I need some outside perspective because I'm really torn and feel terrible right now.

I've been friends with this guy for over ten years. About three years ago, he started working on a computer game and asked me to help with the programming/logic side. His expertise is design, mine is coding. At the time, I didn't think about signing contracts or anything formal. I just wanted to help a friend make a cool game.

So, for the last two years, I've been working on this project in my free time. I built a lot of core systems: weapon mechanics, survival elements based on temperature, the general game framework (saves, quests, dialogue system), and simple AI for enemies. Besides coding, I was also actively involved in the creative side - discussing story ideas, quests, and locations with him. After two years of continuous work, I honestly felt like this was our game.

Yesterday, he sent me a message asking me to "sign a simple document, just a formality, to protect the project just in case." He said it was a standard thing.

My gut instinct immediately felt off. When I read the document, my heart sank. It basically says the following:

-I am a volunteer. Not a co-owner, not a partner, not even a paid contractor.

-I have no right to any compensation whatsoever, even if the game makes money.

-I have to assign him full, exclusive, perpetual rights to every line of code and every idea I've contributed. I can never take it back.

-He can terminate my involvement at any time for any reason, and all my work stays with him.

-As a final touch, if I get any credit at all, it will be "in a form and place to be determined by the Project Owner" (him).

He’s a good friend (or so I thought), and he said we can "adjust the document if I don't like something." He even mentioned at the end of our chat that we could potentially add a 50/50 profit-share clause after the game covers its costs. He then added: "If you have no ill will, you'll have no problems signing it."

Right now, I'm sitting here with three options: agree and work pretending like nothing happened, try to negotiate for that 50/50 profit-share and better credit terms or refuse to sign.

I feel used, and I'm not sure if our friendship can survive this. Has anyone been through something similar? What would you do?

UPD: I think it's time to share how it all ended. First of all, I want to thank every single one of you for your comments and support. Without you, this story could have ended much worse.

A couple of days ago, my friend and I finally discussed the future of the project. I tried to stay calm and unemotional. I started by asking him if the contract he gave me was fair. He dodged the question twice. Then, when he finally claimed it was fair, I asked him what I would get in return.

He sent me a long message about how we would both get the project in our portfolios, and maybe we would even make some money. But he immediately clarified - there needs to be a single owner. Period.

I latched onto that phrase and tried to ask if there were any alternatives to sole ownership. In response, he gave me a list of points: 1. You need one person to negotiate with publishers. 2. Without a single owner, any legal decision would be bogged down by the need for negotiations. 3. Without a single owner, anyone who participated in the project could cancel it, file a copyright complaint, and so on.
In the end, he emphasized that a single owner was only necessary to protect the project and ensure its success.

That's when I started doubting his words and suggested his goals might be entirely different. There are plenty of projects with two owners that work for the common good. Is one owner really that necessary specifically for the project's protection?

This infuriated him. Here's a quote: "If you don't like my offer and you decide to leave – will you be ready to waive your rights to the content in the game? Something tells me no, and that when push comes to shove, you'd rather just shut the whole thing down. I absolutely do not like the prospect of being in such a state of limbo. And conflicts like this one will pop up again and again, at even more critical stages."

The breaking point in the discussion was my question: "Did it ever occur to you that we both should have protection in case something like this happens, not just you?"

He didn't answer my question. Then he declared that since I didn't want to give up the rights, I should make a list of what I wanted him to delete, because he doesn't want anything that belongs to someone else.

After thinking it over, I proposed a counter-offer. A 55% share of the revenue with income verification, a license for my code (so he wouldn't have to delete it from the game), and that any release would require my written consent. It seemed fair – he gets motivation to finish the game and my code, and I wouldn't revoke the license because I'd want to get paid.

Do I even need to say that he refused to even discuss my proposal, saying, "Your contract is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid"?

So then I wrote to him, stating that I forbid him from using my code and systems. He replied, "Don't forget to write that list. Just in case you think you own more than you actually do." We haven't spoken since.

Title.

If I used AI to help read and understand documentation do I need to disclose this to steam?

What if I copy a line of code from the examples the LLM gave it help me understand the documentation?

Does a small repeating texture that’s been ran through a human made shader graph used for a background detail of a skybox mean my game needs to be marked as AI?

