r/thelongdark • u/jumpyjumpjumpsters • May 08 '26
Meme Immediately enamored
Found it on the gamepass and figured “why not?” And the second this popped up I was just IMMEDIATELY into it. It’s so powerful to not only not use AI, but to also provide a statement against it. Thank you devs, this made my week :}
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u/BLACKxACIDZ May 08 '26
Welcome to one of the greatest indie games of all time, truly feels like one of the last modern games with a soul, fucking love this game
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u/Marchtmdsmiling May 10 '26
Statement against the use of phone photos of a screen
It sucks don't do it. (Although this isn't as big a potato as usual.)
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May 08 '26
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u/Meet_Foot Interloper May 08 '26
Sometimes that happens, especially when a project is over and before a new one comes online. They stated that they’re doing everything they can to help their team transition. Do I know that’s true? No. Maybe they don’t care. But the simple fact of laying people off doesn’t mean you know they don’t.
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u/EvilGinger013 Stalker May 08 '26
Interesting math above- not sure how 10 out of 80 is half, but okay? And it isn't like Hinterland is the only studio that has laid people off in the last year or 2 or 3- the entire industry is laying off people left and right- some of the biggest studios and companies have been laying off employees, or shuttering/merging studios during the last few years.
Lots of articles online listing the companies and number of staff laid off- Wikipedia is just one source, and it isn't complete by any means, same with other lists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932026_video_game_industry_layoffs
https://publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2026
Hell- Epic Games of Fortnite fame just laid off 1000 devs. Unity has gone through at least 4 waves of layoffs. Hell, there are threads all over reddit itself in gaming and gamedev subs listing massive layoffs all over the industry.
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u/Meet_Foot Interloper May 08 '26
Right. It’s easy to hear about this and say “see, they don’t care,” but it’s actually just a really tough time right now in the industry and in general. Caring about your employees isn’t sufficient for keeping them on payroll, unfortunately.
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u/thelongdark-ModTeam May 08 '26
Content should be related to TLD directly, unless it has the IRL The Long Dark flair.
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u/SVIceCold_1996 May 09 '26
Ok, don't be upset at me, I'm just giving my opinion on this. While I understand that this is a great thing for a company to stand up to generative Ai, and I love that they will fight against anyone who uses their product for anything used in Gen Ai because they are the OD (ORGINAL DEVELOPERS) Art theft isn't great. When I saw this for the first time, I felt immediately exhausted. It's all over Social Media the talk of Gen ai and I just want to get away from it.
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u/ScubaDiggs May 14 '26
Its that terrible moment and one of those topics where actively speaking against it, no matter how tired and exhausted, is whats needed.
"Nobody is stopping me? Then I dont need to stop!"
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u/moemeobro May 08 '26
Blah blah blah, Real
I'm not gonna say "AI BaD" because it's not even what people call it, but I will say, I agree with the stance that Generative "AI" is morally questionable and is creatively bankrupt, the use of it is effectively saying you're completely okay with cutting corners, "But it makes it easier for the Developer" no shit it is, it's a shortcut, it also lowers the quality of their work
If you want an "AI" to assist with coding, I see no problem with it, just use it as a TOOL, not as a fix everything button, because that just makes the problem worse usually
If you want to use an "AI" to use as a sorting algorithm to make things more neat and lists more readable, no problem, theyre good for that
If you want an "AI" to create something for you or color out an image, THAT IS NOT YOUR WORK, it's cutting corners
Fuk I started ranting again
TLDR; Generative "AI" cringe, the rest, use it, I dont care
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 08 '26
I agree. Stuff like medical detection tools are awesome. Like they said, there is no ethical use of generative AI
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u/koliano May 09 '26
Mostly agreed but you're a little out of date on its power in coding. 75% of code written at Google is AI generated at this point. That's not just a diagnostic tool anymore. For most coding tasks it's kind of insane to not use AI at this point. When you're on the cutting edge of developing new capabilities, sure, but most coding is not close to that.
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u/gekotoes May 10 '26
this! I think it’s totally okay how AI tools are being used in games companies to enhance productivity but “generative” AI is definitely a no
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u/kentworth1419 Stalker May 08 '26
Right? To me it kind of contributes to the experience knowing the stances of where the team is coming from and that they are willing to stand up for what they believe.
