Steam users threaten to boycott Metal Eden for using AI voices

To boycott or not to boycott ?

  • Boycott

    Votes: 12 9.9%

  • Not to boycott

    Votes: 109 90.1%
  • Total voters
    121
People losing their minds over 10 lines for one character? I couldn't give a shit. If the game is priced in the budget range, I'm picking it up. I enjoyed the demo and hopefully the delay let them polish it up a bit.

The same people moaning about a game using AI voices probably watch AI voiced, or even fully AI generated, social media accounts on YouTube, Instagram, and/or TikTok without batting an eye.
 
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Not really a problem assuming they're not lying and using AI for dubbing was in fact very limited (and not for a human character). I still have my limits when it comes to stuff like this and I wouldn't buy a game if some major scenes or characters were done using AI.
 
MagusMajul said:
South Park Jobs GIF
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GUARANTEE if someone said YOU can have 1x-3x the pay, but 3 people lose their jobs, you would say "fuck those guys" without hesitation because you're getting paid and they're not.
 
digimaster7 said:
I used to hate AI as much as the next guy, but then I tried Copilot and god damn it really is freaking convenience. for example if I want to understand a code with complex syntax I just copy paste the whole thing and it literally explained it to me step by step instead of being roasted on stackoverflow 😂
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i told you.

I like the IA

:messenger_tongue:
 
digimaster7 said:
I used to hate AI as much as the next guy, but then I tried Copilot and god damn it really is freaking convenience. for example if I want to understand a code with complex syntax I just copy paste the whole thing and it literally explained it to me step by step instead of being roasted on stackoverflow 😂
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I don't miss the days of posting on Stack. Every question replied by some smartass with non-answers like "what have you tried so far?" and "have you tried searching?" (yes I have). I bet that place is dead now, or soon to be.
 
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hussar16 said:
if ai is used for smaller games to help them out i do not care
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Small games, big games. Why does it matter? If AI could help Bethesda to release The Elder Scrolls VI before I'm 55, and with more than 10 cities, then great bring on the AI revolution!
 
Personally I wouldn't get a game using purely AI voices, but I wouldn't bring out torches and pitchforks either.

And I think a studio doing a mix of real VAs for main roles and some AI for NPCs or secondary characters might not be bad if done right.
 
digimaster7 said:
I used to hate AI as much as the next guy, but then I tried Copilot and god damn it really is freaking convenience. for example if I want to understand a code with complex syntax I just copy paste the whole thing and it literally explained it to me step by step instead of being roasted on stackoverflow 😂
Click to expand...
Modern LLMs are indeed pretty good for code related work, research, tutoring, and so on.

Personally, I use Anthropic for coding, ChatGPT for general stuff and Gemini/NotebookLM for research.

CoPilot kept giving me worse results vs ChatGPT models it's using so I don't use that one.
 
To be honest i dont have a problem with this if its used only for background npc's chattering away, like in a bar or a crowd scene or something. If they start doing it with main characters though, yikes.

I think part of the problem people have with AI is just how much of it has effected Youtube and other video sites. From cheap and tacky looking thumbnails, to cringy fake content, to AI narrators missprounouncing simple words etc.

It gets tiresome.
 
I played wow classic last year at some point and i added a mod that gave the character ai voice acting. Was pretty decent. Who gives a fuck?
 
AI could help gaming in several good ways. Like f.ex.the headache of repeating lines and voices in open world games and others (like ATC in flight simulators).

I mean, for a skilled developer it can be a good tool. For a slop developer it won't change much.

I mostly only care about the end result.

The overarching impact to society and its mitigations is a concern that independent experts, scientists, politicians and people have to figure out on a bigger scale than this.

Thus I refrain from "boycotting".
 
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geary said:
That's one of the stupidest thing ever heard on this site. By your logic, we should still be pre-industrial revolution.
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Oh really? Then why did Youtube officially remove monetization to any channel using AI to voice their content or in general to make a collage of videos for their content? Because its uninspired, lazy, quickly done slop. You are literally comparing beneficial tech to a fucking written prompt: "say this sentence in a rough female voice".....wow, what advancement. Nobody is saying all AI is bad, but next time in a few years when your game is 80% made by AI, dont come here complaining how you could of done the same thing in your own bedroom but now they are charging you $100 for a game. By your logic, your children will be braindead by the time they are 12 because they wont even use any critical thinking left and instead, AI is going to give them the answer.
 