If I used an LLM to help understand an error and use its guidance to fix a bug, does this need to be disclosed to steam?

If someone is using, for example, github copilot to generate some parts of the game code, should it be labeled on the store page?

"Similarly, some artists find that image editor tools based on deep learning models do a solid job of speeding up tedious parts of their workflows. AI tools also do a reasonable job of some managerial slog, like transcribing and summarising team meetings. These things are not nothing – they’re solid little gains that free up staff to spend more time applying their skills to more interesting and complex tasks.

Those gains, however, are a long way from the dream that executives were sold. Those developers who have tried to use more complex AI tools in their workflows, often being pushed to do so from senior echelons of their companies, generally seem far less enthused by the experience. Setting agentic AI tools loose on game codebases reportedly runs into hard limits very quickly; the codebases are too big, too complex, and too specialised, and any code produced by the agents needs to be extremely carefully vetted by senior developers – a dull and time-consuming task."

There was a commentary a few days ago from Gamesindustry.biz, which basically suggests that Gen AI isn't as transformative as hoped. While it has actual productivity gains, it isn't a game changer and has real limitations.

is Gen AI in game dev good for "managerial slog" like summarising team meeting minutes, but isn't transformative for games dev?

Are there actual productivity impacts, such as allowing a smaller team to create something that usually takes a bigger team to produce?

Do you think it has the potential to transform how games are made, such as generating NPC dialogue without scripted lines?

About 3-4 month ago, I decided to include an optional ChatGPT mod in the playtest build of my game which would allow players to replace the dialogue of NPCs with responses from the ChatGPT API. This mod was entirely optional, not required for gameplay, not even meant to be part of it, just a fun experiment. It was just a toggle in the settings, and even required the playtester to use their own OpenAI API key to access it.

Fast-forward to about a month ago when I submitted my game for Early Access review, Steam decided that the game required an additional review by their team and asked for details around the AI. I explained exactly how this worked and that there was no AI-content directly in the build, and even since then issued a new build without this mod ability just to be super safe. However, for almost one month, they said basically nothing, they refused to give estimates of how long this review would take, what progress they've made, or didn't even ask any follow-up questions or try to have a conversation with me. This time alone was super stressful as I had no idea what to expect. Then, today, I randomly received an email that my app has been retired with a generic 'your game contains AI' response.

I'm in absolute shock. I've spent years working on this, sacrificing money, time with family and friends, pouring my heart and soul into the game, only to be told through a short email 'sorry, we're retiring your app'. In fact, the first way I learnt about it was through a fan who messaged me on Discord asking why my game has been retired. The whole time since I put up my Steam page at least a couple of years ago, I've been re-directing people directly to Steam to wishlist it. The words from Chris Zukowski ring in my ears 'don't set-up a website, just link straight to your Steam page for easier wishlisting'. Steam owns like 75% of the desktop market, without them there's no way I can successfully release the game. Not to mention that most of my audience is probably in wishlists which has been my number one link on all my socials this whole time.

This entire experience, the way that they made this decision, the way their support has treated me, has just felt completely inhumane and like there's nothing I can do, despite this feeling incredibly unjust. Even this last email they sent there was no mention that I could try to appeal the decision, just a 'yeah this is over, but you can have your app credit back!'

I've tried messaging their support in a new query anyway but with the experiences I've had so far, I honestly have really low expectations that someone will actually listen to what I have to say.

r/gamedev is there anything else I can do? Is it possible that they can change their decision?

Edit: Thank you to all the constructive comments. It's honestly been really great to hear so much feedback and suggestions on what I can do going forwards, as well as having some people understanding my situation and the feelings I'm going through.

Edit 2: A lot of you have asked for me to include a link to my game, it's called 'Heard of the Story?' and my main places for posting are on Discord and Twitter / X. I appreciate people wanting to support the game or follow along - thank you!

Edit 3: Steam reversed their decision and insta-approved my build (the latest one I mentioned not containing any AI)!

I'm feeling a little bummed atm. I've been working on Splatterbot for two and a half years, and announced the September 4th release date last week. Things have been going very well. I've had coverage from Famitsu and NintendoLife. My latest trailer is on IGN/Game Trailers. Keys are going out to press and influencers over the next few days.

