A small detail in a text was enough for players to suspect that Polish studio 11 bit, known for acclaimed games like Frostpunk and This War of Mine , had used generative AI in its new game, The Alters . And they were right.
In a statement published on Monday (30/06), the studio admitted to using artificial intelligence during the development of the game, released on June 13. The company acknowledged the flaws and promised more transparency in the future.
According to 11 bit, the use, which was not flagged on the game’s Steam page, was limited to translation and graphical text. However, players speculate that the studio may have also used AI in icon generation and character design.
Players spotted in-game prompt
The discovery happened organically. On Reddit, user EarthlingKira posted a screenshot showing an excerpt from the captain’s notes in the game. However, what caught the most attention was the beginning of the text, which displayed a typical “remnant” of a prompt used in artificial intelligence generation tools.
The phrase appears at the top of the excerpt: “Of course, here is a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data”, language that denounced the use of AI in the final content (and which the team missed when copying and pasting the text for the game).
Other examples followed. A Brazilian player identified a Portuguese subtitle from a video played in the game as having the same problem. The text begins with “Of course! The text translated into Brazilian Portuguese is…”, again indicating that the translation was done by AI and without human review.
On BlueSky, users raised the possibility that the company used artificial intelligence in the generation or refinement of icons, but the signs are less clear than the appearance of excerpts from the prompt.
This, for user Daniel Wynter , who posted the suspicion, “is yet another reason for developers to be honest and stop trying to justify gray areas.”
Because of the controversy, on Steam, The Alters began to receive some negative reviews pointing out the lack of transparency on the part of the studio.
Players complain that the use of AI was not previously informed or indicated on the game’s official website. Even so, most of the reviews are positive and there has not been an explosion of criticism so far.
Studio admitted “limited” use
According to 11 bit studios, AI was used in a specific way to create a placeholder text (temporary) for the graphic resource — the captain’s notes — which, due to an internal error, ended up being kept in the final version.
The studio also admitted that it used artificial intelligence to localize licensed videos. In the official statement, the company justifies the use of AI to translate content outside of English due to the “tight deadline” and explains that these translations must be reviewed later by professionals.
“In retrospect, we recognize that this was the wrong decision. We should have simply told you,” the company admitted in the statement.
In the post, the studio focuses on poor communication, not the fact that it used AI. However, this failure alone could result in punishment from Steam, since Valve, which manages the platform, requires developers to explicitly inform when they use AI.
11 bit also signaled that it intends to continue adopting the technology in “smaller” tasks, a practice that is increasingly common — and even advocated — within the gaming industry.
Industry has already adopted AI massively
Gamers and professionals certainly have concerns about ethics, artistic quality, and the impact of AI on jobs. On social media, users have claimed that 11 bit can simply hire (and pay) human artists during development, or they will stop buying their products.
But skipping any game that doesn’t use AI these days might be a long shot. According to MIT Technology Review , AI is already part of the daily routine of 87% of game studios.
Recently, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai stated that game development has become “unsustainable” and that generative AI is the “only effective solution” to balance creativity and productivity.
Of course, there he was referring to the production of AAA games (the most expensive and sophisticated), but a similar view is shared by names like Shuhei Yoshida, former president of PlayStation, who defends the use of it to automate repetitive tasks and sees the use by indie game producers as a way to balance the industry.
On Reddit, the creator of the thread denouncing 11 bit’s use of AI downplayed the situation: “It’s funny to me that they failed to copy the AI-generated text correctly. If they had deleted the sentence, no one would have noticed.”
