A r/aigamedev post argues anti-AI-coder criticism is unwinnable by design: whatever an AI-assisted developer does, the dismissal is the same. Disclose AI use and the project is “AI slop.” Keep quiet and you’re accused of deception. Spend months building a serious, professional-level library with AI and critics say “maybe you shouldn’t have used AI.”
The goalpost pattern:
- Hide AI use → bashed for not mentioning it, with the standard line “using AI is fine if you just say so”
- Disclose AI use → instantly labeled “AI slop” anyway
- Build something serious with AI → “maybe you shouldn’t have used AI,” quality be damned
The author’s read: the complainers are mostly hobbyists, not professionals — game companies have moved on to AI-assisted programming. And the same people happy to build on Unity or Godot bash hand-coded AI-assisted libraries, which makes the objection about the tool, not the work.
The top reply (u/TechgeekOne) adds the useful part — a taxonomy of who anti-AI critics actually are:
- Developers whose identity was tied to a skill that just got cheaper (the same script played out with Rust/C devs in the Linux kernel)
- People who genuinely love the craft of writing code and are grieving its devaluation
- People with legitimate adjacent concerns who throw out the baby with the bathwater
- Slop-fatigue knee-jerkers — “there was a number of years where anything made in Unity was considered low effort garbage purely because it was made in Unity”
- Classic elitists
The sharpest line in the thread: “slop isn’t a property of the tool, it’s a property of the person using it.” The legitimate complaint buried under the noise is volume of low-quality releases — not the tool itself.
Takeaway: “anti-AI” is five different positions wearing the same coat, and the debate stays stuck because no one separates them. The practical response to criticism is quality, not transparency theater.