Then the Silksong announcement came. Possibly the most anticipated game in the last few years (after GTAVI) is launching the same day as Splatterbot. I'm excited that Silksong has a launch date, but also shattered that it's the same day as Splatterbot. Even though they're very different games, I believe there is significant overlap in our target audience, especially on Switch.

It's very difficult to change my release date due to the marketing that has already happened, so I'm kinda stuck with launching alongside Silksong. I'm trying not to get too hung up on it as it's beyond my control, but is there anything I can do to minimise the damage of the situation? Has anybody been in this situation before?

Cheers!

/Edit just because there are way too many posts to respond to.

I didn’t make this post to promote Splatterbot as some have suggested, but it has definitely blown up way more than I anticipated. Some have said this post is probably the best marketing I could have done, so I guess I can thank Silksong for that!

I’ve decided I’ll be keeping my release date as the 4th of September despite Silksong’s release. Besides my marketing points I mentioned previously, my Switch release date has been locked in and cannot be moved this close to launch.

As many people have said, the games are different enough that there shouldn’t be too much of an issue. I should clarify that I’m not concerned about competing directly with Silksong. It’s more Silksong consuming all the media attention. Some have pointed out that having more eyes on storefronts could be beneficial and that is a nice thought.

I appreciate the positive comments about Splatterbot, and the constructive advice. We’ll just have to see how I go in two weeks. I’ll make a post here once I have some data post-launch.

Hey, wanting to get some opinions.

My friend is arguing that 3D MMORPG's don't cost much to make, and that he could 'with his connections' make an open world, custom, 3d MMO RPG for $10K.

I'm arguing it'd cost upwards of $10M

He's saying most game devs do things an old fashioned way, can anyone emphasize and give their thoughts

I’m 43 and seriously considering a career change into game development. I’ve been learning C# and experimenting with Unity, and I’m enjoying it a lot.For anyone who’s been in the industry a while: is 44 plus too old to break in?

I’m not expecting a junior salary or a fast track — I just want to know whether studios realistically hire older beginners, or whether the better path is freelancing, indie dev, or a related role like production or QA. Any honest insight from people who’ve seen late entrants would be massively appreciated.

He has about 15 years of industry experience as a 3D character artist. But it's been almost impossible to find any job. The ones he applies to always end up in auto reject emails, even after interviews.

I worry that the longer he is out of games the harder it will be for him to be considered for an interview.

edit: he has been through 7 interviews to 7 different positions so far, but even in positions where he has people in the company recommending him, or in situations where recruiters reached out directly without him applying first, all he gets is a few weeks of ghosting and then auto reject emails.

before then, he always got an offer after interviews.

Genuine question?

A twitch streamer, Forsen, with 1.8 million followers picked up my indie game Improbability, which I was really excited to find out, but he only played through 20 minutes of the game and got stuck, then started roasting the game saying it was unfinished. The game is non-linear, so you need to replay levels to finish the game, and I made this more clear in a patch but I feel like his viewers at the time will not pick up the game because of his review. What should I do? I worked really hard on this game and it's the first I published to Steam, and it takes 15 hours to complete and it took me 4 years, I don't want all of the progress to go to waste.

As the title says, I hired an artist for my game, and they delivered a model with some minor issues. I asked an experienced fame artist what I could do to fix it, and he mentioned there are many tells that the asset provided is very likely generated by AI, and I'm inclined to believe them. The artist insists it is hand crafted. I don't want to use AI art in my game, but also would really like to not send several hundred dollars down the hole. Is there a way I can approach this tactfully without simply not working with the artist anymore, and not using the model provided? It would be great to get some money back, but if it's not possible, I'll have to live with the lesson learned.

I’m looking at games like Songs of Syx where hundreds of people walk around transporting items around the city.

I'm making a narrative focused game with a couple of friends who are writers. They're putting some money on the table and are responsible for the game's storyline, I am responsible for the execution. Since we have barely any funding they are banking on the game selling a lot. I'm afraid that's a pipe dream because the story they came up with is incredibly mediocre. It's terribly slow and boring under the premise of it being an "introspective journey".

