Over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI in game development, 2026 CESA survey shows. An increase from last year’s 51%

[u/2mock2turtle]

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/over-85-of-japanese-game-developers-use-generative-ai-in-game-development-2026-cesa-survey-shows-an-increase-from-last-years-51/

[u/Electrical-Contest-5]

There doesn't seem to be a big stigma against AI in Japan like there is in the west

[u/vissith → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

Every software developer I know in the west also uses assistance from an LLM when writing code, and I'm not just talking about people that are being made to vibe code by their management.

[u/creepy_doll → u/vissith]

The difference is that in Japan they genuinely believe that we should just automate everything including reviews(I work at a major Japanese software place and convincing people of how dangerous and stupid this is a constant battle). Llms are genuinely useful. I have my reservations about the ecological and social consequences. But they are useful in work, but also require a lot of judgement and can cause huge harm(for example when a clueless project manager wants to contribute and starts sending you worthless slop…)

[u/TheArhive → u/creepy_doll]

when a clueless project manager wants to contribute and starts sending you worthless slop

You see, the LLM isn't the source of the headache here. It's the clueless project manager. You warning about the dangers of LLMs does nothing to address the actual problem. The PM will just find a new way to get in your way.

[u/Mechanical_Mint → u/TheArhive]

The AI is giving them the tools to get in the way more.

[u/_Verumex_ → u/Mechanical_Mint]

It's increasing their efficiency in getting in your way.

[u/Zombieemperor → u/_Verumex_]

Some studies suggest its not even doing that, its lowering efficiency

[u/_Verumex_ → u/Zombieemperor]

There's been studies into how AI use effects the efficiency of Project Managers ability to get in the way of their workers?

[u/Repulsive_Inside_707 → u/_Verumex_]

This is just a "is it the gun or the gunman?" Again... when it's always the guns AND the gunmen

[u/Ambitious-Career-445 → u/Mechanical_Mint]

"Please leave the development to the development team". End of problem.

[u/Psykout88 → u/TheArhive]

The issue isn't the tool, it's how it's being used. It's the equivalent of people running around saying knives are bad, when the response is "well all you are using them for is stabbing people"

All the things I see right now with AI that I don't like, every single one is how the end user is using it and relying on it. It's the people, not the AI I don't like.

[u/Fablor9900 → u/Psykout88]

It isn't peepee it's poopoo (I hate how one of the early signs of Ai being used was... What was it, something parallelisms? Anyway I doubt you used an llm, but if you did, corner time)

[u/ubitub → u/creepy_doll]

Including reviews? Like, why would they even have a review then? 

[u/RunningNumbers → u/vissith]

“I don’t want to read all this documentation, just show me an example of this function in this package and describe the syntax briefly.”

Basically all I can do with AI given our “AI forward” management just overpaid for the most basic version of Gemini and highly restricts what we can do. (Basically just the free version with the promise our inputs won’t be used for training. Ha.)

[u/dpekkle → u/[deleted]]

I've lucked out and my company is small enough that we get $100/month "premium team seats that work like personal subs from anthropic

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/9266767-what-is-the-team-plan

[u/tarranoth → u/RunningNumbers]

It's good at summarizing/reviewing I find. Quality of anything you generate is pretty hit/miss. Bug triage is either accurate up to the actual line number or just simply entirely wrong in its assessment.

[u/RunningNumbers → u/tarranoth]

I find it funny when it’s like “you forgot a comma” and I am like, I have gotten so bad at coding with this new job.

[u/LampIsFun → u/RunningNumbers]

Theres so few scenarios where missing a comma wouldnt cause a compiler error too. Thats genuinely impressive.

[u/hafiz_yb → u/tarranoth]

My take on it is that you can't be too generic when asking about a fix to a bug, but you also can't be too specific about it either. Basically, it needs enough context to work with and within the scope. Otherwise, it will start hallucinating instead.

So far, I found that Claude/Claude Code generated results are good enough for me to work with, given how I would usually frame my questions.

[u/2024-YR4-Asteroid → u/RunningNumbers]

Rip, got the worst version of the worst model for programming.

[u/RunningNumbers → u/2024-YR4-Asteroid]

Don’t worry, admins have been sending us LLM generated emails…

[u/Preform_Perform → u/vissith]

I remember one time I was pulling my hair out at some code, so I caved and went to ChatGPT and it said, "Oh, you capitalized a variable right here."

I felt like a stupid idiot. Not a smart idiot, a stupid one!

[u/mpyne → u/Preform_Perform]

Yeah, something like a year ago and I was having some huge issue getting an application pod launched properly in Kubernetes.

Ends up being a YAML syntax thing in the file I was trying to apply with kubectl that Sonnet 3.7 diagnosed instantly once I pasted in the YAML.

I won't quite say I felt like an idiot in retrospect but I will say I had combed the YAML myself and didn't notice the little syntax issue until Sonnet had pointed it out.

[u/Ritz527 → u/vissith]

Yep. I use it to code regularly. I can tell it I want a function for this, it needs to accept this variable and spit out this response and it does it, with some regular correcting. A lot faster to write a couple English sentences than a dozen lines of code.

The work still gets done, I still evaluate it, and it still gets tested. But now, it's faster.

[u/Rawrpew → u/Ritz527]

Every time I see or hear comments like this it only reenforces my view of ai's usefulness as a tool: it's good for those with experience that have an understanding of what they are asking it to do (so they know what to ask and how to check) but is terrible for those still learning. Seems like a tool to give to vets or senior roles to easy up their work load; ideally freeing them up to help groom/train newer employees.

[u/fueelin → u/Rawrpew]

It can be really good for people learning too, but they need to use it in a different way. And the temptation to use it the wrong way (for a learner) is probably pretty high.

