The Alters / 11 bit Studios
11 bit Studios had to admit that they used AI during the development of The Alters. The creators were not lucky enough to hide their secret.
It all started when the players noticed a piece of background text in the command center that clearly contained a fragment of the chatbot’s response. It read: «Of course, here’s a revised version that focuses exclusively on scientific and astronomical data:», and then — the usual text. The players immediately realized that someone had inserted the language model’s answer and forgot to remove it, so they began to look for other evidence out of curiosity.
The community has reached non-English versions sometimes absurd game about clones where she found other evidence. In the Brazilian subtitles, the text began with the phrase: «Here is the translation into Portuguese:». The Korean translation had the same phrase, which was later confirmed by the developer of the Korean version, Handong Ryu. In his opinion, the studio added localization elements at the last minute, when they were finalizing additional scenes after the main work
However, the acknowledgment of the use of AI did not save the creators from a harsh reaction from players. The most outrage was caused by the fact that the game is not labeled as containing GenAI on the Steam page, despite Valve’s requirements. There are relatively few generated texts in the game, but the fact that they are present without warning causes outrage among some of the community.
As a result, 11 bit Studios had to officially recognize a problem that cannot be hidden anymore. They blamed one of the designers who allegedly used generative AI for the background texture. This text was supposed to be temporary, but it was accidentally left in the final version. The studio emphasized that it was an isolated case that will be corrected in the update with human translation According to them, these fragments make up only 0.3% of the game’s total text (10,000 words out of 3.4 million).
Despite the incident, The Alters were very positively reviewed in Steam. However, the incident put the game on a par with other projects that have been criticized for the unfair or hidden use of AI. For example, Activision was recently criticized for generative cosmetics in Call of Duty. Besides, Frontier Developments had to remove GenAI portraits in Jurassic World Evolution 3 after a wave of discontent.
We’ve seen a wide range of accusations regarding the use of AI-generated content in The Alters, and we feel it’s important to clarify our approach and give you more context. AI-generated assets were used strictly as temporary WIPs during the development process and in a very… pic.twitter.com/Me9oyABOrZ
— The Alters | OUT NOW 🐑 (@altersgame) June 30, 2025
In addition to gaming scandals involving AI —, incidents in other areas continue to occur. For example, the writer published a book with «forgotten» promos for ChatGPT. It also turned out that Chinese students bypass AI detectors… with artificial intelligence.
Source: TechSpot