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uchikoshi's comments here will be read about ai specifically but they really should be considered in the context of what this industry squeeze is doing to labour and who the winners/losers of indie sustainability in 2026 are

Wario64@wario64.bsky.social

Kotaro Uchikoshi has followed up with Q&A

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I'm happy that he at least has recognized that fans/gamers want games without ai, made by people for other people. if anything this situation has made me even more resentful for the current state of AA and AAA games. it was already a cutthroat industry, and now it has just gotten even worse

uchikoshi knows extremely well how painful the industry can be— especially thinking back to the comments he received about VLR and later ZTD. I only discovered him recently, but he has already become one of my favorite game directors; I hope he can secure funding to make games without compromises

wild how one of the first comments i saw online was "the publisher dropped him cuz he wants to use AI?" and like, i kiiinda doubt that reading??

if i dont exploit my workers enough then i will be out competed and we will all have nothing is the defining dynamic of capitalism and also why it's basically impossible to be a good boss, it's not a matter of personal choice and morality

there's definitely people out there for whom it is a personal choice. I remember back in 2019 or so, a guy I ended up firing excitedly presented to me a business model based on my previous work where we'd basically release games every six months using nothing but contractors "so we keep the money"

I later found out he was crunching workers, trying to convince people anyone who disagreed with his model was just a bad egg trying to rock the boat, going around lying about people if anyone asked "are they good to work with" so he could offer them half the pay, that kinda thing.

Had a boss I got really sour over because the top guy was a box of every textbook toxicity. But the worst part was, he is an incredible human.

That's my read on it, that he is just stating it is a hostile and predatory environment through and through. Gotta give the keys to the thief or remain locked out. But so many other bits and such like others call that this is an ARG set up have me just quietly watching from afar.

my read on it’s that those little ciphers & references are intended to (successfully!) drum up interest and noise from the diehards who know what Crash Keys means and offer a big hint to the nature of the project, but that he’s being p genuine here about needing the funding and the state of business

either way next steps for ARG truthers and/or uchikoshi will almost certainly be through that contact form, after decoding the extra text under “Members” it seems that the discord channel i’m in has hit a roadblock and is mostly now just trying to edit the logo to find any number 4 in it lol

This is wild speculation on my part, but I feel like uchikoshi was either directly told by or felt that the publisher wanted him to use genai to cut costs, but he knew that if he did so it would directly hurt his sales, and so he was left with no good options.

yeah could be i dont really have any window on that specifically, the thing i find interesting is the framing of "cut development time, not staff" because of course those are the same thing it's all labour

Yeah. "Progress" in just about any given industry--certainly software development--is largely measured in a reduction in labor hours to accomplish any given task.

yeah i mean thats just capitalism, there is no way to increase efficiency that does not mean someone loses out somewhere because efficency is more profit for less labour and that's where growth comes from