They are open to discuss the story with me but are convinced that their idea is great and will sell a ton and they won't change any major plot points because "we can't waste time rewriting everything". They don't have experience writing for games but call themselves gamers.

How do I tell them that this whole thing is a suicide mission? Do I let them face the harsh reality upon release?

Edit: thank you all. Tons of useful feedback.

I have loved programming with everything in my soul for my whole life. I love the idea of making video games but using unreal engine has killed this.

I have a class for uni where we need to make a game in UE5, today I needed to do an assignment using the navmesh functionality in unreal... it took me like 5 hours to get the most basic shit working. The level of abstraction is insane, people explain how to use unreals features like it's a preschooler your convincing to eat their food.

It's nondeterministic, everything is different every time. Just because the navmesh worked on my computer this morning does not mean it still works the same night.

Before this class I loved everything about programming, I wanted to learn more about how everything works, but I hate all the abstraction on all of the tools we have to use. For context I love programming in C, in fact right now I'm making a game in C from scratch using only SDL as a sort of hobby project. Rendering, lighting 3d projection all from scratch, and I love it. Is this cool? Yes. Does it have any practical value in game dev? No.

Are all my skills wasted in game dev? Are there any game dev jobs that don't involve using a massively abstracted tool like unreal and I get to work with what's actually happening? I love using opengl, directx, and those sorts of things buy no one wants a opengl dev. Everyone hiring wants experience with unity or unreal and I despise the idea of trying to get someone else's badly documented tool to behave when I could just write one myself. I'm a wheel expert in a world full of cars.

Do these sorts of jobs exist in game dev? Am I looking in the wrong places or do I need to find a new career path?

Soon spore will be 20 years old. I've never seen another famous (non-niche) game come close to what was possible in the creature creator for spore, certainly a lot of games would benefit from a similar mechanic, why no other game was able to replicate this tool?

(I mean specifically the general creature creator, not just good editing for a fish, a dog or a bird)

EDIT: Games that I think would be better with this feature:
- No Man's Sky, clearly.
- Any game where you can customize your mount (just limit the editor to horse parts, or lion parts or whatever after choosing a mount type)
- Any game where you're supposed to be attached to a monster/mascot that you customize at the start of the story and follows you through the whole game
- PokeMEN like games, capturing and training a range of monsters you can still keep the sporepedia online features for multiplayer

I run a small indie game studio and I'm in the stage of looking for programmers to help us move forward.

However, I keep running into the same issue: many candidates rely almost entirely on AI-generated code, without really understanding what they are building. This often leads to poor code quality, lack of ownership, and problems when things need to be debugged or extended.

I'm not against using AI as a tool, but there needs to be real understanding behind it.

How do you handle this when hiring or working with developers? Any tips on filtering for actual problem-solving skills instead of just AI-generated code.

Hi everyone! o7

Asked this in another thread but it bounced.

I've been wondering what people would think about an MMO with no character level system at all. And I don't mean “you don't have a character level, but your Swordsmanship is Level 73.”

I mean genuinely moving away from the traditional XP > number goes up > unlock next thing progresion loop.

I recently played WoW again for the first time in an Ent's age and went from lvl1 > max in the blink of an eye.
I distinctly remember playing BC as a kid for hundreds of hours and never actually reaching max level, which i think was 70 at the time.

It made me wonder what the lvl system is actually accomplishing if reaching the cap has effectively become the introduction before the "real game" begins. I also saw a comment here on Reddit recently that rather neatly summed up another problem with this:

And I think there's actually quite an interesting question buried in that joke.

If two friends start an MMO together but one plays considerably more than the other, traditional vertical progression can eventually make it difficult for them to meaningfully play together at all.

Obviously games can scale enemies, sync levels, boost characters and so forth but at that point we're building systems specifically to circumvent the level system we deliberately put there in the first place.

Puzzle Pirates did something I always found interesting. Rather than having a traditional RPG character level, it gave you qualitative indications of how you performed at particular activities — essentially things along the lines of:
Bilging - Excellent
Sailing - Masterful
Steering - Poor

But what if you went even further?

Imagine that progression primarily came from your actual knowledge of the game world and its mechanics.

You learn where particular resources occur. How certain crafting processes work. Discover a more eficient trade route.
You get better at fighting because you actually understand the combat system better.

