Some AI controversies happen because a studio stays quiet. This one happened because the CEO wouldn't stop talking, and the story is worth walking through step by step, because it's become something close to a textbook example of how not to handle exactly this situation.

How It Started

Rideshare "Stimulator," a gig-economy driving satire from developer Unigine and publisher Saber Interactive, revealed its trailer roughly two weeks ago without generating much attention. That changed when Stella Sacco, a narrative designer who worked as lead writer at Saber Interactive on Stuntman: Hollywood and other titles until 2024, posted on social media that she had been lead writer on the project and that Saber replaced her with ChatGPT midway through development, including AI-generated voices for the game's passengers. She noted the Steam page carried no AI disclosure at all, despite Valve's own content survey rules requiring developers to describe any AI content in detail if it ships with the game.

The Denial That Wasn't Really a Denial

Saber Interactive publicly disputed Sacco's specific framing, saying she wasn't replaced by AI. But in the same breath, the company confirmed generative AI is genuinely used in the game, specifically an "experimental free-ride mode" generating passenger dialogue on the fly, something Saber described as necessary given the mode needs to produce effectively infinite unique passengers. A spokesperson told Game Developer the Steam page would be updated once the feature set was finalized, and that the studio intended to promote the AI mode as a feature rather than hide it.

Then the CEO Made It Much Worse

Where this went from a disclosure dispute to a genuine scandal was CEO Matthew Karch's own public comments. Responding to outlet This Week In Video Games, Karch opened his statement by asking "Stella who?" and said he'd had to ask Claude who she was because he'd never spoken to or met her. He then said that, in retrospect, he would have been happy to replace her with someone more talented, seemingly confirming the exact accusation the company had just spent its official statement denying, while personally attacking a former employee by name in the process.

Karch has separately made headlines this same week for confirming that Rideshare's trailer contains a joke license plate mocking Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, tied to an ongoing public feud stemming from Pitchford's earlier comments about Embracer Group, Saber's former parent company.

The Disclosure Eventually Showed Up, Late

Rideshare "Stimulator" had been listed on Steam since July 30 with no AI disclosure in place. One only appeared after the controversy had already fully erupted online. Once it did, the disclosure covered more ground than the initial statements suggested, both AI-generated passenger dialogue in the experimental mode and AI-generated music stations within the game's in-game radio, clearly labeled as such.

The Detail That Actually Undercuts the Whole Debate

Here's the part worth sitting with longest. Karch confirmed that building the AI dialogue feature required hiring two additional writers and multiple coders to get it working at an acceptable quality level. In other words, the AI mode reportedly cost Saber more in total development spend than simply not building it at all would have. That's a genuinely important data point in the broader industry conversation about AI as a cost-cutting measure, this specific case suggests it wasn't one, and the actual story here is less about AI replacing labor and more about a studio adding AI-powered content on top of, rather than instead of, human work, then badly mishandling the disclosure and PR around it.

Why This Matters Beyond One Messy Week

Strip away the personal feuding and this is a genuinely useful case study in exactly the kind of disclosure failure we've written about before, both with Steam's broader AI tagging problems and with Cygames' own apology fumble earlier this year. A studio that had simply disclosed AI use accurately from launch, the way Saber itself now says was always the plan, likely avoids this entire story. Instead, a late disclosure combined with a CEO who couldn't resist personally attacking a named former employee turned a relatively small feature decision into the most-discussed story in gaming this week, for reasons that have nothing to do with whether the AI mode itself is actually any good.

Sourcing note: this piece draws on original reporting and direct quotes from Game Developer, Kotaku, This Week In Video Games, and Games.gg, all independently covering different parts of the same unfolding story.

Does this change how you'd judge a studio's AI use, less about whether they use it, more about how honestly and quickly they disclose it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. And if you've got a game you'd like us to review, send it over to editor@gamevibe.io.