A roguelike made with AI-generated assets will soon disappear from Valve's popular PC gaming storefront, all because of the power of love
AI in video games is a caustic enough subject that Valve requires developer disclosure if a title utilizes the generative technology. This way, people who have qualms about AI or its impact can opt out of purchasing anything that uses the genAI. One developer, however, is saving everyone from the moral quandary in the first place by just deleting their game altogether.
Hardest is a free-to-play roguelike on Steam that was released in the summer of 2025 with the tagline, “stop time, summon tsunamis, shoot with bubble guns, feed cards to mimic, collect rare negative cards!” Except for a user who says the game helped him bond with his son, Hardest mostly got a negative reception. “I assume the whole thing is AI slop,” one reviewer wrote.
You’d think flopping like this would be the end of the story, but half a year later, Rakuel, the developer, has undergone a revelation. On Jan. 10, the indie creator posted an update to Hardest announcing that he would pull the game from the platform by the end of the month.
The stock broker is a genuinely nice guy, they realize they are soul mates and he quits his job to be a house husband so she can chase her dreams and make an indie game on steam. Coincidentally it has no AI and blows up, and they both get to retire and live off the earnings. Sorry, what were we talking about again?
first time seeing a indie dev go ahead and Remove the whole game because the whole game uses AI.
Until now i only have seen indie devs just use AI to show that its just a tool rather then replacing artists/people, to fit the narrative(the narrative itself is not AI generated) and keep it on the game’s backgrounds(and the devs opted to use adobe firefly cause it claims to be “ethical” there were even mods created to remove the AI apparently).
Meh - sounds like they saved some money by not going heavy into custom assets.
Seems like for a first pass at an indie game you should use asset packs and/or Gen AI. If the game has legs - you make another pass with a bigger investment into it.
Obviously if you enjoy the asset/model/whatever aspect then delve deeper into it.
Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about celebraing an indie dev deleting their game while the biggest games such as arc raiders succeed despite overt ai use that actually displaces voice actors at the company.
The developer gives a pretty decent reason for the deletion, imo:
“I have realized the AI is not actually free, and it has a major effect on the economy and environment,” Rakuel wrote. “Some AI companies can use this game just existing as a reason the get more investment for their AI companies, that benefit[s] no one, but rather suck resources from the economy from hard working people,” he continued.
There’s nothing he can do about Arc Raider’s success, but taking ownership of what he did, I gotta say, respect.
I would never judge anyone for using AI to fill in the parts they need to realize their project vision that they otherwise simpy couldn’t (without putting in a lot more effort into a thing they probably don’t really enjoy), but doing this is still a statement and pretty cool to do.
Not that I’ll ever be motivated enough to actually finish a project, but I’ve thought about the art aspect of making a game, and eventually figured if I’d need to commission more than I can afford, I’d be morally fine with genAI if the game is either free or I use a large portion of profits (if there are any lol) to hire artists to gradually replace the art.
Though I also refuse to give a single cent to all the companies profiting off this so any image gen I’ll ever do will be local on my pc (or for free on some service, I guess).
I don’t think you deserve this many down votes for this take, but I’ll provide a counterpoint. Not being able to afford a real artist is not as large a barrier as you think.
Balatro’s music was created by Spanish musician Luis Clemente, known online as LouisF, after developer LocalThunk hired them on Fiverr in 2023.
It depends on the project, I think. If you require hundreds of pieces to make the concept work (and such concepts have floated in my mind) even hiring an amateur would get pretty expensive. If it’s just small scope art (and for most games it will be) I agree, it can be relatively cheap. Though I’m still privileged in being able to afford that, some people couldn’t even really spare 200€ for a project that, statistically, is unlikely to make even half of that back.
The announcement suggests the developer wrote all the code, but used the slop robot to generate assets. Sounds like the issue is that making art assets actually takes skill, and is something most programmer types underestimate.
I’d agree with this. I’m a dev, I can make things work, I can’t do art/graphics/assets/etc for shit. Give me 5 or 6 hours and I might be able to get you one image that is semi passable if the intended artistic style is “3 year old with crayons”
I’m curious if a dev that carefully manages placeholders could at least garner interest from artists this way. Clair Obscur’s debacle with their Indie Award demonstrates how horrible this can turn out if they miss even one asset; but sadly, I empathize coming from a position where I devoted my studies into learning coding and writing techniques, not artistry.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking, but the main difficulty here is that using AI, even just for temp assets, is a virtue signal that demonstrates bad virtues. That’s why it’s socially repulsive. It’s like inviting someone into your home and watching them stick their fingers in the soup.
It’s not that using an AI asset for exactly 5 minutes only before swapping it out, and never even committing it to your git history—it’s not that this disqualifies your work from being meaningful in other ways, it’s just that being weak on this front, morally, makes you seem like kind of a dipshit. It’s a failure to reject the siren’s song that leads sailors to their death, you know?
And for what it’s worth, I love seeing passionate work. As a proper art enjoyer, a professional liker of things, cubes and cylinders do nothing to dissuade me.
I think he means trying to make a proof of concept to get an artist to do the work.
