Saber Interactive denies replacing writers with ChatGPT, former lead says otherwise

The dispute over Rideshare Stimulator, a driving-simulation game developed by Unigine and released last month, began when Stella Sacco posted on Bluesky that she was the lead writer on the project and that Saber replaced her with ChatGPT midway through development. She added that all passenger voices in the game were generated by AI and questioned whether the company had changed course since then or simply omitted any mention on the Steam product page. The Steam page currently contains no disclosure about generative-AI use, although segments of the promotional trailer show writing and audio that appear to have been produced by a computer for the fictitious passengers.

Saber’s chief executive, Matthew Karch, issued a statement saying that neither Saber nor Unigine substituted writers with AI. He asserted that the game’s narrative was written entirely by humans, with the exception of a single experimental game mode. Karch explained that the title will feature a free-ride mode that incorporates AI out of necessity because the number of passengers in the game is infinite. He also noted that Saber has employed AI tools to enhance gameplay and non-player-character (NPC) behavior since its founding in 2001, and that while the broader games industry continues to contract, Saber is still hiring. According to Karch, none of the company’s more than 3,000 employees need to worry about being replaced by AI.

In a follow-up to The Verge after Karch’s remarks, Sacco rejected the official narrative. “You cannot claim at the same time that the story was written by writers and that the text was written by a computer,” she wrote. “If rides I wrote are in the game, and alongside them are rides that AI wrote or will write, then AI use occurred, and I was still replaced, exactly as Saber told me in December 2023.” Sacco concluded that the company is trying to play both sides: “You can’t win with the employee argument while at the same breath admitting you took work from employees.”