An indie developer says he’s pulling his recreation from Steam as a result of his new girlfriend has criticised its use of AI.
Hardest is a free-to-play roguelike card recreation which makes use of Rock Paper Scissors guidelines however provides quite a few new talents like stopping time and summoning tsunamis.
The sport was launched on Steam on July 1, 2025, however developer Rakuel –actual identify Eero Laine – says he’ll now be delisting it on January 30.
In line with Laine, the sport might be eliminated as a result of the cardboard illustrations have been created utilizing AI picture technology, which he initially didn’t see a problem with.
Nonetheless, Laine says his new girlfriend has satisfied him that generative AI is ethically mistaken, and quite than change all the pictures along with his personal unique work he has determined to take away the sport from Steam solely.
“I made this recreation throughout the summer season in a few months and thought to make use of AI as a result of in college there’s a lot brainwashing on college students and all of the instruments are given free of charge, so I might generate limitless photographs free of charge and so,” he mentioned.
“However I’ve realized the AI is just not truly free, and it has a significant impact on the financial system and setting. Some AI firms can use this recreation simply current as a motive to get extra funding for his or her AI firms, that profit nobody, however quite suck sources from the financial system from onerous working folks.
“I coded every thing myself, so I can sooner or later make a brand new recreation with actual belongings if I really feel prefer it, however the recreation current in its present type is a shame to all recreation makers and gamers.
“Ethically the one logical [decision] is to delete the sport from Steam. The lady I’ve been courting for a month made me notice this.”
Since 2024, Steam has required builders to reveal whether or not generative AI is used of their recreation when submitting it to Steam. This then seems on the sport’s retailer web page in a bit referred to as ‘AI Generated Content material Disclosure’.
In July 2025, an evaluation discovered that just about 8,000 titles launched on Steam within the first six months of 2025 had disclosed using generative AI, in comparison with round 1,000 throughout the entirety of 2024.