If I ever get round to making games, I will need an art guy and a sound guy, because I know full well I cant do anything remotely good there. But I cant afford to pay an art/sound guy, so theyre not going to just do work for a random guy on the promise of a cut of the profits because what profits? I’m just a guy with a dream and a promise.
Kind of an extreme viewpoint in my opinion. I personally have no issue with an indy or first time dev using AI assistance for a passion project, my issue is when large studios are replacing talented folks with soulless slop.
Ethical concerns aside there is a difference between using AI to not have to hire artists/developers and using AI because someone can’t realize their vision because they do not have all the prerequisite skills.
On one hand, you have companies using AI when they can absolutely hire a human to do something; on the other, there is someone who couldn’t have published anything without the assistance of such a tool.
People have different passions, and not everyone can be good at art, programming, etc to create something amazing. The problem is when someone uses a tool as a clutch, or uses it to replace human expression of intention. Then it truly becomes a soulless worthless piece of crap.
The best example is people in the scanlation scene that translate manga. It’s fine to use AI to remove the original text while NOBODY is fine with an AI translation. Why? Because redrawing line art is an activity that doesn’t require human expression (it’s more about preserving the original expression of the artist, not changing anything); while localization of text requires a human to interpret and express intent in a different cultural setting.
I know how to program and I can make games with really shitty assets that no one would want to play because it looks like crap. I’ve tried many times and I don’t seem to have the artistic skill set to make it happen. I’ve tried dozens of times to find and pay people on sites like fiverr, with extremely disappointing results.
And as a hobby I can’t just afford to pay thousands of dollars to have someone make passable art either.
And someone like this as a student obviously doesn’t have the money to pay someone to build all their assets.
So what do??? It seems reasonable to have a desire to finish your passion project in some manner
I wanted to make this joke but didn’t want to downplay the breakthrough they had. But man I wonder what her argument was… How did she manage to convince him?
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Can’t forget how polygon trashed Witcher 3 at launch with bad score because of “sexism and misogyny”
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She didn’t like AI for altruism cause, she’s not gonna fall for a stock broker or anything similar.
We can’t understand you with Andrew Tate’s dick in your mouth.
deleted by creator
This is the cowards awful reply…
Smells like incel talk
removed by mod
The stock broker is a genuinely nice guy, they realize they are soul mates and he quits his job to be a house husband so she can chase her dreams and make an indie game on steam. Coincidentally it has no AI and blows up, and they both get to retire and live off the earnings. Sorry, what were we talking about again?
I checked to see if they were from the MGTOW instance
Good for him doing the right thing. Keeping slop out of the world is one of the most moral things a person can do.
That’s why I’m not having kids.
first time seeing a indie dev go ahead and Remove the whole game because the whole game uses AI.
Until now i only have seen indie devs just use AI to show that its just a tool rather then replacing artists/people, to fit the narrative(the narrative itself is not AI generated) and keep it on the game’s backgrounds(and the devs opted to use adobe firefly cause it claims to be “ethical” there were even mods created to remove the AI apparently).
Meh - sounds like they saved some money by not going heavy into custom assets.
Seems like for a first pass at an indie game you should use asset packs and/or Gen AI. If the game has legs - you make another pass with a bigger investment into it.
Obviously if you enjoy the asset/model/whatever aspect then delve deeper into it.
Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about celebraing an indie dev deleting their game while the biggest games such as arc raiders succeed despite overt ai use that actually displaces voice actors at the company.
The developer gives a pretty decent reason for the deletion, imo:
There’s nothing he can do about Arc Raider’s success, but taking ownership of what he did, I gotta say, respect.
I would never judge anyone for using AI to fill in the parts they need to realize their project vision that they otherwise simpy couldn’t (without putting in a lot more effort into a thing they probably don’t really enjoy), but doing this is still a statement and pretty cool to do.
Not that I’ll ever be motivated enough to actually finish a project, but I’ve thought about the art aspect of making a game, and eventually figured if I’d need to commission more than I can afford, I’d be morally fine with genAI if the game is either free or I use a large portion of profits (if there are any lol) to hire artists to gradually replace the art.
Though I also refuse to give a single cent to all the companies profiting off this so any image gen I’ll ever do will be local on my pc (or for free on some service, I guess).
I don’t think you deserve this many down votes for this take, but I’ll provide a counterpoint. Not being able to afford a real artist is not as large a barrier as you think.
https://balatrowiki.org/w/Music
And here it is being played at the Game Awards.
It depends on the project, I think. If you require hundreds of pieces to make the concept work (and such concepts have floated in my mind) even hiring an amateur would get pretty expensive. If it’s just small scope art (and for most games it will be) I agree, it can be relatively cheap. Though I’m still privileged in being able to afford that, some people couldn’t even really spare 200€ for a project that, statistically, is unlikely to make even half of that back.
Companies drive AI development. Your usage doesn’t really matter that much.
Your usage still gives them justification to continue being global parasites. “Our daily active users is (X + you).”
Yea that’s probably true
Why doesn’t he just… I dunno, develop the AI bits? Is he just going to give up?