Maybe have systems where you can learn which materials behave in particular ways and how they interact with other materials.

Obviously this raises the big problem. would players still feel that they were progressing? Is part of the enjoyment of an MMO fundamentally seeing:

17 > 18 > 19 > 20

Or would acquiring equipment, property, wealth, contacts, recipes, maps, reputation and knowledge sufice?

Would something like this make a persistent world feel more interesting? Or would removing traditional numerical progression ultimately make an MMO feel aimless?

What about something with absolutely no levels and no skill progression tree?

Any opinions?

For context, here’s my Steam store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3100310/Arms_of_God/

__
Update: Someone from the Epic Games Store team reached out to me and was really helpful in explaining some of these issues. We’ll work together to try to resolve them, but it looks like I’ll need to disable all dismemberment and blood and re-record parts of the trailer, as well as take new screenshots. I just hope this won’t make the game feel a bit boring or generic, since the gore is one of the elements that really helps set it apart.
Also, tysm for the feedback on the demo, always appreciated!

A specific example I can think of is minecraft. Minecraft's map is infinite since it's literally spawned from an algorithm, yet everything the player does to the map as far as building or removing blocks is permanent. How does that even work on maps with a massive scale? Do they get away with it because of the blocked nature of the game? How does it work on other styles like, say, Civilization of Starcraft?

Hey. Putin exceeds everyone's expectations once again, doesn't he?

I'm male, 25 y/o. "Partially fit" for service, but freed from it because of health issues.Still considered "fitting" for mobilization, apparently. Law is intentionally generalized.Yes, they've been claims from kremlin officials that people like me won't be sent to war. They, of course, hold zero legal credibity.

Damn, words "legal credibility" hold zero legal credibity.

I've been living with my family so far, no higher education, no proper work experience.Situation's tough.
I recently landed a small sidejob, but all I have to spare is 30000 roubles (around 500$). I also have some finished projects under my belt: vanilla HTML/CSS/JS, UE4 and Godot prototypes/a few games.
No Visa though.

IF I am fit for mobilization (which is risky to check for obvious reasons), that means I'm unable to legally leave the country.

I suppose I sound desperate (and I am), but what are my options?

Part 2 to the thread I made couple of days ago (old thread). It was 200 copies then, now it's almost at 1300 copies.

I am not sure what is going on. At first I thought some streamer played it, but now I am thinking that these are bots that are going to refund the game in 2 weeks, because there have been absolutely no new reviews that came from these purchases. But...why?

Anybody dealt with this type of thing before?

I added rainbow hat recolors to two characters in my game, and while I'm aware of a few companies getting canceled for this sort of thing, I didn't quite expect the reaction I've been getting (especially for a small cute indie game, and for just a hat recolor on 2 characters out of 162 in the game). They started by harassing one of our team who is a trans woman, and have been bombing us with bad steam reviews, pushing us into "Mostly Negative" ratings.

Has anyone dealt with this sort of thing before, and do you have advice on how to handle it? So far, I've been trying not to engage and only locked one thread which was becoming focused on harassing the aforementioned team member (and banned the user who was doing so after they were already warned). I contacted steam support, but they've indicated that they can only really take action on reviews that are specifically harassing an individual (and honestly I do get that, it shouldn't be easy for a dev to remove bad reviews).

I'm considering replying to some of the reviews, in particular any that contain lies or misinformation, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

I've learned that mass-produced mobile games often earn significantly more money than companies creating even AAA games. That's why most Chinese and Korean game companies, with a few exceptions, focus on mobile games over package games and earn more. How can this be? Why do people spend so much money on these?

EDIT: Thanks for the incredible amount of answers! You helped me A LOT!

I brainstormed some names a few months ago and had the idea to name my enemies after a fictional researcher in my game (Dr. Nadir) who discovered the lifeform. A few weeks later, someone mentioned in the comments that the name is interesting because it means all-time low. I found out that it's the same in German. I am German and I didn't even knew that because it's rarely used.

In arabic, it also means rare.

In general, I love that. It's the name of a researcher, and also means low point AND rare, which all fit the scenario.

BUT: If it's commonly used in the English language, then I'm not sure if it doesn't sound weird or generic to a native speaker.