If Larian is using generative AI to develop concept art which is then given to artists to turn into game assets and environments, then they can’t say there is no AI generated content.
For placeholder text - Lorem Ipsum exists for a reason.
shocking how fast the tone of the conversation has turned from "fuck ai" to "well actually everyone is probably using it so i guess we should just throw our hands up and accept this terrible bargain. what else are we supposed to do, stop playing games?"
and well. yes. that is literally how it works. you withhold money from companies doing unethical shit and you criticize them publicly and you go elsewhere for your entertainment. games are not food or shelter or utilities, this isn't a "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism" scenario. there are plenty of indie studios and solo devs creating works of art by themselves without touching generative ai and supporting those smaller creators when the games industry is cratering is a net good: it supports them so that they can continue to create, it doesn't give money to companies who are using unethical business practices you want to see stopped, and it broadens your horizons past the latest big fandom game.
fomo isn't a good enough reason to just "oh well, all our favorite companies suck, i guess, so no point in taking a stand now that it's not just one or two." sorry. it's just not.
this post was written by a nonbinary atheist with a transbian sister in law. if you reblog my post you agree that trans rights are human rights.
Regarding Steam, Adult Content Bans, and Making an 18+ Game
Hey guys;
There’s been a major shift in the gaming scene recently that could have some very serious consequences for queer creators and the adult content they make and unfortunately, TCM is (what I fear) a pretty prime target. I know no one likes reading long blog posts but please at least skim the following write up. A lot's going on and frankly, I'm very, very anxious for TCM.
Bear with me, the situation is complex.
What Happened:
Steam, the largest videogame marketplace in the world, caved to pressure from payment processors like Mastercard and Visa to delist games and effectively censor content that goes against the TOS of the payment processor.
This is incredibly shitty.
Visa and Mastercard now have direct say in what content is “objectionable” on the world’s largest gaming marketplace. They are the entities that get to decide what art is “degenerate” and what art is suitable for their advertisers.
Adult content has long been a target of Mastercard, which has been constantly putting pressure on companies like Etsy, OnlyFans, Patreon, Pornhub, Fansly, and more for multiple years now to deplatform and censor not only real-life content featuring real people, but also overtly fictional and drawn content as well.
LGBT+ art is a prime target for being slandered as deviant; we’ve seen it throughout our history, and this is only becoming more evident as queer sex workers, content creators, and artists are getting financially deplatformed all across the internet.
Several ultraconservative groups are behind the pressure on Mastercard, including swerf and terf clubs.
This goes beyond region or payment method. It doesn’t matter how you pay for Steam games; once a game is delisted, it cannot be purchased via any method.
Since this change to Steam’s TOS and as of this writing, over 80 adult games have been delisted, and I’d like to take a second to emphasize what this means. Being delisted on Steam is the same as having a game functionally permabanned. Delisting means that anyone who has the game can still access it, but the title is taken off the marketplace completely, and new players will never see it or be able to access it.
Steam is effectively being held at gunpoint. Without the ability to accept payments from the two largest, most duopolistic processors in the world, its continued resistance would likely destroy them as a marketplace. This attack on Steam gives Mastercard and Visa an unprecedented amount of power over gaming as a whole and has already had huge consequences. This sets a disturbing and wholly unfair precedent of disproportionately silencing queer and/or politically charged art.
What’s shocking about this is that in the past, Steam has worked to maintain a high level of neutrality in its content offerings. As long as games were rated properly and appropriate themes were disclosed during the rating process, Steam generally let explicit content slide even if their content was questionable to some. The problem now lies in the fact that corporate overlords have now taken the power to decide what is and is not artistic expression, and historically, that does not bode well for anyone challenging or commenting on the status quo. If you’re queer like me, you know you challenge the status quo by simply existing.
The Future is Unknowable
Unfortunately, it just got a lot murkier for me and for TCM. Because TCM’s queer leanings, its focus on sexualized men and monster fucking, the game will certainly be seen as transgressive to any remotely conservative leaning weirdo looking for a power trip. I don’t know if we’re on the chopping block and there’s literally no way to prepare.
I’ve heard several people mention Itch.io as an alternative, and, firstly, please understand that I adore Itch. Itch is where TCM got its initial start and early community from, and I owe a lot to Itch’s commitment to its devs and the freedom to produce whatever content they want. The problem is that if payment processors put pressure on Itch, too, they will be forced to acquiesce. I can’t stress enough that Steam is astronomically larger and more powerful than Itch- and if they didn’t have the resources or independence to hold to their ideals in the face of pressure from Mastercard, Itch won’t either. At this point, it's less of a criticism or doomerism on my part and simply an ugly, unfair fact.
