Party Animals suffers Steam review bombing due to poor AI

party animal Developer Recreate Games has apologized after a $75,000 AI video contest caused the game’s Steam reviews to drop from very positive to mostly negative (mixed at time of publication) in less than 24 hours.

The competition, called the Golden Paw Awards, was announced on May 13 and required all entries to use generative AI as a “core creative tool.” Players were asked to submit short films using AI-generated images, video, music, narration, and 3D assets. The backlash was immediate.

party animal is a physics-based co-op brawler developed by Chinese studio Recreate Games, released simultaneously on PC via Steam and Xbox in September 2023, and available on Xbox Game Pass from day one. It was later expanded to PlayStation, gaining a loyal following on all three platforms. Reviews on Steam have been very positive over the years. Within a day of the Golden Paw Awards announcement, it dropped to Mostly Negative.

“Giving $75,000 to people who generate AI slop with the press of a button is an insult to game creation,” wrote one reviewer who played the game for over 370 hours. The contest rules made the reaction even worse. While stipulating that all entries must be “original works,” the rules also required AIGC as a core tool, a direct contradiction that players were quick to point out.

apology

“We apologize for any upset this event may have caused our players, and we also apologize for not communicating clearly enough with you before the event began,” the post reads. “Our initial goal was to lower the barriers to creation,” the studio said, describing AI as “just another tool” and saying it was “not trying to negate handmade work or disrespect creators.” The community hasn’t quite accepted that framework.

Rather than making a unilateral decision, Recreate created three options for community voting. You can either cancel the contest entirely, change it to a non-AI contest, or keep the AI ​​category and add another hand-crafted category on top of it. Voting is still open. Results have not been announced.

part of a broader pattern

party animal The game is not the first to face backlash from the AI-related community this month. Notebookcheck covered the controversy surrounding From Neverness to Everness In early May, players identified suspected AI-generated assets in the game, and VTuber Ironmouse publicly severed ties with the developer over the allegations.