Head of Saber Interactive insulted the fired screenwriter of Rideshare Stimulator and accused her of leaking information about AI, while denying her statements about AI

The controversy surrounding Rideshare Stimulator has moved past a simple credit dispute and turned into a PR disaster. Writer Stella Sacco said on social media that she'd once been the game's lead writer but was fired in 2023 in favor of AI. Saber Interactive denied this, insisting the story was written "entirely by real people."

That could have been the end of it, but Saber CEO Matt Karch issued a statement that immediately caught the industry's attention. Karch claimed he didn't know who Sacco was until he asked an AI chatbot about her. He nevertheless added that she'd been replaced by "someone more talented" and let go "for a variety of reasons."

Karch's full statement reads:

Stella who? I had to ask Claude because I have never spoken to her or seen her. We have already said we are using AI for certain parts of the game and will update the Steam page once we have finalized the feature set.

Let me clarify that the entire story script, were it to win an award, would go to someone who can walk up on stage and receive it. It was always our intention to reveal this until Stella violated her confidentiality clause and revealed this before we were ready.

We look at our use of AI in this particular game, which will be a lower priced title, as a plus for consumers. As far as Stella is concerned, she was replaced by someone more talented and terminated for a variety of reasons a few months later.

From what I can gather she enjoys controversy even more than I do. I would frankly in retrospect have been happy to replace her with AI. At least we would be dealing with someone programmed to be honest.

The statement contains an obvious contradiction – Karch accuses Sacco of breaching her confidentiality agreement while simultaneously denying that she revealed anything true about being replaced by an AI writer. He also indirectly confirms that AI use in Rideshare Stimulator was meant to stay under wraps for now, even though the information still doesn't appear on the game's Steam page.

Sacco responded with a lengthy comment of her own.

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 who reads that statement that he's lashing out because he did not want people to know there was AI use in the game.

Everything I said was true. Here's more truth: that statement is remarkably pathetic for the CEO of any company to be making, and combined with the AI use it will do far more damage to Saber's reputation than it ever could mine. This screed will be many people's first exposure to the Saber brand.

The situation points to a larger issue across the industry – AI use in game development keeps becoming a flashpoint, and transparency around it remains a touchy subject for both studios and players. As of this writing, the Rideshare Stimulator Steam page still says nothing about generative AI being used.