Game Developers' Sentiment Toward AI Turns Negative

According to a new Game Developers Conference (GDC) survey of 2,300 “game industry professionals,” sentiment about generative AI in games has turned sharply negative: 52% of respondents said gen AI is having a “negative” impact on the industry, while just 7% called it “positive.” The shift has been rapid — 18% called it negative in 2024, 30% in 2025, and now a majority in 2026.

GDC notes the sample skews primarily male (64%), white (67%), and US-based (54%), and says it’s “far from truly representative.” Use of gen AI at work remains limited: 36% report using it on the job. Among users, common tasks are research and brainstorming (81%) and administrative work like email (47%); smaller shares use it for prototyping (35%), testing/debugging (22%), or asset generation (19%). Only 5% said they use it for player-facing features.

Layoffs and closures remain a major concern: 17% said they’d been laid off in the past year and 28% within two years. Twenty-three percent expect more layoffs in the next year, with 30% unsure. More than 100 educators and ~50 students were surveyed; 60% of education respondents said the current state will make it harder for new students to find jobs — one educator warned, “Most of my students will not have a career in game development.”

The survey comes as major publishers (EA, Krafton) publicly tout AI’s benefits and studios (like Larian) clarify their approaches; GDC — which begins March 9 in San Francisco — is likely to focus on these tensions.

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