
"Anti-AI" Clauses Become Standard in Game Contracts Over Legal Risks and Player Backlash
For the past few years, ever since the rise of AI, we have seen corporate executives frequently tout generative AI as the future of video games and video game development. Improving pipelines, generating assets, doing localizations, replacing voice actors with AI, among other things. However, legal reality on the ground tells a very different story.
According to Haley MacLean, a corporate IP lawyer and head of the video game practice at Voyer Law, clauses banning the use of generative AI have gone from rare additions to mandatory boilerplate language across developer and publisher contracts in the gaming industry.
The lawyer revealed a massive shift in contract negotiations between indie and AA game studios. No AI was once a niche clause used by cautious publishers but is now a standard practice.