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AeonGaidenRaiden said:
Its slop. As soon as I hear Ai voiceover on a YT video, it tells me the creator is not confident or that is lazy as fuck and wants to make the easiest possible content. Same feeling towards developers. By adding Ai voiceovers, you arent paying someone that does that for a job. Why should anyone support such practice?
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This is literally the only correct statement in this entire thread so far. This content-theft system that people fraudulently call "AI" represents industrial-scale laziness.

In a few months' time you're going to be hearing the argument "X industry is non-sustainable without AI!", which of course is a complete, heaping load of bullsh. The videogames industry will eventually start crying about it, too. "The costs are just too high! Look at the bloodbath! Its either we embrace <<content theft>> (AI) or you just won't have any games to play!"

This is just what they want. It's not anywhere close to what we need. It's a nonsense dream most people here seem to have, where people throw a few words into a parser and - pop - out comes an awesome game with infinite possibilities. That's gonna hit a brick wall really fast, and in the future when everything reeks of flavorless slop, it's gonna hit hard.
 
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I use it daily now and there's no way I could replace it with a single hire. Maybe not even 3 hires. People are crazy if they think they can compete. Retool those skills homie.
 
I understand people potentionally losing out on work and that sucks, but selfishly, if companies us A.I to do a humans work and reduce development time, the price of the game should be less. This will never happen of course, in fact prices are going up, so I think people will end up being on the same side of this arguement for different reasons.

Devs have gotten so lazy since the internet became standard and they can patch whenever they want. With DLSS and Frame Gen, it is used more and more as a crutch versus a user end tool. When A.I becomes standard, I can't help but feel devs will again use it as an excuse for less effort. Maybe I'm just bitter the way gaming has gone the past 15 years or so, but their track record is what it is.
 
One man Developer using AI to deliver an indie dream game? ok.

Ubisoft using AI to deliver their same fast food game from 15 years ago? Not ok, but not deal breaker either. At least I know what I'm buying.
 
Most of the games ppl play already have used AI during development in one way or another and most ppl is not even aware of. Anyone boycottyng a dev for using AI might as well find another hobby.
 
There are arguments for not using AI in video games, but this isn't one of them. It doesn't sound like proper VAs were removed, but the game world was made more elaborate by including voiced characters that otherwise wouldn't be voiced or present because of budget/time constraints. This is the ideal use of AI in development, in my opinion. Make the leaves and generic assets, add voices to the crowd/unimportant NPCs, etc.

Also, just my mostly unrelated opinion, but English (mostly American) VAs have by large forgotten that they're doing a job meant to help people enjoy a game. Now it seems 100% agenda pushing and political shit. I do like that a lot of Eastern video game developers are using EU/UK voice agencies for EN Dubs instead of the more popular American ones, for this very reason.
 
I'll record the 10 lines they used AI for for free if they really want. This seems like a non-issue.

Edit: I just sent them an email offering to re-record their lines pro bono. This is such a stupid reason to boycott an entire game, I hate to see an indie dev get shit on for something so small.
 
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Eh.. Isn't this exactly what it should be used for?

I guess the business-end of it will have to be ironed out, but having people license their voices to be used by AI is exactly what I had in mind. Must save huge amounts of time for any game that makes heavy use of voice acting.

But even then, wouldn't Bethesda, for example, 100% own all of the voice over work for all of their games already? So in their case they could technically just train an AI on the current content portfolio and get pretty great results. Or should it be considered unethical to train your AI on your own data in that case?
 
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Hari Seldon said:
The hate against AI in video games seems drummed up by industry insiders who are friends with these voice actors. Voice acting is definitely going to be deleted by AI, there is nothing they can do to stop that. However actual live acting is completely AI proof.
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AI voice acting, as with any other form of acting, will fail to fully capture the human experience.
 
My vote would be... would it have being voiced if there wasn't made with IA... and the answer will be the same as If you should boicott or not the game.
 
Copy/paste was the first step. Without having to do the work, a human can copy/transcribe anything they want in seconds. Do you have any idea how many jobs this cost us?

For a really strong economy. We should still be typing code in off pieces of paper. That would be even better!
 
ElevenLabs AI is amazing, so I wouldnt call it slop ... and also in a game with a lot of dialogue i think 10 sentences is really not something that we should blame a small studio
 
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