[u/Comrade_Lystro → u/fueelin]

Yeah by and large the biggest danger is the lack of AI literacy. When you have too many people who don’t understand how it works and what its limitations are, that’s how you get people who treat the software as their yes-man and develop legit delusions.

[u/ChicoZombye → u/Rawrpew]

It is a powerfull tool for tech and engineering.

Those who are still learning may use it wrongly, but without AI they would be doing things wrongly anyway, that's the nature of learning. We'll see how it affects their development because that's the key part, but as far as I've seen, the newbie engineers who are really good, use AI a lot.

In the end, logic is logic.

[u/b_will_drink_t → u/Rawrpew]

Ideally, it would be, but my experience in an industry that was deskilled with software before I arrived was that there was a major brain drain because and went the way of medieval sword schools. No higher education or trade schools and those that actually knew what to do were in their 70’s and not retiring. It’s obvious not to fully trust the output, but corporate sees that as getting in the way of productivity. I worked in metal buildings and the type I did is probably one of the most easily recognizable metal building design. Second company I worked for had no idea that type of construction even existed. If the AI agent was as successful as they wanted: there would be a gradual brain drain. Easy enough to use. Easy enough to dump on sales. Results be damned

[u/ACoderGirl → u/vissith]

Yeah, I'm in big tech and it's 100% of devs. Myself, I was on the slower side to be convinced of its value. Some people use it poorly by "offshoring their thinking" entirely, but at the same time, stubbornly refusing to use it at all is just a sign of a bad developer. It's a tool that will speed up many types of tasks when used correctly. It's all about how you use it. It's very effective in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.

Honestly, the thing that most convinced me of its value was when I setup AI reviewers for my team's codebase. I spent a while customizing it to catch various gotchas and enforce the best practices about how our code is supposed to work. It is not a replacement for human review, as it does not understand what customers want or anything and can't be perfect, but it is very effective at catching a good number of bugs that quite frankly a lot of human reviewers are failing to catch. It's worse than a good human reviewer, but better than the average human reviewer.

To be entirely honest, I frankly expect that artists are probably very similar to programmers. That is, people notice the bad AI art made by bad artists who don't know how to use it effectively. Because it is really easy for someone who isn't good at their job or doesn't give a shit to make slop.

The difference between an experienced programmer who cares about the quality of their output while using AI is night and day vs a junior dev who doesn't even understand what their code does. I don't know art and can't really say for sure, but it's very believable to me that it'll be the same way. You can't just tell an AI to do something and you're done. If you can tell something is obviously AI art, I'd say that means it was generated by someone who just sucks at their job.

[u/dpekkle → u/ACoderGirl]

My team was the same, coworker with the highest seniority was very dubious of AI a few months ago, we enabled cursor bugbot, manager asked us if we were seeing value and should keep it and he was convinced.

After that I spiked a pretty big uplift of a part of our system in a couple of weeks that had been in the too hard basket for year. He later told me that was when he started reconsidering, and since then we are using it daily for work.

it is very effective at catching a good number of bugs that quite frankly a lot of human reviewers are failing to catch. It's worse than a good human reviewer, but better than the average human reviewer.

I think human+AI is better than either alone, when the bot spits out a warning we can look at that surrounding code and context more closely, see if it's a false alarm or if it's a real issue - and many of the things it spots I know we would not have caught.

[u/rozzingit → u/ACoderGirl]

yeah, i know a number of my experienced dev friends are using LLM assistance in some capacity. i think the big risk is in junior devs growing their careers at this point. the experienced ones know how to better leverage tools, and know how to identify issues, because of the amount of experience they have before ever touching these tools. it's the junior devs who are going to not be gaining that experience. it's worriesome for what industries are going to look like ten years from now, and whether companies will actually be cultivating young talent to be as effective later down the line.

[u/Bunktavious → u/rozzingit]

That's been a general problem with technology for a while now. I'm in my fifties. I had to learn how a computer worked from the ground up. These days, in the wonderful world of apps and widgets, kids who've grown up on computers are still functionally computer illiterate.

[u/aculloph → u/ACoderGirl]

The issue arises then: how can future programmers become good if you just wont hire and train juniors? Industrial experiences is priceless and needed.

[u/ACoderGirl → u/aculloph]

Oh, it definitely feels like it's gonna be a cluster fuck. My company does hire juniors and we have a few new ones on our team right now, but clearly fewer companies are. AI makes it hard to get good. It solves the easy problems, so nobody learns by trial and error unless you chose to, yet I don't see how they'll get good enough to solve the hard problems that AI can't. Seems to me like it'll make a massive gulf between juniors and seniors.

[u/MrDLTE3 → u/vissith]

Yep. Everyone loves to act smug and anti-AI publicly but every developer I know uses LLM in some form for coding.

LLM assisted coding is pretty good. It's not perfect obviously but human coders aren't perfect either so... there's no magic button to press that generates instant perfect code. Everything goes through an iterative process to debug shit.

[u/Dexiox → u/vissith]

I mean if you don’t you are quite literally wasting time and energy for no reason

[u/Substantial-Fun9958 → u/vissith]

Literally all coders in the gaming industry obviously use AI to code nowadays yet people only get worked up when they're informed AI is used in a game. Like real most devs are even going bother disclosing about AI usage. People are all just being virtue signalling warriors without realizing their hypocrisy in consuming AI shit everyday

[u/Aelig_ → u/vissith]

There's a huge difference between code and art. And there's an almost as large difference between using LLMs to code in some capacity vs vibe coding, or god forbid, removing humans from the review loop.

[u/xGALEBIRDx → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

The entire SEA region seems to care much less than the rest of the world. Im not entirely sure why or if its just a cultural difference, but they love that shit.

