Steam Early Access Star Under Barrage of Player Accusations. AI Was Supposed to Help Develop and Promote Supermarket Simulator
Supermarket Simulator is a game that has won the hearts of players on Steam. Now, however, this love is experiencing quite a crisis. This is because there have been allegations that the Nokta Games studio uses AI.
Developing a good simulator is extremely difficult, but when developers succeed in this art, we may be dealing with a really big hit. The confirmation of these words is the game Supermarket Simulator, a title that has grown into a real revelation of Steam in recent weeks.
However, if you doubt my words, allow me to quote a few numbers.
- As I write these words, Supermarket Simulator boasts 12,621 reviews on Valve's platform, 94% of which are positive.
- Praises for the game of the one-person studio Nokta Games isn't everything. The Steam activity results are equally impressive in appearance.
- During the last day, at its peak, 49,412 people were playing this simulator at the same time. This resulted in a new record for this title.
- In terms of the number of players, this indie game is currently ahead of such giants as Cyberpunk 2077 or Overwatch 2.
Controversies
The whole situation would certainly be a dream come true for the dev, but unfortunately, a quite large fly in the ointment was found. We are talking about artificial intelligence, the use of which in the game industry has recently become heavily stigmatized by the community.
On the Steam subreddit, a user named pantolix posted a promotional image for Supermarket Simulator, claiming that the image was likely AI-generated. The author of the post explained his outrage by saying that, in his opinion, such actions were unethical.
An Internet user with the nickname beezzah responded to the post by stating that he had been on the game's official Discord channel and observed that the potential use of AI had been discussed multiple times by the developer.
Informal_Strength_89 expressed similar, if not stronger, sentiments, accusing Nokta Games studio of utilizing artificial intelligence to produce graphics and generate positive reviews (similar allegations were made at the debut of Supermarket Simulator, but they pertained to reviews posted from fake Steam accounts). Moreover, he added that the game itself was supposedly based on a ready-made resource package.
I saw this game on the [Steam] front page and it reeks. The combination of an AI generated banner image, assets that are clearly all directly taken from an asset pack, and several AI-generated positive reviews makes me think there is something insidious going on here.
Is it money laundering?
I bought a game called Ranch Simulator recently only to find out it was an awful half-baked asset flip, and yet it had very positive reviews. What's going on here?
Problem with a lazy restocker
Speaking of imperfections, the Nokta Games studio recently released an update for Supermarket Simulator, which not only fixes several existing bugs but also introduces a range of new features, such as restockers.
Unfortunately, the NPCs who are supposed to replenish missing products in the store aren't performing very well for now. Players complain that restockers don't react to shortages in the assortment or they simply get stuck while putting the goods on the shelves.
Even though this bug really annoys players, some of them react to it in a humorous way. One user even sarcastically remarked that in real life, supply workers also stand and do nothing, and the game simply reflects this in a very realistic way.
Finally, I would like to remind you that Supermarket Simulator is currently in early access. According to the information provided by the dev, the game should spend about a year there.
