Future? No Thanks! Deweloper Removes AI-Generated Voices and Offers Refunds to Players Who Felt “Betrayed

The next game will be “completely hand-coded.”

Open-world satire Future? No Thanks! has been updated to remove some AI-generated voices, after lead developer Paolo “Molleindustria” Pedercini belatedly disclosed his use of the technology earlier this week. He is also offering refunds via PayPal or Venmo to anyone who “still feels betrayed” by the matter.

The update removes two instances of text-to-speech voicework for in-game robot characters – an automated toilet and an automated translator in a hair salon. In a previous blog post, Pedercini wrote that he had used generative AI for these characters as a spoof of generative AI. He decided to remove them following a number of angry reactions on social media and some press coverage.

“The voices were recorded earlier this year but I decided not to use them because I thought the actual uncanny text-to-speech was funnier in that context,” Pedercini writes in a new blog post. “Alas, the new generation of text-to-speech counts as user-facing AI-generated content and that keeps creating all sorts of annoyances and bad optics.”

Pedercini still believes the text-to-speech voices belong in Future? No Thanks! “In my opinion the game is worse now, but only, like, 0.001% worse,” he observes. In less acrimonious tidings, he has also tweaked the game so that “various gigs give you a bit more money, possibly preventing some situations of soft-locking players from achieving all the quests.”

The blog includes a “personal update” in which Pedercini expounds rather bitterly on the backlash to the game’s generative-AI elements. “Somebody from Bluesky (the Twitter/X clone) dragged me due to a post disclosing what I foolishly thought a minor use of generative AI in Future? No Thanks!” he writes. “I gave versions of that statement multiple times before, whenever asked by festivals and events. Steam doesn’t require disclosure of generative AI for things like code assistance, so many people assume their favorite indie games don’t use AI at all just because the developers stay mum.”

For context, Valve updated Steam’s rules in January to allow “efficiency” tools such as coding assistants. This is based on anecdotes and conversations with other developers rather than any statistical survey, but it seems very likely that many developers on Steam are not disclosing their generative-AI use – the policy has always been more of a gesture on Valve’s part than a mechanism of real accountability.

“Not me, I’m a good boy and I wanted a page I could link to that explains that NO, this is not a vibecoded slop game but YES, I did ask ChatGPT to fix a broken shader and a few things like that,” Pedercini goes on. “Więcej foolishly, I added a paragraph that sounded like I was trying to exculpate myself by poo-pooing on all the colleagues who advocate for an AI-free life.” (The paragraph in question was deleted after the original blog’s publication, but not before it had been screengrabbed and shared on social media.)

“Look, it was not a good post,” Pedercini concedes. “Defeatist, hastily written. I thought nobody would read it. Anyway, slow news day, everybody fucking hates AI, the whole scene piled on.”

Pedercini proceeds to caricature some of the people yelling at him over social media: “Am I satirizing the puppy-killing machine by KILLING PUPPIES?” He compares the anger he has received to being harassed by Adam Baldwin’s followers at the height of the Gamergate hate campaign.

Pedercini ends by sharing a list of developers who have sworn off generative AI. “Big props to them,” he writes. “Give them a follow. SteamFest is drowning in actual slop, help them stand out. And I hate to break it to you, but you should probably assume that all the studios that have not made a public statement against all generative AI are using it for coding in some capacity. I’m guessing this episode isn’t going to encourage more voluntary disclosures.” As for his next game, it will be “completely hand-coded”.