Anti-gen AI clauses have surged across indie and AA video game contracts, with corporate IP lawyer and Voyer Law head Haley MacLean noting that virtually all of her studio and publisher clients now explicitly oppose the technology.

Quick Facts

  • The Source: Corporate IP lawyer Haley MacLean, head of video game practice at Voyer Law, speaking with GamesRadar+.
  • Contract Shifts: Anti-AI clauses have transitioned from a rarity used by risk-averse publishers to standard boilerplate across indie and AA agreements over the past year.
  • Player Impact: Studios avoid generative AI primarily because of strong public and community opposition, a sentiment echoed by Palworld communications lead John Buckley.
  • Legal Exposure: Studios face dual liabilities of potential copyright infringement from scraped training data and an inability to legally own purely AI-generated outputs.

The Shift in Publishing Agreements

Publishing agreements detailing services in exchange for revenue shares increasingly feature explicit bans on generative tools. While only a handful of risk-averse publishers utilized such terms two to three years ago, the practice has trickled down to smaller studios seeking to cover legal bases.

Typical clauses now treat gen AI usage as a material breach of contract. For instance, redacted boilerplate agreements prohibit using generative AI technologies in the creation of game products or inserting assets into AI libraries without written consent.

MacLean defines generative AI in these contexts strictly as technology used to actively generate an asset, distinguishing it from passive exposure to tools like automated search results.

Player Pushback and Community Sentiment

Beyond contract stipulations, public reception heavily drives the push against automated asset creation. MacLean points out that many studio clients explicitly state they want to avoid gen AI because their communities dislike it.

This sentiment spans different regions, with fierce pushback occurring in the United States amid ongoing debates over AI resource consumption and labor issues. Palworld comms lead John Buckley reinforced this perspective, stating that Pocketpair avoids the technology because players reject it and artists prefer hands-on creation.

Legal precedents in the United States and Canada dictate that generative AI cannot assign or transfer copyright because it lacks human authorship. This creates two distinct legal hazards for developers utilizing the technology.

First, studios risk infringement claims if an AI-generated asset mirrors existing intellectual property scraped without permission. Hotta Studio encountered related scrutiny after admitting to AI-assisted tools in Neverness to Everness and pulling flagged assets following visual comparisons to anime promotional material.

Second, studios utilizing AI-generated assets without significant human transformation may lack the legal ownership required to prevent third parties from copying those assets. MacLean argues that if an entire outdoor level relies on AI-generated trees without human sweat equity or original transformation, the studio holds no enforceable title over those assets in court.

Consequently, the time required to review, refine, and verify AI outputs often outweighs the time saved, leading legal counsel to advise that studios are better off relying on human artists from the start.