Gamers Boycott New Tomb Raider After AI Disclaimer Surfaces

The new Tomb Raider game, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, has come under fire for AI use during development despite developer Crystal Dynamics saying action has been taken.

We got to see more of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis at the recent PlayStation State of Play showcase and it looks fantastic.

It captures the spirit of the OG PlayStation games whilst modernising it for a new audience. Lara’s leaping around with guns akimbo and dodging dinosaurs again, it’s a beautiful thing to see.

Unfortunately, gamers spotted an AI disclaimer on the game’s Steam page, which has prompted major backlash.

The disclaimer, as spotted by Eurogamer, said: "AI-assisted tools were used during development to support some early exploration and temporary development content. Any AI-assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team."

Crystal Dynamics followed up with a comment to Eurogamer saying, “At Crystal Dynamics, we leverage AI tools to help our teams iterate on ideas faster and more efficiently, while ensuring that all finished content in the final product is human-crafted.

“Our goal is to empower the creativity and flexibility of our developers to deliver the highest-quality experiences for players everywhere."

Basically, nothing you’ll experience in the actual game will have been made with AI, but that’s unfortunately not enough for some people.

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“It was replaced. I don’t care if AI was printed on the f****** toilet paper in the stalls. Generative AI has no business in a creative space, and I will not tolerate any excuses. I don’t care if it was done with CO33, I don’t care if it was done with CDO,” read one response to the news by Geezaws2.

It’s the same kind of backlash we saw with Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios. It was semi-recently revealed that AI was used in some of the early planning processes for its next game, Divinity.

Fans obviously weren’t pleased to hear this, despite the tool only being used for things like PowerPoints and concept planning.

This isn’t even the first time the Tomb Raider series has been accused of AI-use, as earlier this year, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered received an update many gamers accused of being “AI slop.”

Gamers are well and truly split down the middle when it comes to AI. You have one camp that refuses to accept any media AI has come into contact with, whereas the other is accepting of it as long as it wasn’t used to create in-game assets/features.

Whether or not this development affects the sales of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis remains to be seen but there’s probably nothing to worry about.

As Crystal Dynamics explained, everything you’ll experience in the game has been made by human hands, and it looks all the better for it.

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