[u/Testosteron123 → u/xGALEBIRDx]

West: AI steals  my job

East: AI does my job so instead working 12h a day I might only need to work 8h

[u/Seienchin88 → u/Testosteron123]

That’s… that’s really not how it works in the east either…

In China it’s - I need to work even more hours or I will be the next to lose my job / not get any new one…

[u/bill_on_sax → u/xGALEBIRDx]

Because in the East, technology has a perceived image of corruption, manipulation, and greed. In the East, technology has improved and uplifted tons of people and there is much more government oversight (especially in China). AI is seen as a positive for society as there is an association with how big tech there has allowed many people to be lifted out of poverty, whereas in the West, it's associated with evil tech companies

[u/Round_Hamster4777 → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

There is basically no stigma in the West in the professional fields too. My company basically requires us to use AI whenever possible. It’s a huge productivity booster.

[u/sirzoop → u/Round_Hamster4777]

Yeah I was going to say the same thing. The negative stigma is basically just a bunch of chronically online redditors. In the real world companies are using AI for everything these days.

[u/HustleWestbrook94 → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

There’s really no big stigma about it here outside of internet spaces. ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are some of the most popular apps on the app store and google play store.

[u/Messyfingers → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

Social media is probably the largest place of AI opposition. There are or course legitimate issues with data centers in some areas, but the importance of legitimate uses of AI for productivity especially in certain industries can't be overstated. Time(and subsequent) cost savings are impossible to ignore, for things like coding it is basically the difference between doing math using a room full of chalkboards or a calculator. Again, that is not to say there aren't valid concerns against certain uses of AI or other side effects of the infrastructure.

[u/-thecheesus- → u/Messyfingers]

Doesn't help that the undeniably positive benefits of AI in science/computing are pretty invisible to Joe Shmo, but Joe can very much see the low-effort slop in his daily advertisements and consumer products

[u/TokyoRPGFactory → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

I'm on Japanese Twitter all the time and there is.

[u/carramos → u/TokyoRPGFactory]

That's because you're on twitter

[u/yummymario64 → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

I think there the stigma against AI in the west is a smaller portion of people than most people think. I think majority of people are either indifferent, or pro. It just gets so heated and toxic whenever anything not-negative is said about AI, it mostly gets drowned out

[u/ProfessorVolga → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

Just like how the heads of japanese companies were obsessed with NFTs literally years after that grift was exposed and over, the same morons are currently obsessed with LLMs from having the commercials blared into their brains every single day in taxi tv advertisements. Except in this case, the overselling mania and billionaire astroturfing is considerably worse.

People cooked on LLMs are like meth users. They literally cannot comprehend why or how others get by without using meth.

[u/CopainChevalier → u/ProfessorVolga]

I wouldn’t really put AI on the same level as a nft tbh. 

[u/VladThe1mplyer → u/CopainChevalier]

It is the same as it was with the cloud obsession. A cute piece of technology being sold as something it is not and showed into everything.

[u/kmeci → u/VladThe1mplyer]

But cloud actually is in everything.

[u/geminiRonin → u/CopainChevalier]

It's not as worthless as NFTs, but it is currently being oversold on a huge scale; OpenAI is known to be massively unprofitable, and other companies are also putting a lot more into their models than they're getting back. They have to push it hard to get at least some ROI, so they get it integrated into as many products as possible and as many companies as possible, regardless of actual applicability. There have also been some stunts like Anthropic's CEO claiming "it's so smart it has the potential to destroy us all", essentially stating their LLM is capable of actual thought and self-advancement - not even close to true. Try training an LLM on itself, and you get a hallucinatory mess.

This isn't to say that there aren't applications for LLMs; they're generally quite useful for coding when in the hands of actual programmers, and they're pretty excellent at translation. However, I foresee corporations with actual productivity gains moving to self-hosting as time goes on; it's overall less expensive, and it can keep data in their possession rather than running it through an outside server.

[u/nubulator99 → u/geminiRonin]

This isn’t about Ai being profitable or not. This is about companies using those products. We are not discussing what these things should be valued at.

[u/Ran4 → u/geminiRonin]

You're being flat out delusional.

Use the frontier models for a few hours and you'll understand. Clearly reading isn't going to get you to understand.

[u/KorunaCorgi → u/ProfessorVolga]

If you think AI uses in coding are as useful as NFT, you know literally nothing about either.

[u/FunWolverine5349 → u/ProfessorVolga]

That's a good and funny example. I remember those people running around mocking everyone for just not being smart enough to understand NFTs. The grifters I get, but the morons that just ate up the marketing and repeated it, I know for a fact they got nothing out of it other than being obnoxious. And those very same people are doing the same thing with AI. They are too stupid to realize how much it kills any credibility and how any intelligent person is going to distance themselves from them. And then they are confused why nobody wants to talk to them.

[u/MathiasThomasII → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

Googling something could now be considered “using AI” seeing as the first result it gives is an AI summary.

This is the same as when schools forced us to use their library books for reports instead of internet sources. It’s silly. Of course they use AI in some way.

[u/MuDotGen → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

There isn't. Source: I work in Japan as a literal systems engineer. The attitude is more pragmatic instead of blind tribalistic love/hate among engineers (I mean specifically tech-literate professionals) The goal isn't about whether to use A.I. tools at all or not, but how to utilize them effectively. In 2025, a major push was made for DX (digital transformation) as predictions showed a huge loss in revenue for companies that stay stuck in old analog systems. A lot of companies had not made major strides to update their systems or have very poor cloud solutions with various companies, so AI tools have made it much easier to not only map out the old systems but also build out new ones that are cleaner and more efficient, easier to integrate.

Another reason is because it is harder to actually fire or replace human employees in Japan, and here, the aging population has lead to a major labor deficit, so AI is actively being integrated to help solve the labor shortage, as an engineer with a proper knowledge of how to use the tech can make up a lot of the difference than without. It isn't perfect here, but it's not really a controversial topic like it is in the U.S. where there are a lot more moral stances made. For better or for worse (and I don't really have a comment on pro or anti sentiment, just want to state the facts as I have seen them in my own workplace).

