‘Some Studios Won’t Survive’ as AI Takes Over Gaming, Says Google Cloud Exec

Generative AI is triggering an industry-wide reckoning in gaming—and a few studios received’t survive the fallout.

That’s the warning from Jack Buser, international video games director at Google Cloud, who says the {industry} is coming into an upheaval as huge as any in its historical past.

“A few of these sport corporations are going to make it, and a few of them should not,” Buser instructed Decrypt. “And a few are going to be born by this revolution.”

Buser, a 30-year {industry} veteran, works with publishers and studios to undertake cloud infrastructure and AI, from scaling multiplayer methods to analyzing participant information and testing generative instruments. That function places him on the intersection of huge tech and sport growth, the place studios hook up with Google’s servers and AI fashions to construct, or maintain, their titles.

He identified that AI is arriving simply as builders face mounting monetary stress and shrinking participant engagement with new video games.

“Over half of play time is in video games greater than six years previous,” he mentioned. “So should you’re making a brand new sport, you’re competing for lower than half of the accessible play time. And should you’re the creator of a type of older video games, you’re struggling to maintain it related and preserve gamers engaged.”

Following many years of progress, the worldwide video games {industry} dipped post-pandemic, with revenues falling in 2022 earlier than recovering. In 2024, it generated $182.7 billion, up 3.2% from the 12 months earlier than. Revenues are anticipated to rise to $188.9 billion in 2025, a 3.4% enhance.

“You could have a damaged enterprise mannequin, and the result’s layoffs, sport cancellations, and different issues throughout the video games {industry} lately,” Buser mentioned.



Nonetheless, Buser believes generative AI may very well be the {industry}’s means out. A Harris Ballot commissioned by Google discovered that 9 out of 10 builders are already utilizing AI instruments in some a part of the manufacturing course of.

“For those who go use case by use case in your growth pipeline, from idea to high quality assurance, and also you assault each use case with AI, you may have fairly a radical discount in growth time,” he mentioned.

Builders are testing generative instruments geared toward altering how video games look, really feel, and evolve in actual time. Buser known as this the period of the “residing sport”—titles that use AI in actual time to investigate participant habits and generate new content material on the fly. Not like conventional video games, which depend on patches and downloadable content material (DLC) drops, these methods may adapt in minutes moderately than months.

“Take Darth Vader in Fortnite, for instance—the participant response was sturdy,” Buser mentioned. “We’re simply scratching the floor.”

However the rollout wasn’t easy. When Fortnite launched an AI-powered Darth Vader earlier this 12 months, the bot spewed racist and homophobic slurs earlier than Epic Video games rapidly patched the system.

Not everybody welcomed the experiment. Following the discharge, SAG-AFTRA filed a labor criticism towards Epic subsidiary Llama Productions, accusing the corporate of changing voice actors with synthetic intelligence with out union consent.

“This cost considerations the union’s crucial function in negotiating phrases regarding the alternative of bargaining unit work with AI know-how,” a SAG-AFTRA spokesperson instructed Decrypt. “We’re very supportive of AI instruments to reinforce the viewers expertise, however employers can not implement these kind of makes use of with out coming to the union first and bargaining phrases.”

Buser drew comparisons between the elevated function of AI and earlier shakeups in gaming historical past—moments when technological shifts redrew the {industry} map. Some corporations tailored to the transfer from cartridges to CD-ROMs. Others didn’t.

“You will note some corporations that didn’t make it,” Buser mentioned. “And you then see different simply huge sport corporations right now that have been what I’ll name CD-ROM-native. That is the very same factor taking place now.”