AI in game development: 90% of developers use AI in their work

According to a Google Cloud survey, as reported by AI News, 90% of video game developers are already integrating artificial intelligence into their daily work. Meanwhile, on the Steam platform in 2025 alone, 7818 games announced AI use — a 681% increase compared to the previous year. The publication concludes: AI in game development has ceased to be a side experiment and is already transforming the entire production pipeline — from concept to release.

How widespread has AI become in the gaming industry

The figures cited by AI News from the Google Cloud survey show that the use of AI in game development has ceased to be the domain of individual enthusiast studios and has become the practice of the overwhelming majority of developers. The 90% figure is comparable to the level of AI penetration in other technology professions — software development, design, marketing — and suggests that the gaming industry is moving in line with digital transformation, rather than staying apart from it.

Key figures from the material:

• 90% of video game developers already use AI in daily work — data from Google Cloud survey
• 7818 games on Steam revealed AI use in 2025
• Growth in the number of such games on Steam — 681% year over year
• AI, according to AI News, is restructuring the entire development pipeline — from idea to launch

For comparison, just a few years ago, mentioning generative AI in the context of game development almost always meant one specific scenario — procedural generation of levels or textures in individual projects. The current scale — thousands of games officially revealing AI use, and the overwhelming majority of developers integrating it into daily work — speaks of a qualitatively different stage: the technology has ceased to be a point experiment of individual studios and has become a standard part of the industry's toolkit as a whole.

The dynamics on Steam are especially telling: the platform requires developers to declare the use of generative AI in games, and the growth in the number of such declarations almost eight times over a year — this is not a gradual, but a rapid spread of technology in consumer, commercially released products, not just in internal studio experiments.

How AI is changing the game development pipeline

The AI News formulation that AI is "restructuring the pipeline from concept to launch" indicates the spread of technology far beyond one narrow task. At the concept stage, AI is usually used to generate references, level ideas and narrative sketches. In production — to accelerate the creation of textures, animations, dialogues and voice-overs, as well as to test the balance of game mechanics. At launch and post-release support — for localization, community moderation and analysis of player feedback.

It is this multi-stage nature that distinguishes the current wave of AI adoption in game development from earlier, point experiments like procedural level generation in individual indie games. It's about applying technology at every stage of a project's lifecycle, both by large studios with large R&D budgets and by small independent teams, for which AI tools compensate for the lack of resources for full-fledged art and sound departments.

What this means for the job market in game development

The massive penetration of AI into game development inevitably raises the question of how roles within studios are changing: artists, animators and screenwriters increasingly work not "from scratch," but on top of drafts generated by the model, editing and refining the results. At the same time, the fact that Steam requires developers to disclose AI use, and players continue to buy such games in growing volumes, suggests that the market as a whole accepts this practice — the question now is less "whether to use AI" and more "how to use it so that it doesn't hurt quality and originality of the product."

Data from the Google Cloud survey and Steam statistics complement each other well: the first shows how deeply AI has penetrated the internal processes of studios, the second — how visible these changes already are to the end consumer on the store shelf. Together they form a picture of an industry in which AI has ceased to be a topic for a separate conference or presentation and has become a background condition for almost any new project — regardless of genre, platform or studio size.