GDC survey finds 40% of game workers use generative AI on the job

Four in ten game industry professionals surveyed by GDC say they use generative AI at work. The event organizer published its findings on November 12, reporting an increase of four percentage points from its previous survey. The new edition draws on responses from more than 2,600 people across 69 countries, including people in business and support roles as well as developers.

Among respondents who use AI at work, 73% selected research or brainstorming, while 8% selected production art or final game assets. Workers could select several activities. The distinction matters when a studio says its staff use AI: a tool that helps developers research a problem and a tool that produces the art players see are measured separately in the survey.

Where AI shows up in the work

After research and brainstorming, the most frequently selected uses were data analysis and summarization, at 62%, and writing or debugging code, at 56%. Early prototyping drew 37%, and concept art or visual ideation drew 22%. Seven percent selected features or content that players interact with. Concept art can establish the look of a level well before a studio decides what the player will see. GDC counted that early work separately from the production of art or other assets for the finished game.

A separate question asked how often people used AI. Among those who said they used it at work, 57% said they did so daily. The share reporting any use also varied by the kind of game people worked on. It reached 58% among people making free-to-play titles and 70% among respondents from mobile-only studios. Those groups can overlap, and GDC cautions that the size of its sample limits what it can conclude about that part of the industry.

Asked about the effect on the games business as a whole, 55% described it as negative, 35% as mixed and 8% as positive. The November report puts the comparable negative figure in the previous survey at a corrected 54%. In written responses, some people who described the broader impact as negative still saw a place for AI in repetitive work or early prototypes. GDC also recorded concerns about legal issues, jobs and the possibility that people could lose skills through disuse.

Respondents faced different rules at work. Twenty-three percent reported that their companies prohibited use, while 16% reported that only some tools were permitted. At AAA studios, 27% said they were encouraged or pressured to use AI, compared with 9% at independent studios. GDC grouped encouragement and pressure in one answer, leaving the individual shares unknown.

The makeup of the sample also changed. U.S.-based workers accounted for 63% of respondents, up from 54% in the previous survey. Reported use among respondents in the U.S. moved from 36% to 38%, a difference GDC placed within its margin of error. Outside the U.S., the corresponding shares were 37% and 44%. These are responses from successive surveys, so the figures describe the groups GDC reached at each point.

What Steam asks studios to disclose

Valve’s Steamworks documentation focuses its disclosure questions on material that ships with the game and reaches players, including art, audio, narrative and localization. It distinguishes material made with AI during development from content the software generates while someone is playing. For the second category, studios must also describe the safeguards they use to prevent illegal content from being generated.

The makers of the cooperative game Big Walk described one use of AI in their own FAQ. House House said it consulted chatbots about difficult technical issues late in development and occasionally adapted snippets from the replies. The studio estimated that the work touched well under 0.1% of the game’s code. With the November edition, GDC has moved publication of its annual survey from the beginning of the year to near its end.