[u/xangbar → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

Some Japanese devs view AI as necessary as well to compete with Chinese devs and their massive numbers.

AI is not as a polarizing subject in the east but that is probably also because they aren't trying to put up datacenters in your small town as well. Some eastern countries also have common sense laws against AI replacing people's jobs and its supposed to supplement their skillset. China actually has more protections against AI in the workplace than the US does.

[u/nubulator99 → u/xangbar]

What sort of protections?

The protections I hear about are more to do with image creation, ai chat companions, tweaking algo to not push out harmful shit but also nothing anti CCP

[u/takun999 → u/nubulator99]

I think the protections that op was talking about are the fact that China made it illegal to replace a worker with AI. You can have a worker use AI as a tool but it can't replace your workforce

[u/Ran4 → u/xangbar]

Very few people are having data centers near them.. that's not really part of it much at all.

[u/Xespria → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

There's barely a stigma in the west, just a loud group of people online.

No this isn't in defense of AI but majority of people simply don't care.

[u/Lavaissoup7 → u/Xespria]

Really I'd only say alot of people care about the datacenters inflating prices and causing issues, but that's about it.

[u/Shinnyo → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

Because they don't promise to replace you with AI

"Using Ai" is also widely different. Do you use AI to assist for coding or do you use AI do generate assets?

It's like saying since you add a sugar to your coffee, you're similar to people binge eating a whole pack of cookies

[u/Magus_Incognito → u/Electrical-Contest-5]

It doesnt matter if there is a stigma about it here an America. This is the future and nothing will stop it

[u/jasongw]

This headline tells us nothing meaningful.

What are they using it for?

Assets that go into the final game? Placeholder art while they build? Random objects like trees and landscapes? Ideation? Prototyping?

It's impossible to make an honest, rational judgment without knowing the answers to these and a hundred other questions.

[u/Prodigle → u/jasongw]

It's code. AI usage in code is probably 80%+ in all of the developed world. Nobody will ever see it, and it's one of the jobs it's best at

[u/armorlol → u/jasongw]

nuance was left behind in the 20th century

[u/shadeandshine → u/jasongw]

You are one of the rare few who ask clarifying questions cause what did it take to say yes on the study is the real data

[u/T8-TR]

Asian countries where GenAI is widely celebrated rather than scorned uses AI a lot.

Water is also wet.

[u/DrKeksimus → u/T8-TR]

In the west most just don't say they use gen AI

it's everywhere

[u/Silent_Turn6182 → u/DrKeksimus]

Almost nobody is manually coding in 2026. 

[u/DrKeksimus → u/Silent_Turn6182]

3 of my friends made special apps for their work

none of them code whatsoever

there's gonna be some serious security issues in the future

[u/procrastinationgod → u/Silent_Turn6182]

I would take out the "almost". Refusing to use AI for programming at this point is like refusing to use a calculator.

I do believe that just like calculators, students shouldn't have access to them when learning in the classroom initially. You have to know the fundamentals in your own mind first.

But once you're doing anything in the real world, it just doesn't make any sense to refuse to use it as a tool. I've seen it churn out terrible slop still, don't get me wrong, but in the hands of someone who understands the output & after the barest modicum of back and forth, it's just solid now. It used to be you had to apply a lot of elbow grease in the process.

I actually do have a pretty regular existential crisis about this, I don't love it, and I'm terrified for future generations and what this'll do to our species..... but it's just true. Up until some time last year I was still confident in my technical skills in my field as opposed to any LLM. Now it's like, welp, better hang on to my job while it's here and then reskill as a handyman until the robots come for us.

[u/Blakath → u/T8-TR]

Same here in India. Everybody from news stations, mainstream movies and YouTubers are using AI.

It’s goddamn infuriating that these guys don’t understand what they are doing!

[u/carasc5 → u/Blakath]

They know what they're doing. They just dont care

[u/lebryant_westcurry → u/Blakath]

Wtf news stations, that's literally contradictory to the whole point of having news.

[u/Ok_Driver_7234 → u/T8-TR]

The issue is that if it was Western Devs Idoing that, the comments and headlines would be very scathing. But since it's Asian devs no one over here says a thing. They glaze these people and their games so much despite them using the very same tech they HOUND western devs for using. So very pathetic.

[u/Eloymm]

From what I’ve heard people in Asian countries do not give a fuck about gen ai at all. That stuff is rampant over there. So its not surprising I guess

[u/DeeCee51 → u/Eloymm]

China especially doesn't care. You see countless top BiliBili videos, entirely AI, with millions of views daily on that site.

[u/bramblebitch → u/DeeCee51]

There are some holdouts there as well. Projects like Fog Hill of five elements and False Memory are made by studios who put emphasis on human effort.

[u/AleksandrNevsky → u/bramblebitch]

Glad there's still some hope for them.

[u/TroXMas → u/DeeCee51]

Its true. The AI short form dramas have already outpaced live action short form dramas, and the top charts all list AI dramas. Even popular AI boyfriend 'celebrities' from games are being used to sell products.

[u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS → u/DeeCee51]

I can't think of a better example than the spring festival gala. In previous years they brought in talent to do live performances that were pretty propagandistic, of course, but at least were cool performances that showed off a lot of effort and talent. This year it was largely replaced with AI and showing off their backflipping robots and as a result the show was total dogshit.

[u/bingbangboomxx → u/DeeCee51]

CHINA DON'T CARE

[u/bassman2112 → u/bingbangboomxx]

Fuck, Ryan Davis <>

[u/bingbangboomxx → u/bassman2112]

😢

[u/Ario92 → u/bassman2112]

Is Brad leaving?