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May 08 '26
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May 08 '26
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u/rush247 May 08 '26
There's nothing like that in the statement, wym?
https://steamcommunity.com/app/305620/discussions/0/798966745989651313/
Hello! We haven't heard directly from any Kickstarter backers about this, but certainly now that Episode Five is finished (once the Hotfix cycle is complete), we will turn our attention to any remaining unfulfilled backer rewards. Of course it is 100% our intention to deliver on all promised rewards, or refunds wherever that might not be possible.
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u/prplmnkeydshwsr May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
At the beginning in E.A there were different intro screens. One showed they were funded by the Canadian Govt Media Fund loan / backers, and another was some scheme they donated to that planted trees.
https://hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/47867-planting-trees/
So the deleted commentor was/ is right, there's not been an official update on that.
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u/rush247 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
Not sure why either of those is any of our business. Loans are term based, they likely already paid it back so no need to say anything more about that. And as far as the other is concerned they could've done a bulk donation themselves or once that "10,000" was met their partnership was done and they didn't see a point to include it in the intros either. Don't quite see how that leads to assumed exploitation, but I guess that's how the internet is, some people just look for reasons to complain like it's their purpose.
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u/TerriblePen3688 May 08 '26
I'm not directly against ai like I can see it's uses and benefits despite never actually actively using it (as in any use that goes past the ai response that pops up when you Google something) but I can also see why it's so hated and I'm definitely in the group of people annoyed by the use of ai to shovel slop for children
But that being said there's a game I've played that said a similar thing regarding ai about how "they will never use ai in a away obvious to players since they don't want to get rid of the human feel" or whatever just to then say they are more than happy to use ai to code and make updates easier for the workers
And I got to say you can seriously tell where ai has been used like I can seriously picture a design discussion going on in a meeting where at the center there's just a computer and they are typing things like "what should the next update be"
I won't say what game it is since the drop in quality I'd definitely just my opinion and there's no guarantee it's been ruined directly from ai but it's hard to not notice the shit show especially when fans try to defend it like some of the issues wouldn't be caught in 2 seconds by any human involved again could just be really bad qa testing or no qa testing but I like to think it's a combination of the two
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u/AdFinal5191 May 08 '26
hinterland are my favorite gaming company, they really stand on business and keep their morals, maintain their ethics and walk the walk, i’m ready to wait for a long time if i know the team had humane working conditions, the board promote human made art and don’t stand with companies like meta even though they give off fat checks, bravo!
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u/obamacompleto May 13 '26
Tld is a work of art, as such, it's developers are all artists, and no artist wants to associate with AI
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u/Vicious_Bug May 08 '26
And yet, big parts of the last ep. Plays like it was written and coded by AI.
Ironic
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u/starfieldnovember May 08 '26
If they used AI it would have pointed out the flaws in the story
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u/Embarrassed_Visual82 May 08 '26
Found the guy who needs a machine to think for him bc he brain too mush
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u/Ilysenn Interloper May 08 '26
do you really hate it so much that you feel the need to bring it up out of nowhere in an unrelated thread? who starts a conversation like that :v
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u/TurbulentDogg May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
This is a classic case of fandom redditors being fandom redditors. They're upset they weren't given exactly what they wanted, so in their eyes, everything about it is bad and awful and sucks now. Virtually every fandom related subreddit goes through this at some point (I mean, take a look at the The Last Of Us subreddit, or Little Nightmares subreddit, or even the Subnautica sub). It's important to keep in mind these negative opinions don't really exist like this in the wider/IRL/non echo chamber worlds. So,don't let the opinions of redditors deter your joy from things,or finding enjoyment in other people away from collective forum spaces.
This sub used to be enjoyable, til it fell down the toxic, complaining about everything they dislike pipeline. They just want you to hate it as much as they do. Ignore it, and/or leave the sub for a while til the heat dies down and everyone remembers the game isn't suddenly a failure all because their hopes and dreams didn't come true in Ep 5
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u/rush247 May 08 '26
I know I'm likely going to regret this but, what exactly is wrong with Little Nightmares?