This kind of uncertainty alone is enough to stagnate a lot of business in any industry. This puts the burden on me to either pre-emptively censor the game myself or to cope with the immense financial instability of going forward with unclear and/or unfair guidelines that- once again- disproportionately target queer creators.
We saw it with the widespread tariff confusion earlier this year that had a pronounced effect on global commerce. Stephanie Sterling elaborates on the burden of uncertainty in this video about YouTube’s unclear and inconsistent demonetization rules and the clamps it puts on artistic content. She’s a lot more articulate than I am and paints a really robust picture about why having vague content policies- like the ones Mastercard is pushing- throws a wrench in the whole creative cycle, especially for artists hoping to make a living via their art.
What This Means for TCM
Honestly, this could mean a lot of things, and unfortunately, I just don’t know what the road ahead will look like in 6 months. Or even next week. Because I really value transparency, I wanted to lay the situation out for y'all so you can hopefully see where I’m coming from and why this is so incredibly devastating to hear about.
I invested a ton of money into making this game. More than that, it's been about five years of my life with no other projects on deck, building this game and community from the ground up. I believe in this project, and I believe in queer adult entertainment that’s inclusive and fun and sexy. I really do.
But if I get financially deplatformed, I can’t create.
Essentially, I planned to invest my own money up front, offer the base game (Amir, Mori, and Akello’s full routes) for free, and then make DLC in the form of additional character routes and charge money for those to recoup costs and eventually get me out of the hole. I hoped that people would really enjoy the base game, get a feel for my writing style and Atlas’ art, and hopefully find that a paid DLC for another character is a worthwhile purchase. Now, I’m reevaluating how I want to move forward, and I wanted y'all to be a part of that 1) because I need you to see what factors I’m dealing with and 2) I’d like to give as much of a heads up as possible if plans change.
So, right now, the game is in a state called “Early Access”. This tells players that the game is still in development, still getting updates, and generally taking player feedback/bug reports into account as development furthers. Once the game is “completed,” I was going to take it out of Early Access and into “Fully Released”.
One option I’m now considering is charging for the game once it hits that fully released state.
People who already have the game will not be affected by this at all. You’ll get the Full Release without having to pay. (Anyone who has the game in their Steam Library before the changeover will get the Full Release for free.). The Full Release won’t have significant content changes but will probably have minor bug fixes, polish, things of that nature. I’m not sure what price point I would set it at. But like most options, there are pros and cons to this- namely, I made it clear that I wanted to keep this chunk of the game free, but I’m worried that might not be possible. The benefit to structuring things this way is that I may be able to recoup some of the development costs before a potential delisting, which would essentially terminate my ability to make extra content like I’d intended.
Talking Numbers
I would like to share my budget with you so that you can see the figures I’m looking at. Again, my ultimate goal here is gaining yall’s understanding first. I know it’s disappointing to talk money and numbers when we’re all surviving out there, but things are getting dire. (Note that these numbers are general but close estimates.)
Artwork includes: Sprites, CGs, Logo Design, Menu, GUI/UX assets and implementation, other In-Game Assets, Commissions for birthday posts/special occasions, Trailers, Animations, Capsule Artwork, etc
Ads, Hosting, and Business Misc includes: Ad runs on websites like Furaffinity and Tumblr, Hosting and Domain fees, Business Name Registration, Studio Peaches logo
Custom Music includes: 6 custom-performed and recorded tracks exclusive for TCM
The game does pull in some money on the regular, and I cannot stress enough how grateful I am for my patrons, kickstarter supporters, and for my itch donors because your generosity and loyalty have helped add some stability to this situation, and I’ve gotten good at making your every dime count.
And just for transparency, here’s what the Kickstarter ended up looking like:
Now, with Kickstarter, I have to emphasize that these numbers don’t represent failure- this was pretty much what I expected going in. Kickstarter is a great way to raise awareness of projects, and in that respect, the TCM Kickstarter was very successful, even if I cut it perhaps a little closer than I had intended.
