Rideshare "Stimulator" was announced by Saber Interactive (developers of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2) in July of last year.
While the idea of a taxi simulator game might've been intriguing for fans of Saber's previous driving games, the reception has unfortunately tanked pretty hard after some facts have been brought to life. As of right now, the PlayStation 5 reveal trailer (which is the most viewed version of the trailer) has a ratio of about 20% likes to 80% dislikes.
On August 11, former head writer Stella Sacco, posted on her BlueSky that she was unaware that the trailer had even launched, and that she had been fired and replaced with ChatGPT at some point during the process.
Previously, she had made a post on December 21 2023 announcing that she had been replaced, and reposted that same post at the same time as her August 11 post.
Quote From Stella Sacco I didn’t even see this had been announced. I was lead writer on this one! And Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development. All the passenger voices were AI too. Either they changed direction at some point or they’re not disclosing it on Steam
In response to Sacco's announcement, Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch admitting that he was happy to replace Sacco with AI on a news post on This Week In Video Games.
Quote From Matthew Karch Stella who? I had to ask Claude because I have never spoken to her or seen her. We have already said we are using AI for certain parts of the game and will update the Steam page once we have finalized the feature set.
Let me clarify that the entire story script, were it to win an award, would go to someone who can walk up on stage and receive it. It was always our intention to reveal this until Stella violated her confidentiality clause and revealed this before we were ready.
We look at our use of AI in this particular game, which will be a lower priced title, as a plus for consumers,” he said.
“As far as Stella is concerned, she was replaced by someone more talented and terminated for a variety of reasons a few months later. From what I can gather she enjoys controversy even more than I do. I would frankly in retrospect have been happy to replace her with AI. At least we would be dealing with someone programmed to be honest.
Sacco said the following in response to Karch's comments about her:
Quote From Stella Sacco Hey everybody. I’ve seen the statement by Matt Karch, the CEO of Saber Entertainment, and all of the truly horrendous things he said about me. I think it should be obvious to anyone who reads that statement that he’s lashing out because he did not want people to know there was AI use in the game.
Everything I said was true. Here’s more truth: that statement is remarkably pathetic for the CEO of any company to be making, and combined with the AI use it will do far more damage to Saber’s reputation than it ever could mine. This screed will be many people’s first exposure to the Saber brand.
I appreciate everyone’s support, but people who know me know I’m a person of principle, and one of those principles is don’t let the bastards get away with it. I’m comfortable with what I said, and everyone got to see what kind of man is running Saber.
This is my official public statement.
On August 14, the game's Steam page was updated to disclose the usage of Generative AI, commenting that it had been used for voice generation, missions, and music. It went on to state that the game would clearly label anything used with AI as such and that players will have the option to turn this content off if they don't want to interact with AI-generated content.
Quote From The Game's Steam Page The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:
The main Campaign story, characters, and dialogue are written by a team of human writers. AI tools are used for voice generation and some localization.
The optional Free Ride mode includes AI-generated passenger missions and localized dialogue. Free Ride mode is separate from the main Campaign and can be skipped by players who prefer to experience only human-written narrative content.
The game also includes a mix of radio stations featuring human-made music and AI-generated music. Stations containing AI-generated music are clearly labeled as such in the game.
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