Wake up, babe - the stupid ass patent wars are back again, AI edition.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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Oh don’t worry. Some AI boot licker will come to defend this as well. “WelL yOu SeE nOt EvErYoNe HaS tHe TiMe To PlAy GaMeS. ThIs WiLl MaKe GaMiNg MoRe EfFiCiEnT.”
First they came for our jobs, next our hobbies, now for our very entertainment ? Who could ever ask for a feature such as this !?
look, on the bright side they burn up every ressource on the planet.
They need it to do something, anything, to justify the investment. As time goes and the sunk cost gets worse, the attempts will be more desperate.
This kind of feature will be for a fee.
They are all looking for a “killer AI app”.
This is why “consciousness” is trying to be marketed as achieved. This assumes the tasks performed can be varied, adapted to, and the AI left unattended while its rich owner fucks off and no longer has to pretend to pay insurance premiums for workers.
Next new AI feature; an AI that can watch the series/films for you, think of all the time you can save!
My biggest fear with this is an arms race between puzzle developers and these solvers. I hope devs never design their games with the expectation that players will use AI
Hell I'd make the puzzles in such a way just to confuse the AI "helper".
That is kind of same thing. I don't want the existence of AI solvers to influence how a puzzle is designed at all
Why even bother living. Just get "AI" to live for you, and recycle your meaningless meat form.
You exist to be exploited for the benefit of the shareholders. This allows you to work so many more hours a day.
Clearly they think that gaming is the same as working.
Prior art: I remember a long time ago seeing a video of a Barney (as in purple dinosaur) video game for little kids that would just start playing itself if you didn't touch the controller for a while. It was a side scroller, probably NES/SNES/Genesis.
Wasn't there a similar shit patent headline about sony doing that?
Oh yeah, there was, "ghost assistance", aka "no need to look up on youtube"; something which I'm pretty sure exists as "previous art" in some game or another - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-patents-ai-generated-ghost-support-system-to-assist-stuck-players
Also, bots that automate play have existed since the old MUD days, this patent must be like the many that are "something that already exists, but ~~on a computer~~ with AI"
One of the mario games would have Luigi show up and play a level for you if you kept dying
Do you know which one? I would love to see that xD
Apparently it's Mario Maker 2.. so technically a Mario game, but it's not "official" Mario levels, so take that as you will
I mean... Use the developers console or a cheat if you're stuck with something and want to continue playing, or just quit the game. There's no need for an AI to do this.
I do wish that more games still had cheats. It does feel a bit like a lot of newer games have foregone them entirely. You can't type plane into GTA V, and have a plane materialise, like you could in Vice City, for example.
You'd need to mod it in.
I'm not a gamer, but besides getting stuck at one point of an otherwise great game, I read that people were paying gamers in other countries to play as them and "power up" their characters. If that's true, it could conceivably be a "job" for AI.
On the other hand, how do people buy games that are so frustrating that you actively pay money to someone (person or AI) to play them for you? It goes completely against my idea of what a game represents.
It's just p2w with extra steps. Pay to get stronger, or pay someone to play for you to get stronger. When games are designed to either make you play a lot or pay to get stuff to make you stronger, some people will gladly pay to either feel powerful, or just skip enough of the grind that they can focus on what's fun.
I kind of get it, but at the point where I'd be spending hundreds or make someone play for me, I'd just look for a different game.
Eh... Folks used to pay people to level up their characters in WoW....
Then they tell publishers and game developers that more players finish their games on Microsoft’s platform than any others!
This sounds like the ironically good version of the Nemesis System patent - no AI helpers in non-Microslop games for the next 20 years.
Tbh I wouldn't mind this, I hate boss fights in games, I would definitely let the AI do those, and switch back to me for the stuff I enjoy :D
Edit: Though as another commenter said below, a skip button would achieve the same, no need for an LLM if that's what they mean by "AI".
I literally put down the entire Deus Ex series because of that teleporting bitch in Human Revolution. I want to know the story, god damn it!
Elon will love this
A STRANGE GAME.
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS
NOT TO PLAY.
Ain't this just botting?
First pay for the game, then pay for slop shit so you don't have to play the game. Corporate big brain time at its best 😄
To be fair, the corpo slop games aren’t really worth playing, never mind paying for.
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Feed it Ski Free.
That stupid jumpy bear can gargle my balls.
What's the point of gaming with this?
If it works I expect it to be popular. A lot of people don't actually want to engage with videogames and would rather zombie through the experience
Exactly, "I hate the grind", "The boss/sub boss fights are too hard", "I only have so many hours in a day".
Some days I barely have an hour to play a game, sometimes I think maybe, just maybe, I could use a bot/AI to get a little more done while I'm doing those tedious life things, then I think "What's the point if I don't do it myself?"
That's a game selection issue IMO. Busy people shouldn't play games they don't have the time to get invested into. AAA design and marketing has pushed this idea that every game has to be this big 100 hour open world RPG narrative adventure, but there's so much good stuff out there that's over in less time or doesn't demand huge play sessions.
Right. I mostly buy Indy and, I guess, AA games like Arizona sunshine and metro awakening, 6 - 8 hrs of story driven game, I have elder scrolls (not oblivion but the one that they have remade/rereleased like 6 times, only got half way through that as I kept forgetting what I was doing lol)
Skyrim?
Dammit, how did I not remember that name. The only 2 names that would surface were oblivion and TESO. TY
There are plenty of people who are happy to cheat at anything.
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The other thing the helps people get unstuck in games is good game design. 🙃
I suppose this is just the equivalent of reading a game guide that someone has written, but this feels like it could remove too much friction. Are you playing the game if everything just becomes a tutorial?
I do play some video games and I guess this is nice, but what I really enjoy is listening to music. When am I gonna get an AI helper to listen to songs for me so I can get that done in peaceful silence instead?
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