Saber Interactive CCO Tim Willits has confirmed the company has not revised its communications strategy despite its CEO telling the press that he “would […] have been happy to replace [a writer] with AI” after she claimed she was replaced by ChatGPT.
CEO Matthew Karch has since apologised to Stella Sacco, the writer at the centre of the Rideshare Stimulator AI controversy, but not before widespread public condemnation. He also shared a statement saying he’d had an “insightful week” but “the digital ecosystem thrives on outrage and surface-level takes”.
“Sometimes we ‘say what we mean’ too much,” Willits told PC Gamer, reflecting on the blunt comms from the studio’s leadership.
When PC Gamer pressed directly on whether the recent backlash had prompted reflection, he reportedly said “no”.
“I’ve been in the industry for so long, and there’s always some dust up. People got mad at Saber because we put World War Z on Epic, and people were like, ‘oh, Saber’s destroying the industry’,” Willits added.
“Now 30 million people have played World War Z. And the games will speak for themselves, even in our experiment with Rideshare [Stimulator].”
He closed by encouraging people to “check it out when it comes out” and play it themselves.
“They may be like, ‘Oh, this is cool! I like this,’ you know. And if they don’t like it, fine,” he added.
“We are going to stick to making the best games we can. Try to show them, give people an opportunity to play them, and have players make their own decisions because players are smart, you know. You make a good game, they’ll find it and play it.”
In a separate interview with Eurogamer, Willits said that in an era marked by long periods of little output from studios between big releases, Saber’s confidence seems so high right now, Willits believes “we can get any IP”.
The studio has finally added the AI disclaimer to Rideshare Stimulator’s Steam page that had been conspicuously missing since the game first went live for wishlisting on 30th July. Initially, Karch said the disclaimer would come “once [the game was] finalised”, but the store has since been updated to include the AI disclosure.
Saber Interactive currently has multiple games in development, including Turok Origins and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, both having a presence at Gamescom. The studio is also working on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3, though we’ve not heard much about that project since its announcement.