1.DS9
2.TNG
3.VOY
4.PIC
5.Everything Else

There's an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that *very* clearly about transgenderism/non-binary and I walked away from my watch of it genuinely unsure *what* stance it was trying to take. Mostly because of the ending, up until that point it seemed mostly in support.

Just a moment.
*Erases sign on his back*
*Replaces it with "slop requestor"*
There, that seems like a better descriptor for them.

Under $10 is cheap enough that I don't even think much about it. Under $20 requires more convincing. Under $30 is super special occasions only. Anything higher than that is basically a no go, I'll just wait for a sale at best.

Pokopia was the big trigger on this realization, but I honestly don't know how long I've thought like this. Maybe forever, and I just never thought about it?
Point being that I don't think I've ever spent more than $30 on a digital.... anything?... and I have an actual aversion to doing so now.

Still annoyed the one I ordered when they were $5 got cancelled. Got a Steam Link for $5 though. Never even opened it and eventually sold it off for like $50.

Didn't get scammed mind you. I bought it at a local store I trust. Dude must have just forgotten to grab the disc, and I got complacent and never bothered to make sure it was in the box.

I did that once, had to repurchase Xenosaga 1 because my dumb ass didn't open the box for like 5+ years.

I am now manually purging the entire list. Mostly because the list of "common tags you've ignored" is way to similar to a list I might make of things I like. Also apparently 12-15 year old me was a little more sexist than I remember, because one of those tags is "Female Protagonist".

That said; I should have used The Alters as my example game. Its situation fell far more in line with the behavior I was talking about and I mixed the two games up in my head due to the news about both breaking around the same time. The slops devs are following The Alters' approach to AI, not E33.

Given that context it's pretty obvious that the E33 team decided the best option was to shut up and hope no-one would notice. Maybe they just accidentally bought/used an undisclosed AI asset or two accidentally, but it feels like it that was true they'd say that rather than saying nothing.

Relatedly: Around the same time The Alters' Devs (11-Bit studios) had just been caught doing the same thing, but they did respond publicly. In short, doing what the slop devs I spoke of above do, highlighting how it was "pre-production/placeholder", and then saying they were going to keep using AI.

Extrapolating a lot of information from zero evidence there. Yes the AI assets were removed shortly after someone posted about them online, but the devs never said shit about it, they just patched them out and refused to respond to news outlets asking about it.

Basically they saw how games like Expedition 33 got away with sweeping their AI use under the rug and are just trying to copy them. Which is exactly why I refuse to touch anything that used GenAI at all. The "savvy" companies are trying to frog boil you into just accepting it by starting "ethical".

Other frequently repeated tropes I saw were "No Live-Generated Al Content is used", "All art is AI generated and refined by our artists", and over emphasizing its use in "pre-production". It was transparent they were just trying to make it sound ethical to get a little more out of the cash grab.

Was browsing through a bunch of the lowest price stuff on Steam (which used to be a fun way of finding really cool/obscure stuff) and way too many had AI disclosures. They were all phrased very similarly to this. Keeping it vague and highlighting how the AI "reflected the team's creative vision".

Not that I'm aware of, just for silly account cosmetics. You can use them to get different unlock/boot animations for the Steam Deck though.