Developers do not in fact welcome our new AI overlords.
Disclaimer: The author of this piece consulted on the creation of questions for the 2025 State of the Game Industry survey and assisted with copyediting its contents.
This week's data from the annual Game Developers Conference State of the Game Industry survey is one hell of a doozy. In addition to revealing insights on the wave of layoffs and increased interest in PC game development, the results show a major year-over-year shift in developer opinions on generative AI technology.
Specifically, developers are much more pessimistic about tools like Copilot, ChatGPT, and MidJourney than they were the prior year. In 2024, 21 percent of game developers thought generative AI would have a "positive" impact on the video game industry. In 2025, that number has dropped to 13 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of survey respondents who think it will have a "negative" impact on the industry increased from 18 percent to 30 percent. This change comes even as more developers report using generative AI tools, with the number rising from 31 percent in 2024 to 36 percent in 2025.
But one eye-opening slide shows who is adopting AI tools in game development—and for the most part, it's not the people programming or creating assets for games. The heaviest AI use showed up for those working in "Business & Finance," at 50 percent of respondents. Next up were those in "Production & Team Leadership" and "Community, Marketing, & PR" at 40 percent of respondents each. Developers in all other departments reported less use.
Why hasn't adoption reached the rank-and-file of game development yet? Well one respondent who answered the question "what concerns do you have about Generative AI, and what can be done to address them?" may have had the simplest answer—one that goes beyond the ethical concerns over using the technology. "No matter how you put it, generative AI isn't a great replacement for real people and quality is going to be damaged," this person said.
The lack of enthusiasm from developers attending GDC is almost an inverse of the breathless hype surrounding generative AI in the broader marketplace. You'd think there would be more alignment if you take claims about the technology at face value. After all, boosted productivity and faster asset creation aren't inherently bad things—developers have been creating tools to solve those problems for as long as there's been a video game industry.
It seems developers view AI tools as going beyond supporting productivity and creativity. "I think AI generated code is currently low quality, and can give rise to subtle bugs that the person using the AI doesn't understand," one respondent told GDC. "If the models advance far enough, this concern might go away, but I'm skeptical. I think right now developers are better [off] avoiding AI code, unless it is for something small like a one time use script."
"People will end up having to review generated content rather than create things themselves, which is not what we all get into the industry for," another wrote.
A third respondent warned that the video game market could become "oversaturated" with "low effort or AI created projects, content, and games that are put out to make money," comparing it to the mobile free-to-play market, currently dominated by fast-follow games that are constantly A/B testing to maximize placement in the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
These attitudes run counter to other surveys about developer adoption of generative AI. Organizations like venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz (a16z) have polled developers and reported that 73 percent of game studios using AI technology, and that about 67 percent of developers are "excited" about using AI in game development.
What's driving that gap in results? "A16z's methodology is opaque so it's hard to say for sure, but it's almost certainly a sampling issue," Omdia analyst Liam Deane explained to us. "If you ask developers to answer a survey about AI in games, the people who respond are inevitably going to be much more interested in AI than the average developer."
He noted that the Game Developer Collective survey (run by Omdia in partnership with Game Developer) has found 35 percent of game developers are reporting the use of generative AI tools, a number that runs parallel to data from the State of the Industry survey. "These two surveys have very different methodologies, so the fact that they produce such similar results is a good sign that the data is pretty accurate."
Whatever you think of the data, what matters most at the end of the day is whether the rank-and-file are comfortable using generative AI tools to make fun, successful games. So far signs say they're not quite there yet.
The question is—will they ever be?
Game Developer, Omdia, and Game Developers Conference are sibling organizations under Informa.
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