"If we're publishing the game, 'no f***ing AI assets'": CEO of Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse bans gen AI art and calls it "cancerous"

Firmly countering the full-throated endorsements of generative AI made by large companies like EA and Ubisoft, the CEO of markedly smaller publisher Hooded Horse, a strategy and simulation specialist known by many for city builder hit Manor Lords, says it's begun explicitly banning gen AI art in contracts.

Where many gaming executives are eager to preach the immense potential of AI tools and output, CEO Tim Bender, speaking with Kotaku, laments that, "honestly, all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult."

"I fucking hate gen AI art and it has made my life more difficult in many ways…suddenly it infests shit in a way it shouldn't," Bender says. "It is now written into our contracts if we're publishing the game, 'no fucking AI assets.'"

Hooded Horse draws a clear line at gen AI art in its games, and Bender says "we've gotten to the point where we also talk to developers and we recommend they don't use any gen AI anywhere in the process".

This is partly to make it a bit easier and more consistent to weed out potential gen AI slop. You can't accidentally leave in purported AI-generated art placeholders, as the nevertheless-excellent Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 did, if you never add them at all.

"If that gets done, of course, there's a chance that that slips through, because it only takes one of those slipping through in some build and not getting replaced or something," the CEO says.

"Because of that, we're constantly having to watch and deal with it and try to prevent it from slipping in, because it's cancerous," Bender adds.

Hooded Horse rang in the new year with the 1.0 release of Terra Invicta, a sci-fi grand strategy game more than nine years in the making. You'll notice a distinct lack of any sort of AI disclosure on its Steam page.

"Last year we were the 'Manor Lords publisher', this year I think we're something more": Heroes of Might and Magic company sold over 4.5 million copies two years in a row.