It's cool, man, everybody's using AI – including the developer of new shooter Arc Raiders, Embark Studios, which freely admits to using AI text-to-speech (TTS) in its dialogue. While some fans find that fact controversial, owner Nexon doesn't seem to mind. Its CEO Junghun Lee knows it isn't alone. "If everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive?" Lee wondered to Game*Spark. "I believe it's important to choose a strategy that increases your competitiveness" – and he says he chooses "human creativity." Arc Raiders devs "don’t use generative AI," CCO says AI text-to-speech is used to help "make rich worlds" while keeping the studio small but "there's no end goal in replacing any actors" The First Descendant's under fire for using uncanny AI ads claiming it's "the world's most popular shooter RPG," and at least one of them seems to imitate an actual streamer Palworld dev's new publishing label isn't interested in AI slop: "If you're big on AI stuff ... we're not the right partner for that" For his part, Strandberg says "there's something fantastical that happens when you bring real actors in, and they are contributing to the lore, as well, of this game world." Like Embark's last free-to-play shooter The Finals, Arc Raiders blends TTS with human voice actor recordings. "There's no end goal in replacing any actors," Strandberg says. Fans of both The Finals and Arc Raider can't seem to agree on how important that is. Controversy, however, has not stopped Embark from apparently reaching a peak of 700,000 concurrent players across all platforms. Arc Raiders lead says games "can't be built by an AI" and "I hope they never can," but also "I want us to build content a hundred times faster" and AI might help with that part.