‘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, world video games director at Google Cloud, who says the {industry} is coming into an upheaval as massive as any in its historical past.

“A few of these recreation firms are going to make it, and a few of them will not be,” Buser instructed Decrypt. “And a few are going to be born by way of this revolution.”

Buser, a 30-year {industry} veteran, works with publishers and studios to undertake cloud infrastructure and AI, from scaling multiplayer techniques to analyzing participant knowledge and testing generative instruments. That position places him on the intersection of massive tech and recreation improvement, the place studios connect 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 strain 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 in the event you’re making a brand new recreation, you’re competing for lower than half of the out there play time. And in the event you’re the creator of a kind of older video games, you’re struggling to maintain it related and maintain 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% improve.

“You’ve got a damaged enterprise mannequin, and the result’s layoffs, recreation cancellations, and different issues throughout the video games {industry} in recent times,” Buser mentioned.



Nevertheless, Buser believes generative AI could possibly 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.

“In case you go use case by use case in your improvement pipeline, from idea to high quality assurance, and also you assault each use case with AI, you’ll be able to have fairly a radical discount in improvement time,” he mentioned.

Builders are testing generative instruments geared toward altering how video games look, really feel, and evolve in actual time. Buser referred to as this the period of the “dwelling recreation”—titles that use AI in actual time to investigate participant conduct and generate new content material on the fly. In contrast to conventional video games, which depend on patches and downloadable content material (DLC) drops, these techniques may adapt in minutes relatively 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 clean. 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 essential position in negotiating phrases regarding the alternative of bargaining unit work with AI expertise,” a SAG-AFTRA spokesperson instructed Decrypt. “We’re very supportive of AI instruments to reinforce the viewers expertise, however employers can’t implement all these makes use of with out coming to the union first and bargaining phrases.”

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

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