So, now you can kind of start to see where the stress is growing. Over the past five-ish years, I’ve invested close to twenty thousand dollars into this project, and although I have wonderful patrons, backers and itch donors, I’ve barely put a dent in that debt. This is what game development costs for a game of TCM’s quality. Currently, I pay Atlas commission rates for their work, but I had hoped to be able to actually employ them. I personally have never been paid for the time and labor I’ve put into this game, and I work on it about 30 hours a week, every week.
TLDR
To recap, there are several reasons I’m taking the time to write this up today:
Prepare TCM community for the possibility of changes coming to the plans going forward
Inform the community of some very alarming developments happening on gaming platforms
Help show the community just how much game development costs, and how imperative it is to find a financially viable future for this project.
Prayer circle we don’t get delisted
The bottom line is: TCM needs to make money if it is going to continue being developed. If the game gets delisted and deplatformed, I might need to make serious changes to keep this project alive. I may need to make serious changes to mitigate what’s already happening to adult games.
Things are scary out there for artists and especially for queer artists. I have absolutely no idea what the future holds for TCM and no idea how much worse things are going to get before they get better. Transparency has always been a priority for me, so definitely expect updates and announcements as things evolve and change over the coming months. Just please understand that I may have to pivot or change tact depending on what Mastercard decides is a violation of their content guidelines.
For better and for worse, nothing is set in stone today, but that does mean I’ll need to continue monitoring the situation closely, and I’ll do my best to keep everyone informed of TCM’s development with as much notice as I can.
Finally, I encourage all of you to do further research into this on your own. I encourage you to sign the petition that the ACLU has been circulating as a first step towards fighting this unfair hold payment processors have on our content. I encourage you to talk to performers excommunicated from OnlyFans and Patreon for having “objectionable” material. I encourage you to talk to Furries who were booted from Fansly for being incorrectly labelled as deviants with bestiality kinks. I especially encourage you to look into the oppressive, hateful groups pushing for this kind of artistic suppression and pressuring Visa and Mastercard to tighten (comprised largely of swerf, terf, and bog-standard conservative purity politics). Send angry emails, support your favorite creators, and cultivate safe online spaces for queer adult content.
As always, please hit me up with any questions you might have- I can be reached in all the usual places: Here on Tumblr @tricitymonsters, on discord @pockatuck or via the TCM server, or even email if you have something longer to send > [email protected]
Some source links for you:
ACLU Petition: https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy
PCgamer Article Breaking the Story: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/steam-introduces-new-rule-prohibiting-certain-kinds-of-adult-content-that-might-make-visa-or-mastercard-unhappy-financial-deplatforming-in-action/
VICE Article that was pulled that lists the groups behind the push: https://web.archive.org/web/20250719204151/https://www.vice.com/en/article/group-behind-steam-censorship-policies-have-powerful-allies-and-targeted-popular-games-with-outlandish-claims/
Have you ever wanted to play a cute monster taming game with lots of love and heart put into every inch and corner of it by a Team of fantastically talented artists?
Me too!! Too bad it got cancelled literally a few weeks before it was going to be anounced!
Artist Nicholas Kole on twitter along with many other talented artists have been sharing their work of nearly 4 years on this game. I cant imagine the heartbreak of working so hard on this project only for it to get canceled right before Release and everyone on the Team to get laid off.
It was meant to be an open world, minecraft inspired builder, with all sorts of unique creatures with various skins, variations depending on biomes, and even petting animations. That you could tame! It also had a large amount of beautiful and unique character customization. Here's some of the art ( NOT MY ART ) for the project!
Apparently alot of this game was near finished, coded, etc! ( ART ABOVE IS BY NICHOLAS KOLE , JOHANNES FIGLHUBER, INES MARSAL, AND MARIA LOBANOVA )
I dont know if the artists can look into crowdfunding ( the Studio still may own the IP ) , but myself and a few others have been trying to get the hashtag #bringbackprojectdragon get some traction on twitter! Maybe if the internet raises enough stink, the Studio might pay attention. Im not sure how likely that is but I desperately want thus game to exsist, it would be a dream game for me and many others im sure. So please consider joining in if you have a twitter.
"I just need to turn off my critical thinking skills to enjoy this game" Please stand up for yourself. And if not for yourself, for everyone whose labor was cruelly exploited to undermine a piece of art that they were passionate about making. Your intelligence and personhood is being insulted if you feel you must turn off critical thinking to enjoy something.
The overt corporatization of a favorite franchise should not be something you turn your brain off to accept. If you truly loved this world, the story, the effort that went into making it? Then fucking stand up unless you want this to be the new standard.
