Game developers are fed up with their boss’s AI initiatives

The video game The industry has been in a turbulent place for the past year, with studio closures and job security at the forefront of developer concerns. Increase layoffs without apparently never ending paints an unfortunate picture for developers, while companies are busy pumping money AI initiatives.

According to a new report from Game Developers Conference organizers, 52 percent of developers surveyed said they worked at companies that used Generative AI on their games. Of the 3,000 people surveyed, about half said they were concerned about the technology’s impact on the industry and a growing number said they felt negative about AI in general. The State of the Game Industry report, published on Tuesday, is one of a series of surveys conducted each year by GDC organizers ahead of their annual conference. This year’s event will take place in San Francisco in March.

The GDC 2025 report comes on the heels of a tumultuous couple of years in the industry. Also like games like Astro Bot, Helldivers 2 and Balatru found success, studios such as Microsoft and Sony have staff cut and canceled games. Amidst a mixture of cultural and economic factors that have an impact on the industry, developers are also still faced with the company’s enthusiasm for technology that some find ethical.

“I have a PhD in AI, worked to develop some of the algorithms used by generative AI,” wrote one developer. “I deeply regret how naively I offered my contributions.”

About 30 percent of developers who responded to the survey said they feel negatively about AI, up from 18 percent last year; only 13 percent believed that AI would have a positive impact on games, up from 21 percent in 2024. “No matter how you put it, generative AI is not a great substitute for real people and the quality will be damaged,” another developer. he wrote in his reply.

For developers, AI has the potential to help with many tasks, respondents said, including coding, concept art and 3D model generation, but when asked what uses they saw for AI in industry, “the most frequently used word in his answers was “none”, GDC organizers wrote.

In theory, generative AI could help some developers lighten their workloads. It doesn’t happen. Instead, developers are reported to be working longer hours than in years. Thirteen percent of respondents said they put in 51-plus-hour weeks, from 8 percent of respondents last year. While these additional hours could be attributed to developers taking on additional work to compensate for colleagues lost during the massive industry-wide layoffs of 2024, many expressed concern that AI was also a factor. “We should use generative AI to help people get faster at their jobs, not lose them,” wrote one worker.

Layoffs, the industry history for the last few years, always they pose a huge problem. “Survive until 25“The mantra for developers in difficulty, did not help those who lost their jobs. According to the survey, one in 10 developers were fired in the last year. There was also an increase in the answers “N / A”: “the question does not apply because they were already dismissed or otherwise unemployed. In other words, it wasn’t a concern now because somehow it had already happened to him.”