Horror's defenders, Steam's slop problem and BioWare's reported fate

Rob Fahey of GamesIndustry.biz argues that a concerted and not especially subtle campaign is under way to manufacture consent for AI use in game development. He casts the flood of generated games as a problem that lands on storefronts, which have to absorb it. The piece adds an industry-trade voice to the Steam clone-game argument, and it frames the issue as one of persuasion as much as volume.

CounterpointPlatform and engine holders see it differently: Roblox says AI-assisted development is driving an "explosion of content", and Epic has said it will use generative AI across Fortnite and Unreal Engine 6.

Previously: Aftermath argued that Steam has become de facto infrastructure and that Valve is not acting like its custodian. — Friday October 30 edition.

Nicolas Lovell of Spilt Milk Studios looks back three years to the Kickstarter for the cosy shop sim Trash Goblin. Seventy-four publishers had turned the game down, one of them pulling out in what the team expected to be the final contract meeting, even though players seemed to love it. His argument, per the headline, is that a single budget figure is the wrong way to describe or evaluate a game in 2026.

CounterpointPublishers and investors, who need a cost figure to judge risk and returns, would say a budget remains the basic unit for deciding what to fund.

Ashley Bardhan argues that horror games deserve a place in the artistic canon but are avoided by players who don't want to feel afraid. Developers she interviewed back the case. Hellraiser: Revival narrative director Antony de Fault says games lean toward escapism over enrichment, and darkwebSTREAMER's Chantal Ryan says horror exists to confront unpleasant feelings.

Bardhan points to institutions such as the Golden Globes, which has no horror category, as evidence the genre is undervalued, and says the Silent Hill fandom still measures new entries against Kojima's cancelled P.T. She concludes that players need the courage to be frightened because art reflects the unpleasant parts of life.

CounterpointPlayers who choose games for escapism would say that wanting comfort is not a failing, and de Fault himself acknowledges that the medium leans that way.

Nathan Grayson hosts Max Scoville and Brian Altano, who each spent over a decade at IGN before layoffs pushed them to launch the independent X Button network about two weeks ago. They argue that IGN is hundreds of different people, so treating one reviewer's score as the outlet's verdict is a mistake. Altano describes waking up to anger over a review he never wrote, citing the backlash to a ten for Mixtape, and says audiences read any review as a slight against a product they are invested in.

CounterpointCritics of IGN's scoring would say a masthead trades on one brand and can fairly be held to account for its aggregate output.

Ashley Bardhan writes about developers who put themselves in their FMV horror games. Cara Cadaver uses her own photos and video in Vile: Exhumed, which Steam banned in 2025 for "sexual content with depictions of real people" and which is now free to download. Emily Pitcher draws on her upbringing as a Chinese-American girl for lily's world XD.

Bardhan calls the form autofiction horror and sets it in a line from Roberta Williams' 1995 Phantasmagoria to Sam Barlow's interactive films. She argues that making these games lets their creators reclaim control over frightening real experiences.

CounterpointValve's stated reason for the ban points to a content-rule question about depicting real people rather than a judgement on theme, and it would likely say the rule applies regardless of artistic intent.

EFF has filed an amicus brief in In re OpenAI arguing that narrowing fair use would harm researchers, journalists, artists and ordinary internet users, not just AI companies. It says courts have already found fair use in some training cases, and that treating unlicensed copying as disqualifying would put scraping used by watchdog researchers at risk. It also warns that mandatory licensing would entrench the largest firms, citing Lawrence Lessig on the cost of licensing everything.

EFF adds that creators are unlikely to benefit much from expanded rights, and concludes that rewriting copyright to help them would mostly help powerful media and tech companies.

CounterpointThe authors and publishers suing AI companies argue that training on their work without permission or payment lets models compete with them, and that licensing is the proper remedy.