ccording to a new report by Bloomberg, developers on the game were told to implement an “AI-first” production model using Anthropic’s Claude AI models. The team is not to use any more “hand-written code,” and even artists are being pushed to use the technology that has become a punching bag among actual players. The director of the unannounced game reportedly told developers that all art should be “generated with full AI workflows.”
No handwritten code allowed is laughably stupid. This decision was made by someone who doesn’t understand code or llms.
If no substantial creative contributions are made during compilation, yes. Which is very likely.
What you can claim a right on is expression made with “creative height” from a human. And you own specifically those bits of expressions you added.
Also keep in mind that copyright stacks. If you start with public domain work and add non-copyrightable derivative work then the result remains public domain. If you add your own creative work then the change and combination is owned by you but never the originals (others can do their own unique but still similar variants from the same source material). If you make a derivative work on anything owned by others (fan art, etc) then there’s now two owners involved and neither may have full rights to the result (the studio don’t own your additions, you have no right to the studio’s work).
So Tldr, the code is probably fair game but the art is going to involve a shitton of still protected works and it doesn’t matter the additions are not copyright protected because there’s nothing copyright free that you meaningfully can apply that diff to (unless maybe you might think there’s some cool animations they did which you may want to replicate for other characters than theirs)
AI Art is even more stupid, getting a diffusion model to depict something generic close to what you want is easy, but when you want more precise control it takes a ton of effort, and it’s a whole new area of knowledge. Sure, full models on servers with terabytes of RAM will follow instructions better than what I run on my GPU, but it’s still absurd.
AI can for sure be a useful tool in development - but forcing everyone to use just the one tool and removing developer agency is going to be a shitshow. You can absloutely make slop code usable and stable - you could make dreamweaver code or VS’s autogenerated C# usable too - but it’s not a magically quick process. Given the goal here is speed, this ill wind doth blow due trainwreck…
Not only that. LLMs have serious flaws like are much more costly than hand written code, are much more prone to errors, cant be reviewed or audited, and rarely employs the most efficient architectures. On top of that, execs think the memory is absolute and dont realize the more context you feed it, the more it has to guess.
They’re using AI as the main development tool by the sound of it, not a supplementary tool. If they’re anything like the AI ads I have seen lately it will look like shit. I have no trust that this will create a cohesive product.
This is going to be a dumpster fire and I can’t wait to sit and watch it burn
And simehow it will be Valve’s fault, according to Tim-boy
No handwritten code allowed is laughably stupid. This decision was made by someone who doesn’t understand code or llms.
Sweet, so if someone gets a copy of the source code then it is public domain as the output of AI is not copyrightable under current US case law.
Wouldn’t that mean the compiled game is also not copyrightable?
If no substantial creative contributions are made during compilation, yes. Which is very likely.
What you can claim a right on is expression made with “creative height” from a human. And you own specifically those bits of expressions you added.
Also keep in mind that copyright stacks. If you start with public domain work and add non-copyrightable derivative work then the result remains public domain. If you add your own creative work then the change and combination is owned by you but never the originals (others can do their own unique but still similar variants from the same source material). If you make a derivative work on anything owned by others (fan art, etc) then there’s now two owners involved and neither may have full rights to the result (the studio don’t own your additions, you have no right to the studio’s work).
So Tldr, the code is probably fair game but the art is going to involve a shitton of still protected works and it doesn’t matter the additions are not copyright protected because there’s nothing copyright free that you meaningfully can apply that diff to (unless maybe you might think there’s some cool animations they did which you may want to replicate for other characters than theirs)
In a just system, sure
AI Art is even more stupid, getting a diffusion model to depict something generic close to what you want is easy, but when you want more precise control it takes a ton of effort, and it’s a whole new area of knowledge. Sure, full models on servers with terabytes of RAM will follow instructions better than what I run on my GPU, but it’s still absurd.
Do you think so? Most big companies require developers to use Ai.
Edit: I don’t understand why my question is downvoted.
AI can for sure be a useful tool in development - but forcing everyone to use just the one tool and removing developer agency is going to be a shitshow. You can absloutely make slop code usable and stable - you could make dreamweaver code or VS’s autogenerated C# usable too - but it’s not a magically quick process. Given the goal here is speed, this ill wind doth blow due trainwreck…
Not only that. LLMs have serious flaws like are much more costly than hand written code, are much more prone to errors, cant be reviewed or audited, and rarely employs the most efficient architectures. On top of that, execs think the memory is absolute and dont realize the more context you feed it, the more it has to guess.
LLM-only code is going to be terrible.
They’re using AI as the main development tool by the sound of it, not a supplementary tool. If they’re anything like the AI ads I have seen lately it will look like shit. I have no trust that this will create a cohesive product.