The situation surrounding Saber Interactive is escalating. Yes, the person in question has finally responded to the statement.

After watching the trailer for the upcoming Rideshare Simulator, writer Stella Sacco took to social media to reveal that she had once been the game’s lead writer, but had been fired due to ChatGPT’s involvement (we covered this in more detail yesterday). However, the game’s publisher, Saber Interactive, has refuted this, stating that while they did indeed use generative AI during development, the story was written entirely by real people (which they have not yet disclosed on Steam). Sacco acknowledged that the studio’s direction may have changed since she was removed from the project in 2023, but stood by her recollections. That could have been the end of the matter, but a confusing and combative statement from Saber Interactive’s CEO, Matt Karch, has now drawn attention.

In a statement sent to This Week in Video Games, Karch claimed that Sacco had violated her non-disclosure agreement by stating that she was fired because of AI. At the same time, Karch refuted this claim, attributing the entire story of Rideshare Stimulator to an anonymous writer. Karch also stated that he didn’t know who Sacco was until he asked an AI chatbot. Nevertheless, he claimed that Sacco had been replaced by a more talented individual and that, in hindsight, he would gladly swap her for an AI since it is programmed for honesty.

“Stella who?’ I had to ask Claude because I’ve never spoken to or seen her. As we’ve already said, we’re using AI for certain parts of the game, and we’ll update the Steam page once we’ve finalised the feature set. I would like to clarify that if the entire story script were to win an award, it would be given to someone who can walk up on stage and receive it. We always intended to reveal this, but Stella violated her confidentiality clause and revealed it before we were ready. We see our use of AI in this particular, lower-priced title as a positive for consumers. As for Stella, she was replaced by someone more talented and dismissed for various reasons a few months later. From what I can gather, she enjoys controversy even more than I do. In retrospect, I would have been happy to replace her with AI. At least we would be dealing with someone programmed to be honest,” wrote Karch.

Sacco responded on Bluesky, standing by her original claim: “I’ve seen the statement by Matt Karch, the CEO of Saber Entertainment, and all of the truly horrendous things he said about me. I think it should be obvious to anyone reading it that he’s lashing out because he didn’t want people to know that AI was used in the game. Everything I said was true. Here’s more truth: it’s pathetic for the CEO of any company to make that statement, and combined with the AI use, it will do far more damage to Saber’s reputation than it ever could to mine. This screed will be many people’s first exposure to the Saber brand.”

When will this back-and-forth end?

Source: PCGamer, This Week In Video Games, Bsky