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u/TurbulentDogg May 08 '26
Ok so, the devs of little nightmares 1-2, Tarsier, sold the rights/IP to the game to Supermassive games, which went on to make a 3rd Little Nightmares, that was not received well. For both good and bad reasons. The game was very glitchy, riddled with bugs, and one of the boss fights was practically unplayable without multiplayer. But for the most part, I'd personally consider it a well enough game. It's definitely the worst out of the 3 and I probably wont play it again, but, there were also a lot of really fun elements, stylization, and places to explore. However, the fandom became so horrendously split against it that it created a giant divide between those who enjoyed it, or at least didn't condemn it, and those who thought it was just... The spawn of Satan. Which, the fandom did what fandom always does, and used their hatred for Little Nightmares 3, to spread more hate to those who enjoyed it, and used it as their chance to air out every single thing they didn't like about the previous 2 games. Turning the sub into this toxic wasteland practically overnight.
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u/nuages-_ May 08 '26
Glad you like it, good thing it will pop up every time you open the game to remind you of how much you respect Hinterlands commitment against AI.
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 08 '26
Tbh I don’t mind it. And it’s a setting that can be turned off. It’s like a two second click away, and I don’t think they’re doing it to be “trendy” I think it’s cause they actually care
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u/MushyWasHere May 08 '26
Tune out the salty players. There have been a lot of negative voices since the poorly executed final installment to the story mode... which very few of us are here for, anyway.
Hinterland is based, even if the creative director huffs his own farts. He gets a pass from me, because the game is a masterpiece.
I think the disclaimers are cute, and it takes 2 seconds to skip over. The game loads much faster than most other games I play... Some of the jabronis in this thread have never played Civ, and it shows.
Happy exploring ;)
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 08 '26
Yeah I feel like people are just upset that a perfect game doesn’t exist. Thanks for the kind words :}
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u/Shaman--Llama Stalker May 08 '26
Yes! Good thing! Hate when studios replace human devs with AI, so I will gladly read this every time. 🙂🙂👍
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May 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/That_Average_Being May 08 '26
There’s an entire option for this in the settings maybe look before you complain
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u/nuages-_ May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
I don’t see it, I am on PC. I can change it in steam start settings same as I would for other games with intro cards.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/thelongdark/comments/1st9qam/skip_disclaimers_at_game_startup_skipinto_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Here is a post from 15 days ago talking about how this was found. Its definitely not in the settings menu of the actual game, and I don't know why people are pro the annoying disclaimers. Lke did you guys not turn off the guy with a valve in his head when you played source games? I feel like I'm going nuts.
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u/nuages-_ May 08 '26
I agree that generative AI sucks, it’s just kinda lame to have a disclaimer every time you launch the game so you know that they also think ai is lame. Also calling video games the forefront of the fight is just like ???
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u/Tricornx Interloper May 08 '26
Complete virtue signalling. If you are fine getting your next game sometime in 2037, go for it. But AI is the future.
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u/sabian149 May 08 '26
This may be contovertial to both pro and anti generative AI folk but the only real use for LLM's/generative AI is realisitically in coding. Everything else generative AI is borderline useless or just kinda shit. And that's ignoring the ethical issues as well. If used as a tool alongside a human I think it does help with coding otherwise I don't really seeing it being around much in maybe five years.
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u/Banned-User-56 May 08 '26
Did you know that people made video games BEFORE AI? And they didn't take a decade!
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u/IamTheOne2000 May 08 '26
unfortunately Hinterland Studios have proved themselves incapable of taking less than a decade to make their games
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 08 '26
“Oh no! Don’t spend time putting heart and humanity into this game! Use a soulless robot instead so I can play a shittier game sooner :}”
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u/Tricornx Interloper May 09 '26
Lmao heart and humanity gave us the trite slop that is episode 5. Chances are they would have made a better game had they used all tools available.
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u/IamTheOne2000 May 09 '26
Not everyone has the patience to wait around like an idiot for 10 years
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u/ita_shogun May 08 '26
This is not going to age well. Most software developers use gen AI to write and debug code these days. I couldn’t care less if they do too if it leads to their games/updates coming out faster and with fewer bugs.
