from the none-of-this-makes-sense dept

‘Tomb Raider’ Remake Developed Using Some AI, Everyone Freaks, Crystal Dynamics Responds, And I’m Confused

Full disclosure: this post is going to pose way more questions than answers. That’s because the story of the Tomb Raider remake being produced by Crystal Dynamics and its inclusion of an AI disclosure on Steam makes no sense to me.

So, let’s start at the beginning. Crystal Dynamics is making an updated version of the first Tomb Raider game and it looks pretty great from what I’ve seen. But, as gamers are now accustomed to doing, the public came to notice that the game’s Steam page included one of Steam’s mandatory AI disclosure notices. It reads thusly:

AI-assisted tools were used during development to support some early exploration and temporary development content. Any AI-assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team.

And from there, because, of course, everyone freaked out. Comments from all the corners of the internet began flooding in, swearing off ever touching this game because it was developed using AI. What AI? We don’t know. How much was it utilized? No real content there, either. But is the game going to be good? It doesn’t fucking matter, because AI was used and that’s all you need to know in order to know that this game is going to be artless pap fit only to be mocked and laughed at.

Even some gaming journalists have gotten into the habit. This is from Kotaku:

GenAI slop potentially showing up in Tomb Raider is disappointing but maybe less surprising than it should be. Phil Rogers, CEO of Crystal Dynamics’ parent company, Embracer Group, last year called genAI a “powerful technology” for “driving efficiency.” Crystal Dynamics has also undergone several rounds of layoffs, completing three just last year and one earlier in 2026.

Here you have a writer who has already reached their conclusion while having almost zero information on which to base that conclusion. They haven’t played the game. They’ve barely seen the content in the game, save for some trailers. They don’t know thing one about how AI was used, where, and in what way. But it’s probably going to be “GenAI slop”. As if there is simply no other possible outcome.

But it gets at least slightly stranger with Crystal Dynamics having responded to some of those concerns over at Eurogamer.

“At Crystal Dynamics, we leverage AI tools to help our teams iterate on ideas faster and more efficiently, while ensuring that all finished content in the final product is human-crafted. Our goal is to empower the creativity and flexibility of our developers to deliver the highest-quality experiences for players everywhere.”

This is where I get confused. If all of the content that is going to make it into the final product is “human-crafted,” then they shouldn’t even have needed to add the disclosure to their Steam page. Back in January, Steam updated its rules around its AI disclosure such that a game with an AI disclosure must have AI-generated content that is either in public marketing materials for the game or in the final product and with which the player of the game interacts in order to require the disclosure.

In its submission form, Valve now specifies that game publishers must disclose pre-made generative AI assets only when used in marketing materials or content that “ships with your game, and is consumed by players.”

In other words, Steam’s disclosure requirement is not concerned with generative AI tools used behind the scenes for efficiency gains (presumably including coding helpers) or office work, but with things like final art, sound, and writing.

Now, I’ll just note that there is a subtle difference in the disclosure notice and Crystal Dynamics’ statement. The former indicates that the game may include AI-generated assets that were then iterated upon by a human developer. The latter seems to say the opposite, where everything in the final game will be “human-crafted”. So… which is it?

As I said from the start, more questions than answers is all I have at the moment. But if the gaming public is going to freak out at the mere mention of some AI being used in some way, somewhere within every new video game that comes out, then this is going to be a very annoying time in which to be a gamer.