Oh dear. Goonswarm Games are shutting down after Running With Scissors cancelled POSTAL: Bullet Paradise due to the use of generative AI. It’s a bit of a saga this one.
I covered the initial announcement, along with a follow-up update in there where Running With Scissors attempted to defend the developer. The backlash only continued, and eventually RWS cancelled it as per the statement GamingOnLinux was sent on December 5th via Vince Desi, founder of Running With Scissors
I had a feeling about this game, and it seems that came true.
The enemies all being feminists felt… “off”, especially when Postal isn’t a right wing series, it’s more about poking fun at society in general… So it just seemed odd that ALL of the enemies in Bullet Paradise were Feminist Stereotypes.
How do you define a witch hunt? Kings of the AI creates mobs through tiktok, facebook thanks to AI social engineering… so the mob hunt the random guys for their own guilts (as “king of the AI’s guilt”).
Solid apology imo
I had trouble reading the image so here’s the text if you’re like me:
Dear gamers, we want to start with a sincere apology to everyone affected by this situation: the community, our partners, and especially the artists who supported us. The last few days have been overwhelming. As a small studio, suddenly pushed into the spotlight, we reacted emotionally and defensively. The accusations came as a shock, and we needed time to breathe, look at everything calmly, and understand what truly happened. After taking that time and conducting an internal review, we agree with your criticism. The promo art does appear to include or be influenced by Al-generated material. We collaborated with external artists for years and never saw any signs of this. The layered PSDS always looked legitimate within our internal pipeline, which is why our initial reaction was to protect our team and defend our innocence. We understand now that your concerns were valid. And we take responsibility for not catching this earlier. We also want to stress that this issue relates only to the promo art and does not concern the real artists who worked on gameplay visuals, assets, and other content. Many of them have nothing to do with this situation, yet they have been receiving threats, harassment, and hatred. This is deeply unfair, and we hope this message helps protect them. Their work is real, and it deserves respect. We previously announced the closure of the studio, but even in this state we feel responsible for the outcome. As far as our remaining resources allow, we will replace all disputed promo art across our projects with pieces created entirely by human artists. It will take time, but we will do it. We again apologise to everyone who was harmed or affected by this situation. We never intended to mislead anyone, and our earlier statements reflected what we honestly believed at the moment.
Totally reasonable thought process on their side. Sucks that it had to come to this.
Still don’t understand the shutdown? Remove the marketing material and move on if it’s such a problem?
Their publisher pulled the plug on the game they were making due to the accusations, so they probably can’t afford to stay open.
Due to the accusation of using generative AI. This was a result of the witch hunt itself.
The apology admits use of AI in marketing material
After the studio was already shut down. If it turned out they hadn’t used generative AI would the results have been any different?
Also, oh no, marketing material. Definitely worth destroying a game studio over.
Not just marketing material, the game itself used it.
Yeah this is getting ridiculous. People are going to have to accept the existence of genAI sooner or later. To be honest I never understood what the problem people had with it was in the first place. Surely AI is something we were all looking forward to before it actually came out.
If you don’t personally have a problem with GenAI, that’s fine. Nobody else has to accept it or like it for themselves though.
A game studio has been shut down over this. So yes it’s a problem when others can’t at least tolerate it. It’s especially funny when people attack people for using GenAI when they actually didn’t use it.
Yeah, I never noticed any particular negative reaction when someone walked into the Holodeck on Star Trek and said “Computer, create a mystery in the style of Sherlock Holmes” or whatever. Ask most people and they’d probably count that as one of the fictional technologies they were most looking forward to.
And also the actually using it.
If you actually read the note you would have realized they didn’t even use gen AI but hired someone who did without knowing.
