forthcoming Divinity, tried and failed to quell massive pushback from fans:

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This episode is just the latest of many. Just this month, the latest Postal game was axed by its publisher, which was “overwhelmed with negative responses” from the “concerned Postal community” after fans spotted AI-generated material in the game’s trailer. The developers of Arc Raiders were accused of using AI instead of voice actors, leading to calls for boycotts, while the developers of the Call of Duty franchise were called out for AI-generated assets that players found strewn across Black Ops 7. Games that weren’t developed with generative AI are getting caught up in accusations anyway, while workers at Electronic Arts are going to the press to describe pressure from bosses to adopt AI tools. Nintendo has sworn off using generative AI, as has the company behind the Cyberpunk series. Valve, the company that operates Steam, now requires AI disclosures on listed games and surveys all submitters. Perhaps sensing the emergence of a new constituency, California congressman Ro Khanna responded in November to the Call of Duty backlash: “We need regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to extract greater profits,” he posted on X.

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Now, though, gamers have another grievance with AI. This is less complicated: It’s making building a gaming PC prohibitively expensive. According to Tom’s Hardware:

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Translation: The price of the sort of memory PC gamers most want to buy has skyrocketed, with DDR5 units often more than doubling in price, and demand for AI chips is the cause. Memory chipmaker Micron recently announced it would shut down its consumer brand, Crucial, which has been selling components to gamers for decades, citing “AI-driven growth in the data center.” Downstream from memory prices, the consequences for gamers are stacking up: Building a PC is more expensive; prebuilt PC stock is running low; devices like Valve’s Steam Machine could be facing delays; and graphics cards, the prices of which have only recently started to normalize after years of inflation from crypto-mining, are threatening to run back up, as demand for video RAM runs up against similar supply constraints.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took home the Game of the Year and Debut Game honors at the Indie Game Awards on Thursday, but the teams at developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive couldn't celebrate for long. On Saturday, the Indie Game Awards retracted Clair Obscur's honors due to inclusion of generative AI assets at launch that were quickly patched out.

As detailed on the Indie Game Awards' FAQ page, the organization states that "representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" when the game was submitted for awards consideration. "In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination." Though the AI generated assets were patched out, their initial inclusion was enough for the Indie Game Awards to disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and retract its awards.

Quotes from earlier in the year from Sandfall Interactive's François Meurisse made the rounds on social media last week amid a news cycle caught up in the use of generative AI in games, sparked by comments from Larian Studios' Swen Vincke, who said Larian is using AI tools to develop the forthcoming Divinity. Sandfall Interactive had previously admitted to use of gen AI in developing Clair Obscur. In June, the Spanish outlet El País published a story including an interview conducted around Clair Obscur's launch, in which Meurisse admitted that Sandfall used a minimal amount generative AI in some form during the game's development.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched with what some suspected to be AI-generated textures that, as it clarified to El País, were then replaced with custom assets in a swift patch five days after release. Users on X and Reddit spotted the AI assets, but awareness of them wasn't very widespread. Sandfall and Clair Obscur received nowhere near as much backlash as, say, 11 Bit Studios did for The Alters, which also included AI-generated background assets.

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