Not that anyone reading this website needs to be told this, but the use of generative AI in video game development is not very popular among players. As more and more people become aware of the environmental, societal and economic impacts of the technology, and continue to drown in the visual slop it creates, its use in video games becomes ever more indefensible.
Which is why I did a cartoonish, eyeball-bulging double take last week when Eurogamer published the following story:
Matt Wales
This game, which is not even out yet, is perhaps better known for its use of AI in development than the fact it's a new Crazy Taxi, so trying to brush that fact aside in a headline--then only mention AI in passing in the 12th paragraph of a 12-paragraph story--sure is a decision when covering this kind of story in 2026.
You can't place it to one side! It's part of the story, and is at the forefront of the audience's perception of the game. It's impossible to talk about this game and not talk about AI, so to relegate the topic to what's essentially a legally-obligated disclaimer, buried at the end of the story and under a bunch of ads, is to deprive your readers of important context the game's coverage deserves.
Readers are justifiably mad. The social media posts were ratio'd to hell and back, and there are well over 100 comments underneath the story itself. And they're mad for good reason: a real danger with AI's relentless attempt to seep its way into every corner of our lives is that people will start to get tired of resisting it. They’re mad that websites like Eurogamer, who have posted countless anti-AI stories over the years and even penalised games in their reviews for making use of it, are by September 2026 publishing throwaway lines like "Gen-AI Controversy Aside".
A few days later, Eurogamer then ran an impressions piece for 1666: Amsterdam, a game made perhaps even more infamous for its disastrous use of AI, and dropped in a single line that reads "There's the AI stuff in the game, of course, which is just as miserable as always".
Luke Plunkett
I understand that it's tiring trying to call out AI's use in video games if you're opposed to the tech, especially if your job is to report on them. It's certainly exhausting writing about it every week. But that exhaustion is also the point. AI is being relentlessly crammed into our working lives and emails and personal assistants and search results and customer service experiences and every other corner of our lives, and the big companies behind AI know most people hate the tech and are trying to resist it as much as we can. But they don't care; they're hoping to simply wear us down until we give up, to accept that this shit is just part of life now because it has become inescapable.
I know these posts don't seem that heinous, but they're indicative of that slide, and I'd hope the reaction to them is a sharp reminder to everyone still writing about video games for a living that, as boring as continually covering AI can seem, your readers know how important it has been and still is in shaping the environment in which you're writing.
