this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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[–] deafboy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago
[–] Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works 46 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is a reality. The snake of capitalism is eating its own tail

[–] CMDR_Horn@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Will the end result of this be panacea for the indie Dev? Essentially all the major producers end up killing off all their talent by forcing AI, and those folks now form their own indie studios and make the games we actually want.

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

The question is who funds these theoretical new studios? Indie studios more often than not have to make deals with the devil so they can eat. Then, even if their game is a smash hit, the investors take the lion's share of profit and still control the actual devs by the purse strings. This society is sick.

[–] MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Isn't that already the case though?

[–] Aielman15@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

If you were to listen to the internet, it would seem that AAA studios are be on their last gasp, with indie devs dancing on their graves.

The reality is that, aside from the big indie game of the moment (think Silksong or Expedition 33, if you want to count the latter as indie), most gamers don't care or don't even know indie games exist in the first place.
I have a few gamer friends (each of whom spends a few hours daily on games), and only one of them plays maybe one indie game per year, and only those who manage to breach through his bubble via influencers and streamers.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Indie devs don’t need to reach mainstream mindshare to become successful. An indie team that’s stays small and nimble doesn’t need to reach a million unit in sales. Like how many mainstream gamers have heard of Tiny Glade a game that made a few million dollars created by two people.

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 8 points 2 days ago

Ehhh I know a lot of people that play indie games, but generally they only play one or two genres of them. Part of it is that the terminology gets confusing because people mean different things. Like, other than baldur's gate, I couldn't tell you the last western AAA game I played. But I played FF7 rebirth which is definitely AAA but not what people are always talking about when that talk about AAA sinking. There are also tons of studios that you probably wouldn't call AAA but you also wouldn't call indie. Like, I probably play more games from Falcom than any other studio. They're not huge headcount-wise or cutting edge technology-wise but they've been consistently making games since the 80s. I think a lot of people don't bucket those types of developers in their heads at all.

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

what is going to happen when the prices rocket up and who is going to create the content for future AI?

[–] almost1337@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

One can only hope.

[–] lofuw@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 day ago

Copying != stealing

The laws are written so people richer than you can be even richer. Don't support them unless you're a useful idiot.

[–] MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world -5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Theft of what? The jobs are a legitimate concern though.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I could see using AI for tasks that are so mind numbing and mundane it might actually be cruel to make a human do it.

"I need a perfectly tileable concrete wall texture for a video game, make it light gray with random spots of yellow and white paint."

Took about a minute.

But then, if you're going to do THAT, there are already royalty free libraries where it's already done.

[–] Melonpoly@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Those sort of things are easy to do with procedural textures. You're example isn't even tileable.

[–] MotoAsh@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The problem with your example is there are traditional algorithms that can do that, and better.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They can, but they also don't meet the corporate dictate of "Everyone use AI." 😉

[–] MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

Who are these dictators that need to meet the guillotine?

[–] Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 day ago

Nobody did that by hand even before Gen Ai was invented. Even before photography or computers, there were techniques to get textures without manually drawing them. The splotches, for example, could be accomplished by shaking the brush at the canvas.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Someone skilled in Substance Designer can also do that in minutes. And then you have a file that can generate an infinite number of variations that look artistically consistent including normal maps, roughness maps etc.