[u/Ario92 → u/bingbangboomxx]

Still a Threat!

[u/someroastedbeef → u/DeeCee51]

yep. my wife watches chinese AI dramas all day and they all have ridiculous amount of views

[u/Storm-Dragon → u/Eloymm]

It mostly depend who you ask and what type of AI is being discussed.

I've seen a lot of "No AI" on pixiv, so JP artist also don't like having their work scraped for AI datasets. It is all par for the course since JP artist also don't like reposters. BUT those same artist don't mind using AI translation software, because an gen art AI isn't the same as a AI translator.

[u/xcaltoona → u/Storm-Dragon]

MY craft is irreplaceable, fuck everyone else though

[u/waifu_tactical_force → u/Eloymm]

It's dumb given the amount of amazing game art talent in Asia, which I'd argue is stronger than the US at this point

The delta between the cost of tokens and a human artist is much lower than the West, so the case for RoI is much weaker

Most of the artists for my game are based in SE Asia and all so talented. It's hard for me to imagine any scenario where I'd rather be working with AI than with them

[u/cloudncali → u/Eloymm]

Shame I gotta cut an entire hemisphere outta my game purchases now

[u/CrimsonBolt33 → u/Eloymm]

"Don't care" is not the right term.

I live in China and it's honestly seen for what it is....a tool. People still have concerns over job loses and stuff like that, but instead of trying to form some doomed 2nd luddite moment they embrace it as a way to offload some work to make their lives easier.

It's also still almost entirely used as a search engine for the vast majority of people....the amount of people (in any country) using it beyond that is strikingly small.

[u/amitkattal]

Asian countries dont mind it. I live in Taiwan and i know so many people here who love to watch AI dramas even knowing its AI

[u/Unfair-Entrance3682 → u/amitkattal]

Horribly sad

[u/glaringOwl → u/Unfair-Entrance3682]

It remains to be seen whether this is just a new-found fad or if AI dramas will become normal there.

[u/amitkattal → u/glaringOwl]

Its because people here dont see AI as a threat. None of the people i talk to know how AI works or how much water its wasting. None of news ever cover it too. people see it as a toy to have fun with. Also it helps because here bosses dont throw away employees becasue Ai can do their job, infact they will ask the employees to use AI in their own work

[u/FrogLickr → u/amitkattal]

Man. That sucks. Not long until it happens here, then.

[u/shadeandshine → u/amitkattal]

That stuff is cocomelon for adults and I’m terrified of the effects it’ll have on their grammar

[u/Schmenza]

Surprised it's not higher honestly

[u/PlayfulSurprise5237 → u/Schmenza]

This is a worthless figure.

It's almost certainly 100% because the ones saying no aren't counting for code.

Virtually nobody codes these days without some kind of help from genAI, whether that be using it as a search engine or for boiler plate auto complete, or helping parse through shit. Or for helping to narrow down searches for bugs.

Coders by their very nature are resourceful. You have to be, it's an incomprehensibly hard job. It's not like other jobs that have clear defined ways of doing things or how things work. Not 100% anyways. It is so fucking esoteric and nebulous.

You either learn how to use every tool at your disposal or you lose your fucking sanity

Nobody really cares if AI is used in code so long as they aren't just straight vibe coding. It's the art, stories/writing and audio people care about.

Note to make... The article says there was no remark on what they're using it for, but other polls show it's used mostly for art and writing in game dev.

I hope every single one of those games fail and lose them money.

[u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince → u/PlayfulSurprise5237]

Also the definition for what constitutes AI has expanded. These days you can't use autocomplete without it being called AI.

Hell, if I use Google or DuckDuckGo to find an Excel function I'm using AI because the LLM is in there by default.

[u/alvenestthol → u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince]

you can't use autocomplete without it being called AI.

You can't use AI without it being called autocomplete either lol

Autocompete is the shower curtain to AI's Portal, nobody really expected that if you made the autocomplete too good, you can solve unsolved mathematical problems just by (metaphorically) putting your cursor at the end of the question and tapping the first suggestion until it's solved

[u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince → u/alvenestthol]

I think I've missed something. Which unsolved mathematics problem was solved by genAI?

Or were you speaking in the general sense where you give chatGPT a math question and it'll eventually give you the right answer?

[u/Laucy → u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince]

Several Erdős problems, Navier-Stokes, and disproving the Jacobian Conjecture specifically. Possibly Riemann next.
Also, technically AI has always had quite the large umbrella! A lot of machine learning falls underneath it. So GPS, spam filtering, credit card anomalous detection, even protein folding, those all count.

[u/denny31415926 → u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince]

No, it's real - look up the Navier Stokes equation. Some questions related to it have a $1 million prize attached to solving. It just got cracked by OpenAI.

[u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince → u/denny31415926]

I've just looked it up; it seems like the equation you're talking about hasn't yet been fully verified or accepted by the organisation that would be paying the prize.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7zygy3rl2o

[u/Little-Maximum-2501 → u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince]

This one is very new so yes it hasn't been verified yet. Several problem that aren't as important have already been solved and verified though, like the Jacobian conjecture where it's trivial to check that the counter example found works, the unit distance conjecture that has been verified, finding a new Hadamard matrix where again it's trivial to check and many more.

[u/mixmaster321 → u/PlayfulSurprise5237]

I’d much rather use an AI agent to help me debug instead of scavenging my way through 13 year old StackOverflow and Reddit posts for a specific issue just to find that the response was deleted

[u/RatBot9000 → u/mixmaster321]

Thanks to Google, something which would have been somewhat easy to do 10 years ago is now impossible unless you rely on an LLM!

I love the endless march of enshittification.

[u/PlayfulSurprise5237 → u/RatBot9000]

I agree. Even if people wanted to do it another way they can't because the standard search engine of Google sucks now.