It sounds like the bigger issue was that the game was bad.
He says he might release a new version with original assets in the future
The announcement suggests the developer wrote all the code, but used the slop robot to generate assets. Sounds like the issue is that making art assets actually takes skill, and is something most programmer types underestimate.
Also, it still kinda feeds the AI narrative if he recodes the AI part.
“See? He used AI to make it faster and get some money then he went back and touched it up, really helpful tool”
Incidentally, if people had skill, they wouldn’t use Ai?
Again, reading the announcement, it sounds like the advice the developer received in school was to use it. He’s realized now that it was a bad call.
There are endless assets online for cheap. It‘s kind of the last thing you would need AI for. If only more people realized that.
This challenge never stopped Chris Sawyer and he went on to develop the most influential video game for his time.
I’d agree with this. I’m a dev, I can make things work, I can’t do art/graphics/assets/etc for shit. Give me 5 or 6 hours and I might be able to get you one image that is semi passable if the intended artistic style is “3 year old with crayons”
I’m curious if a dev that carefully manages placeholders could at least garner interest from artists this way. Clair Obscur’s debacle with their Indie Award demonstrates how horrible this can turn out if they miss even one asset; but sadly, I empathize coming from a position where I devoted my studies into learning coding and writing techniques, not artistry.
My space game was cubes and cylinders colliding.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking, but the main difficulty here is that using AI, even just for temp assets, is a virtue signal that demonstrates bad virtues. That’s why it’s socially repulsive. It’s like inviting someone into your home and watching them stick their fingers in the soup.
It’s not that using an AI asset for exactly 5 minutes only before swapping it out, and never even committing it to your git history—it’s not that this disqualifies your work from being meaningful in other ways, it’s just that being weak on this front, morally, makes you seem like kind of a dipshit. It’s a failure to reject the siren’s song that leads sailors to their death, you know?
And for what it’s worth, I love seeing passionate work. As a proper art enjoyer, a professional liker of things, cubes and cylinders do nothing to dissuade me.
I think he means trying to make a proof of concept to get an artist to do the work.
If I ever get round to making games, I will need an art guy and a sound guy, because I know full well I cant do anything remotely good there. But I cant afford to pay an art/sound guy, so theyre not going to just do work for a random guy on the promise of a cut of the profits because what profits? I’m just a guy with a dream and a promise.
You could simplify art hella if you dont go detailed, procedural (nonai) is fun
Its funny reading the positive reviews and seeing thay they couldn’t even bother spending more than 20mins playing.
Props for it being open source but it seems like a shit game. Needs more gameplay polish I doubt AI was the problem here.
Kind of an extreme viewpoint in my opinion. I personally have no issue with an indy or first time dev using AI assistance for a passion project, my issue is when large studios are replacing talented folks with soulless slop.
No AI or death. Give no quarters. The last time we relented, they broke the agreement of the armistice and made ww2.
Ethical concerns aside there is a difference between using AI to not have to hire artists/developers and using AI because someone can’t realize their vision because they do not have all the prerequisite skills.
On one hand, you have companies using AI when they can absolutely hire a human to do something; on the other, there is someone who couldn’t have published anything without the assistance of such a tool.
People have different passions, and not everyone can be good at art, programming, etc to create something amazing. The problem is when someone uses a tool as a clutch, or uses it to replace human expression of intention. Then it truly becomes a soulless worthless piece of crap.
The best example is people in the scanlation scene that translate manga. It’s fine to use AI to remove the original text while NOBODY is fine with an AI translation. Why? Because redrawing line art is an activity that doesn’t require human expression (it’s more about preserving the original expression of the artist, not changing anything); while localization of text requires a human to interpret and express intent in a different cultural setting.
Personally wouldn’t mind if assets don’t look like shit
Wait, a steam game with vertical aspect ratio??
Make like 38 Special and hold on loosely brother. Keep it up.
Could’ve just re-coded the AI-bits
He says it’s all coded by him, it’s just the assets that are AI.
Controversial opinion’
This is kind of a valid take or use I suppose.
And it’s something I struggle with as well.
I know how to program and I can make games with really shitty assets that no one would want to play because it looks like crap. I’ve tried many times and I don’t seem to have the artistic skill set to make it happen. I’ve tried dozens of times to find and pay people on sites like fiverr, with extremely disappointing results.
And as a hobby I can’t just afford to pay thousands of dollars to have someone make passable art either.
And someone like this as a student obviously doesn’t have the money to pay someone to build all their assets.
So what do??? It seems reasonable to have a desire to finish your passion project in some manner
Seems like it’s all AI-bits
He probably doesn’t know how.
Normalize people taking the L for their bad takes!
What good sex does to a guy
I wanted to make this joke but didn’t want to downplay the breakthrough they had. But man I wonder what her argument was… How did she manage to convince him?
Her personality changed when the latest model released
Same argument could have been made whatever she said
Could’ve ended worse, and it usually ends worse
Sounds like mental illness to me.
What? Which part? Summoning tsunamis? It’s not that fun I’m afraid.