You can still enjoy something while being aware of and critiquing its flaws. That's part of maturity. Indulge in some, maybe.
This is a call out into the void to the other UK games artists. (I know you're fucking in here, you can't hide from me.)
Yes. Let's start by saying... everything fucking sucks right now. It really really really fucking sucks. It really really really really fucking sucks- but never stop making your art.
Your job role doesn't define you as an artist. Right now, in this age of AI-driven, race-to-the-bottom, fascist end state capitalism (wowie that's a mouthful), it is more important than ever to keep concept design diverse and full of honest, good faith representation, queer voices and meaningful, heartfelt work.
In the words of some motherfucker:
This too shall pass.
This too shall pass and you need to be here on the other side when it does. Do whatever you need to get by but don't let your dreams get smothered by this. You are an artist, your work is valuable, your voice is important. None of these things are any less true because of decisions made in a boardroom you've never seen the inside of.
About Clair Obscur Using GenAI (aka what people mean when they say "all games use AI now")
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has recently gotten some flak for using AI-generated assets in their game.
Since I played and enjoyed this game, I wanted to know which assets they were referring to. After some research, it appears to be these newspaper textures that were AI-generated.
These are the only ones I could find online. I didn't find these during my own playthroughs, because they were patched out of the game 5 days after launch.
These are the new textures you'll find if you boot up the game now.
I have little doubt that the initial newspaper textures were AI-generated. In an article by from Jorge Morla from El País, Sandfall Interactive producer François Meurisse was very open about their team using AI.
Reading this article gave me a clearer picture of how AI was implemented during the development process. If Sandfall is to be believed, they did not prompt or use an AI model themselves. Rather, they bought these assets pre-made from a third party.
What most consumers don't understand about a lot of big media projects is that majority of them are highly iterative processes. A lot of animation rigs, models, etc. aren't made from scratch. They're built with game engines that offer pre-made and pre-programmed code to build off of. Sandfall outsourcing assets and using them as placeholders is as common as sampling is to the music industry. Because this is Sandfall Interactive's first project, they haven't developed any of their own in-house assets, so it is unavoidable that they will have to purchase assets during the initial stages of development.
That being said, judging from the quote from Meurisse, some people on the team were clearly aware that the assets they were using were indeed AI-generated. Personally, I rather they excluded those from the development process entirely, but this does not mean CO:E33 itself is AI slop.
GenAI is so ubiquitous in computer programming and development that the only way to guarantee that no part of the process ever involved AI is to make it all from scratch in-house. And even the most vigilant creators and developers will unknowingly end up using an AI-generated code or asset because it is simply everywhere and yes, that sucks.
Even outside the space of game dev, even the most ardent anti-AI people will end up reposting or sharing an AI-generated article or cat video despite their vigilance and better judgment. It is not a moral or intellectual failure not to recognize AI. It is designed not to be recognizable. It is programmed to actively mimic people and adapt to circumvent whatever "tells" we use to differentiate it from them.
GenAI is to digital production as sweatshops are to physical supply chains. You will inevitably end up eating or wearing something that was made with slave labor. It is an insidious evil that's a byproduct of globalization's exploitation of labor.
Does this mean that game devs should just give up and use the orphan blood because there's no escaping the orphan-blood harvesting industry? No, not at all! These studios SHOULD be held to the fire for using genAI the same way a fashion house is for using sweatshops. Sandfall most likely did not use the orphan-blood harvester themselves, but they knew these assets were AI-generated and they should rightly receive (proportionate) pushback for that.
My only call for nuance is that their talent and the message of their work is in no way diminished by making a mistake all of us have made and are capable of making. The paint was mixed with blood, but this is a goddamn bloody world where its being pushed down our throats. No one is "pure."
There will be more headlines of games you love reportedly using AI. Look up how they did and practice discretion in how you believe it reflects upon their work. Best we can do is try to be vigilant, yes, but the reason genAI sucks is not because it "taints" human art and everything it touches. It's because it spreads misinformation and exploits the labor of others — don't do the same thing it does by saying that CO:E33 and every game from 2024 onwards is thoughtless AI garbage and dismissing the human effort that was put into them just to assuage the paranoia of being "duped."
This is me once again pleading to everyone to know the humans behind the product. Know their process, know the studio's history, and judge from there whether this is a studio you want to support.