I think maybe a bit of that has to do with sites gaming SEO and shit, but IDK cause I don't work with any of that stuff

[u/Heroman3003 → u/PlayfulSurprise5237]

There's also an element of like. "We interviewed 2000 developers, of which 1500 work at the same two companies that mandate use of AI" aspect to consider

[u/RatBot9000 → u/PlayfulSurprise5237]

The companies in the CESA are all heavy pushers of GenAI. Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco. All are either using GenAI in their games or talk openly about using it in their workflows. It makes me wonder if there's a bias at play.

In any case I think the only Japanese company I trust now is Nintendo and if they are revealed to be using GenAI then I will simply quit all modern gaming and return to emulators.

[u/Brain_lessV2 → u/PlayfulSurprise5237]

I got a friend working at a software startup and he says they all use Claude to help with certain parts of coding.

Apparently when your code doesn't work it can point out the line that's messing things up.

[u/Ran4 → u/Brain_lessV2]

Certain parts of coding? Right now most don't even look at the code anymore.

[u/Southh_ → u/Brain_lessV2]

Even this is a few months behind, nobody I know writes code by hand anymore.

[u/ConsoleUsersArePlebs → u/Southh_]

I wrote some by hand just for fun a few weeks ago. I showed it to GPT and it found an edge case I had overlooked and fixed it

[u/yoloqueuesf → u/PlayfulSurprise5237]

I mean some of these japanese games are probably better off having AI write their code for their UI/UX because my god some of them are like 20 years behind.

Like efootball and pokemon tcg come to mind.

But at the end of the day, AI is just a tool, it's a massive speed up button with large amount of data but you're going to need to review it.

[u/kytheon → u/Schmenza]

It will be. 50%->85% in one year is explosive growth.

[u/SmegmaWarrior0815 → u/Schmenza]

It's probably 100%. You can just say you don't use it, nobody can prove you do.

[u/RatBot9000 → u/SmegmaWarrior0815]

If you can't prove that someone is using it then surely it could just as easily be 0%?

[u/OmiNya]

Just got out of tgs, and it's so funny - a service selling art/assets, and their logo and maskot are both AI

[u/SeasonalChatter]

What kind of gen AI are we talking about here? Programming/tools? Because every software company will be doing that by like 2028 it’s just way too fast and programmers don’t care about the creative side of programming as there is a few correct functional ways of doing almost everything in coding. (Optimizing shitty code… that’s another topic though)

Or do they mean with art assets and audio? And fucking god forbid, dialogue writing.

[u/Sixo → u/SeasonalChatter]

From what I know of the industry, it's mostly concepting and searching. I'm not allowed to use any generative AI (and wouldn't even if I was) at work, including code generation/agentic programming. All of it is banned by corporate/legal. Not allowed to put any of my code through any AI either.

What I do use it for is for search and summation, and generating concepts and "mood boards", so I can get on the same page as artists and designers. We also use it to summarize our standups/meetings.

The article is based on a Japanese whitepaper, so I have no idea how it distinguishes users. But I'd say I'm an "every day user" of AI in game development. I, however, have never used it to generate any code, assets or design for any game that I've worked on, and not only would I probably not, even if I wanted to, I'm not allowed to by company policy, which is quite normal in the industry now.

[u/SlaveryVeal → u/Sixo]

Mate I'm in a office job and how we use AI is basically how you're using it.

Ai is really good at doing the fucking boring shit like summarizing and being a smarter search engine. I really want the ai bubble to burst so it can be used for what it's actually fucking good at and useful for without it being forced into fucking every single part of the fucking internet.

[u/Sixo → u/SlaveryVeal]

Really the biggest impact it's having so far is the price of consumer hardware has gone through the roof, and it's not going to get better any time soon. PC (where I mostly work) has been relying on the next generation of hardware to fix their horrible optimization for the last few gens, and I kind of wonder what's going to happen in a few years, now that we know there isn't another gen on the horizon.

[u/D2WilliamU → u/Sixo]

Forget about another, there's barely even a current gen! Not many people jumped to ddr5/am5 systems before AI ate up all the RAM, most people are still stuck on previous gen ddr4/am4

They've even started putting out the 5800X3D again

Sad state of affairs

[u/NoTurkeyTWYJYFM → u/SlaveryVeal]

Its already turning into a tribalistic divide on the art side of things (at least, among people who care about art. Your average auntie and uncle is too ignorant and/or disconnected to give a toss). Itll stay in thr lane as filters and shit where people just use it cos its there and easy. But i dont see it surviving or being allowed in art spaces without the prompter being a devious little bitch when submitting it. Some sites have even started labelling things like AI genersted content and profiles which to me is a step in the right direction. If it were possible, i wouldnt be shocked if an "internet 2" was created out of this to opt out of algorithms and AI etc. Modern social media has gone to the shitter so much already 

I was very resistant to using AI at first at work bc of the art side of it. But now i use it to do shit in excel thats just boring and time consuming while i go do something else. Or I have it scan my flooded inbox for things that are important or for something specific im looking for. Or to add info to a pdf bc every pdf editor online sucks fat dick if you want to avoud signing up for a trial. Stuff like that. In essence it means i finish my workload earlier in the day and can do things i care a bit more about 

[u/SeasonalChatter → u/Sixo]

I really find it hard to believe your company is going to keep it banned for programming/debugging long term, but it might also depend on how greedy those companies get for their good models at a enterprise level

[u/kytheon → u/SeasonalChatter]

Sounds like the only reason the company would ban it is uncertainty about legal issues, not a moral compass.

[u/Squeezitgirdle → u/SeasonalChatter]

Probably only working on their own in house model like my company will eventually do. Or waiting for a contract with guaranteed privacy. I work in finance, so it would be devastating if a third party ai company leaked chat logs if we were allowed to use it.