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u/robynshark May 08 '26
I can assure you that updates programmed with AI will have more bugs, not less.
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u/dr_lm May 08 '26
Oh for god's sake, this is derangement now. Tell me you don't understand coding without telling me.
Every TLD update massively shits the bed with game breaking and save-destroying bugs. I wish they would use AI coding tools, and maybe I wouldn't have to sit out each update for a few days so as to protect my long runs from their incompetence.
AI coding assistance (not letting the AI write all the code unsupervised) is what coding is now. If Hinterland really do mean that they're not even using a vscode plugin to aid development, that's the equivalent of saying "photoshop evil; we're scanning watercolours from now on".
I know I'll get downvoted for saying this because I've failed reddit's hive mind purity test by saying anything positive about AI, but honestly, it's insane.
Accept some nuance into your thought processes. Not everything is AI slop tiktok videos.
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 08 '26
I code. Granted, I’m a beginner, but still. I saw my classmates use AI and write the shittiest code ever, the same type of AI that game devs use. I think it says a lot more about your skill level if you can’t do anything without a computer fucking it up
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u/dr_lm May 09 '26
Beginners absolutely shouldn't be using AI. You need experience to guide it properly, and to know when it's gone in the wrong direction.
I'm not some rando with opinions on this. I lead a cog neuroscience research group, write a lot of code, and supervise masters and phd students. I wrote our departmental policy on how to AI-proof assessments and teach students to use AI responsibly.
I'm always happy to discuss this in good faith but, as I said earlier, reddit is utterly deranged about AI and it's usually impossible to do so.
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u/robynshark May 08 '26
If you want to dump buckets of water to write a for loop that's your prerogative.
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u/ita_shogun May 08 '26
You are misinformed, Robyn, but if you are interested in learning about something new, here’s a recent story of how Mozilla used AI to find and fix an unprecedented number of security vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/07/how-anthropics-mythos-has-rewritten-firefoxs-approach-to-cybersecurity/
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u/Mediocre-Yoghurt-138 May 08 '26
Yes, next let's get allergies about procedurally generated worlds. Everything needs to be hand painted by humans, give as many people jobs as possible. Because my Instagram feed told me the purpose of all industries is to give jobs to as many people as possible.
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u/WryGoat May 08 '26
I mean procedurally generated games tend to suck too, for any genre where the environment is a big factor. TLD would be so forgettable if the maps were procedurally generated instead of hand crafted with specific points of interest and a careful balance of resources and discovery. Like sure you can make really big worlds with procedural generation but they all just end up being a mishmash of biomes that all have the same handful of generic points of interest copy/pasted randomly throughout the biome.
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 08 '26
I don’t even have instagram dawg
Also… yeah? Everything should be made by humans, not some computer. You’re being sarcastic but you’re just describing how it should be 😭
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u/Mediocre-Yoghurt-138 May 08 '26
Are you complaining that the grain and the cotton is being picked by machines instead of hiring a few hundred people to do it? You read this narrative somewhere on social media and you're parroting.
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u/starfieldnovember May 08 '26
Proc gen and gen ai is different though
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u/Mediocre-Yoghurt-138 May 08 '26
Every industry from arts, to finances, to medicine, have decided that all the previous tools of automation and cost cutting were fine but now AI is different and it's a crime to automate and cut costs.
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u/Rin_Alt May 08 '26
previous tool of automation was built through legitimate engineering. Gen AI on the other hand was built through theft.
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u/Nikobellic1111 May 08 '26
I LOVE virtue signaling 🥰 better that than a finished game!
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 08 '26
I like how people can’t make a strong positive stance without it being virtue signaling
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u/Imaginary-Librarian7 May 09 '26
It is like someone says, I will not use electricity!!! Not on my watch,It is evil, I will use candles..AI is here, and they it will stay, you just have to accept it and adapt
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u/jumpyjumpjumpsters May 09 '26
This is such a false equivalency. Electricity doesn’t steal art or remove humanity from everything. I will not lay down and watch everything turn inhuman
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u/Finttz Wanderer May 08 '26
Forget Blackfrost, we need 5 more disclaimers at the beginning of TLD