Hooded Horse (Manor Lords) categorically refuses to use AI, calling it "cancerous"
, by Thibaut
Hooded Horse is a studio known for releasing Manor Lords in early access back on April 26, 2026, that has decided to take a firm stand against generative artificial intelligence.
In an interview with Kotaku, Tim Bender, CEO of the American studio, was asked about his position on AI. The answer was quite clear, as the company has included a clause clearly stating "no fucking AI assets" in its employee contracts. For him, these new tools have complicated the task of developers.
"I fucking hate gen AI art and it has made my life more difficult in many ways…suddenly it infests shit in a way it shouldn’t. It is now written into our contracts if we’re publishing the game, 'no fucking AI assets.'"
Bender added that it is sometimes difficult to ensure that artificial intelligence is not used at all by his partners.
"We’ve gotten to the point where we also talk to developers and we recommend they don’t use any gen AI anywhere in the process because some of them might otherwise think, ‘Okay, well, maybe what I’ll do is for this place, I’ll put it as a placeholder,’ right? Like some, people will have this thought, like they would never want to let it in the game, but they’ll think, ‘It can be a placeholder in this prototype build.’ But if that gets done, of course, there’s a chance that that slips through, because it only takes one of those slipping through in some build and not getting replaced or something. Because of that, we’re constantly having to watch and deal with it and try to prevent it from slipping in, because it’s cancerous."
Source: kotaku.com