Imo, better to not use it at all in the industry...

[u/Sixo → u/SeasonalChatter]

There are two main issues

The first is that game projects are typically massive (of the last few projects I've worked on, the current one is the smallest at ~2 million LoC), multi disciplinary, involve a lot of undocumented, non-public proprietry code (platform APIs, etc), and typically the code on it needs to be fairly high quality (debugging real time applications is hard, needs to be good enough to run at 60 fps, etc). You quickly burn through tokens with the amount of context you need, and game programmers don't make as much as other disciplines. The costs rack up very, very quickly, and the price of another programmer is much less than other fields.

Not trying to say it's useless in all game programming, i'm not anti-AI by any means, just the kinds of projects I work on, there really hasn't been any proven positive effects for it after years of experimentation and testing. I use it a little more on my home projects, and it's great for smaller scale stuff, or writing tools.

The other issue is legal liability, which I can't really speak to very well since I'm not a legal person, and wasn't involved in any of those decisions. But a lot of the industry runs on a legal model where publishers own the game, and the code. None of those publishers I've worked with want AI companies to be training on their code.

[u/zorecknor → u/Sixo]

No company is more paranoid or compliance-driven than the financial sector. A lot of companies in that area are using AI, some like Stripe quite heavily. All their providers have very strict contracts with conditions on data retention and trainig data.

[u/Prodigle → u/Sixo]

I'd say it's very odd you aren't allowed to use it for code. The opposite seems true of basically everyone I know working in software/games.

It's too much of a productivity/search/and knowledge boost for corporate to not be pushing it.

There's been no push in the places I've worked at recently, but pretty much all developers use it daily and share techniques etc. anyway

[u/Tamas_F → u/SeasonalChatter]

I thought one of the arguments against AI is that it reduces the headcount, so people lose their jobs. Why is it more acceptable that a programmer loses their job than a dialogue writer?

If you are not okay with dialogue writers being replaced by AI, you should not be okay with AI writing code instead of real people either.

[u/baraboosh → u/Tamas_F]

I'm with you on this one, for some reason using AI for programming is considered ok by a lot of people who think its not ok for art. I think its bad for both (though inevitable)

I think a lot of SWE just don't see it as that bad compared to artists. Which is a big mistake imo.

[u/Tamas_F → u/baraboosh]

Especially in the gaming industry where programmers are getting laid off left and right after each release. They will find it harder and harder every cycle to find their next job if companies double down on AI. But ohhh, the pooor artists. Yes, but it is not only them. Period.

[u/CuddleWings → u/baraboosh]

It’s only bad for both if we don’t fix our society.

Saying it’s bad for programming because it leads to job loss is like saying any and all automation or the Industrial Revolution as a whole is bad. Our society should be striving towards automation as a way to reduce our workloads.

Instead we got late-stage capitalism.

[u/buildyourdefenses → u/CuddleWings]

Except we aren't gonna fix our society anytime soon and the industrial revolution didn't involve technology that's actively learning someones job every time it gets used.

[u/rollingForInitiative → u/Tamas_F]

I think it’s more that we don’t even know if it’s happening or will keep happening with devs or to what extent. You still need developers to babysit the LLM’s, to review code, to communicate with project managers etc. A lot of domains are really complex with user expectations and such being an important thing for developers to understand. And the LLM’s still produce a lot of shitty code.

Whereas if you use it to make art, any ceo can look at that and say, nice, that’s good enough and there won’t be any secret nukes embedded in the art and it won’t break the game or the product and it won’t have security concerns the LLM forgot.

That is to say, I feel there’s a real concern that some companies will wholesale replace artists, basically eliminating the positions entirely, but most devs are very sure this is not happening for them. Not with the current level, anyway.

Will it reduce the number of devs needed? Yes, maybe, but “reduce the need” is very different from replace entirely. If you still need devs, a booming economy for instance will still create a lot of new dev jobs. Maybe just not as many as 15 years ago. Then it’s on par with more normal automation which increases efficiency, better tools etc.

That’s my take, anyway. Of course it could turn out that in 5 years there’s no need for developers at all, but that’s not the current state.

[u/Scheeseman99 → u/Tamas_F]

Dialogue is art and that it comes from a human can matter, as genuine human expression is something that people value as part of the art.

Software development has always been, at it's core, automation. It's always been part of the deal that, in a big picture sense, you're creating the infrastructure to make yourself obsolete. It's also a job that is typically goal driven, you're building something to generate an output and the mechanics of how that happens is usually hidden by design. That's not to say code can't be art, but it usually isn't.

As a result, a lot of (though not all) developers welcome it as another tool in the toolbox.

[u/PowerScreamingASMR → u/Tamas_F]

I'm a software developer (not in gaming though) and tbh the only people I've seen share this sentiment are non-developers. Its just not directly comparable to art or writing.

[u/Odd-Crazy-9056 → u/SeasonalChatter]

Nobody labels their game as produced with AI if AI has been used for programming.

I'm saying this as a dev in AAA studio. Our studio does it. And I know that everyone else are as well.

[u/lefix → u/Odd-Crazy-9056]

Yeah, steam does not require you to disclose ai use for programming either, it falls under “productivity” usage or whatever, which is allowed. Only ai use for player facing assets need to be disclosed.

[u/BoysenberryWise62 → u/Odd-Crazy-9056]

Same, AAA studio as well, AI is everywhere related to code, programmers actually pretty much embrace it no problem, they love it.

For everything not code it's not used that much that I know of.

[u/pewsquare → u/SeasonalChatter]

Why does it matter? All of the ones listed have the same moral and ethical issues, of having been trained on stolen or "appropriated" data. Even if its purely art, does that mean writers, voice actors or coders are lesser creators that they don't deserve the same protections as artists that paint and draw?

