Selective Honesty: Why Game Studios Will Keep Using AI — and Talk About It Less

Over the past year, the AI conversation in games has shifted in a way that feels subtle if you’re inside the industry — and blunt if you’re outside of it.

The reaction to **Clair Obscur: Expedition 33**, and the renewed attention on comments coming out of **Larian Studios**, weren’t really about technical details or production workflows.

They were about discomfort.

And more specifically: a growing mismatch between how games are actually made, and how players _want to believe_ they’re made.

The Backlash Wasn’t Nuanced — and That’s the Point

A lot of industry commentary tried to reframe the controversy as a misunderstanding.

That players were fine with AI in tooling.

That concept art was somehow separate from the “real” game.

That people just didn’t understand pipelines.

But that explanation doesn’t really hold up.

For a noticeable portion of players, the issue wasn’t _where_ AI showed up.

It was that it showed up at all.

Once AI enters the creative process, the distinction between “assistive” and “authorial” stops mattering to them. Not because they’re uninformed, but because they experience games as finished works — not as a series of production stages.

From that perspective, concept art isn’t a disposable step.

It defines:

- Visual identity

- Mood

- Character presence

- The emotional texture of a world

If AI influences those early decisions, then AI has influenced the game. Full stop.

That’s the lens most backlash is coming from, and it’s not going away just because studios explain themselves better.

The Larian Shift Wasn’t Hypocrisy — It Was Reality

This is why the recent discussion around Larian resonated the way it did.

Earlier on, leadership had been openly critical of AI in creative work. More recently, that position softened: AI may be used for concept exploration in future projects, even if final assets remain human-made.

From a development standpoint, this makes complete sense.

Concept art is fast, iterative, and often thrown away. It’s where teams test ideas, discard them, and move on. AI can speed that up dramatically, especially under the budget and timeline pressures modern studios face.

But from the outside, that distinction barely registers.

Concept art shapes direction.

Direction shapes everything that follows.

So even if AI never touches a shipped texture or model, its fingerprints are still there — in silhouettes, palettes, and tone. To many players, that means it’s already part of the product.

That’s where the tension actually lives.

Why Studios Will Keep Using AI Anyway

Here’s the part that tends to get glossed over in public debates:

AI is genuinely useful in game development.

Not in a speculative, “someday” sense.

Right now.

It reduces iteration time.

It lowers pre-production cost.

It lets smaller teams explore ideas they otherwise couldn’t afford to touch.

In an industry already dealing with layoffs, rising budgets, and shrinking margins, those benefits aren’t optional. They’re survival tools.

No studio looking at a multi-year production cycle is realistically choosing to ignore something that can shave months off early development.

So usage isn’t the question anymore.

Visibility is.

From Transparency to Risk Management

What’s starting to change — and will be much clearer in 2026 — isn’t whether studios use AI, but how much they’re willing to talk about it.

You’ll likely see:

- AI deeply embedded in pre-production

- Clear emphasis on “human-made” final assets

- Marketing language that leans hard on craftsmanship

- Very little public discussion of tooling choices

This isn’t about deception.

It’s about risk.

Right now, the public conversation around AI in games is mostly binary. Once AI is mentioned, nuance collapses. Assistive use, exploratory use, and generative authorship all get flattened into the same category.

From a studio’s point of view, volunteering details just invites backlash they can’t meaningfully resolve.

So instead of explaining pipelines, they’ll stop opening the door.

Why “Just Be Transparent” Doesn’t Actually Work

There’s a common response to all of this: studios should just be honest.

But honesty only works when there’s room for complexity.

At the moment, there isn’t much space for:

- Partial use

- Contextual use

- Tooling that doesn’t replace authorship

Until that changes, full transparency isn’t brave — it’s costly.

And most studios can’t afford moral clarity if it undermines player trust.

The Ironic End State

The irony here is hard to miss.

AI will shape games more as it becomes less visible.

By the time the debate cools off, AI will already be embedded everywhere that players never see.

Not because it “won,” but because production realities don’t wait for cultural consensus.

The real question isn’t whether AI belongs in games.

It already is.

The question is whether audiences will ever accept that tools don’t erase craft — or whether studios will continue quietly protecting the illusion that everything came together the hard way.

In games, immersion is the product.

And right now, that includes the story players tell themselves about how the game was made.