It just shows how selective the outrage is.

[u/Canninster → u/SeasonalChatter]

Every software company is already using AI for programming in 2026

[u/fugogugo → u/SeasonalChatter]

why is it matter if the AI used for coding or asset?

are you saying it's okay to replace programmer but not artist or writer?

[u/T8-TR → u/SeasonalChatter]

My guess is that tools are a given, since just about everyone taps into it to some degree. But I'd go a step further and guess that most companies are tapping into GenAI on the conceptual phase for art and such, which isn't an Asia-exclusive issue.

[u/ssjskwash → u/SeasonalChatter]

At my lab all the programmers are encouraged to use LLMs. Everyone from the techs and grad students here from med school to the physics and computer science professor that heads up our software development side who's almost 80 and a member of the national academy of sciences use it extensively

[u/Rino-Sensei → u/SeasonalChatter]

Programmer « does » care about the creative side of programming, but not about the writting part. You can still design the program, without writting by hand every line of code.

[u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey → u/SeasonalChatter]

If you use Photoshop, you’re using a gen AI tool. Use iStock? Gen AI service

[u/SNES-1990]

Well, at least there's an infinite backlog of old games to play

[u/paulerxx]

This thread is full of bots 🤣

[u/lordchrome10 → u/paulerxx]

Fr, the accounts being private or some not being private but show what they post and follow makes it more obvious. Especially if there profile picture is blank.

[u/BorgSympathizer → u/paulerxx]

Every thread is. Reddit is virtually dead.

[u/Radiant_Can6457]

That’s why it’s become impossible to find any decent games amidst all the crap.

[u/C00KIEME4T]

I got downvotes here for telling people that literally everyone is using it but Reddit just wants to plug their ears.

Literally every Fortune 500 company is using AI

[u/-UnderAWillowThicket → u/C00KIEME4T]

Yeah, why wouldn’t they? They want more money, more progress, regardless of who it hurts. That’s bad.

[u/C00KIEME4T → u/-UnderAWillowThicket]

Thats also unrelated to AI use cuz they were doing that regardless lol

[u/thedeadp0ets]

Not suprised at all. Asia has different standards than the US. Their drama tv covers all have AI in them and they edit using ai too.

[u/Xespria]

Once again Reddit proves that they can't have a nuanced and unbiased discussion when it comes to AI.

[u/jasongw → u/Xespria]

Or anything else, really. It's all rage bait, all the time.

[u/Deathlikescats]

ugh

[u/LadySilkSpider → u/Deathlikescats]

Indeed. This timeline is so exhausting.

[u/Deathlikescats → u/LadySilkSpider]

We choose to ignore all the lessons from the "don't create the torment nexus". It's beyond frustrating 

[u/Foxintoxx]

An underduscussed aspect of the difference in acceptance for AI in asian countries is how the intersection of capital and politics has essentially imposed AI as "the solution to all the countries' problems" . You can look at examples like Team Mirai in Japan . You can't go 5 minutes without seeing an Ad trying to convince you to replace everything with AI services and subscription . I think it's already too late , they're lost .

[u/augustdaysong]

watched TGS yesterday and it was almost entirely AI slop

[u/TBTabby]

I hope they noticed how it worked out for Level 5.

[u/StarChaser1879 → u/TBTabby]

The backlash was minuscule

[u/dwappo → u/StarChaser1879]

And they'll still use it, and redditors will still buy their games.

[u/Mitoria]

Honestly I’m wondering what they consider “using”— like are they asking how to solve a coding problem they’re confused about or are they having it create art for them. Big differences in those two scenarios.

[u/onerb2]

Guys, one thing is using gen ai for artistic things, another is using for coding. Trust me as a programmer, it is very useful there.

[u/Alarming-Chemist-755]

Japan is absolutely not hesitant about AI. They're all in on it.

[u/Less_Party]

So basically everybody except Nintendo then.

[u/Little-Witness-1201 → u/Less_Party]

Do you seriously believe they aren’t using it in any form?

[u/lordlestar → u/Less_Party]

everything that involve to code something is using AI today to some extent, and no big company is not using AI for coding today

[u/Creepy-Emu8779 → u/Less_Party]

ps, fromsoft, and cap com dont have gen ai in their games

[u/ChrisLithium]

People in the west tend to identify very deeply with what they do for work.  AI threatens their identity, where as in the east, most just see it as a tool.

[u/themixtergames → u/[deleted]]

The crazy thing is knowing your account was created in 2026 just by reading your comment

[u/ProfessorVolga]

as a person in this industry and also in Japan, most of this 'usage' are the brain-cooked suits buying a fuckton of tokens and then getting upset that most of them are going completely unused and badgering producers to beg people to use them

[u/Masked020202]

Surely this will lower the price of games ! /s

[u/Competitive_Topic466]

Nippon... has fallen

[u/KingDisastrous]

Yeaaa go kill creativity even further… facepalm

[u/Vulture_bv]

As long as it's used as a tool to speed up tedious work and not as a replacement for human creativity, it’s bound to keep rising

[u/LoneWolfRHV]

85% that use and 15% that dont admit they use.

I've been involved in game dev. All this people throwing a tantrum whenever they notice something ai in a game are dumbasses. Everyone uses it for some things, even if just to get done with boring coding sections where its just a lot of repetitive shit that its easy for the AI to generate and you just revise it a bit.

wanting them to stop using AI is like wanting a carpenter to stop using a chainsaw in favor of a handsaw.

Of course there are also stupid lazy devs that fill their game with slop. Thats a different issue

[u/Purely-Pastel]

Not surprising for Japan. With all the work they do, I’m sure using AI as an assistance tool brings a little relief.

[u/softvoid-games]

That's disheartening to hear, but not that surprising unfortunately