A billion-dollar company should have no problem supporting real artists for real art.

Yes, they have. The problem is called capitalism.

No wonder Tim Sweeney is against an generative ai label in his store...

After Tim Sweeney's dickhead-level outcry about games being labeled if they have AI, does this surprise anyone?

It's fucking Fortnite. It was already full of slop. Now they can just generate it faster.

I wish I knew a way to make the fact that AI generated content doesn't qualify for copyright more painful to corporations

One more reason to never play that crap again

Art has never really been valued in our system unless it proves some marketing benefit to get people to buy the product. Many people don't spend a significant amount of money on art. In our late stage capitalist system, corporations absolutely will use whatever technology they can do avoid paying, which is why we're seeing demand break down.

Since when did video games get "seasons"?

I don't care as a gamer. Fortnite is a free game and you can have all the fun anyone can have for free. Yes, they sell virtual currency, it's used to buy cosmetic items of pop culture references. Like I seriously thought about dropping ~$45 for the Kpop Demon Hunters pack. But I didn't. I like KPDH but I really don't play Fortnite much. Enough to keep it on my Xbox, but not nearly enough to spend real money on it.

I do care as a game industry watcher/commentator (of no real note; I'm not some blogger you've heard of, just some random asshole on forums/Lemmy) because Fortnite is, from this point of view, a demo of the Unreal Engine. And if they're using AI slop in it, it just makes Unreal look bad and that sucks, because it's a great engine, from a gamer perspective at least. I don't like Fortnite because of the memes and the pop culture references (though they are fun), I like it because I played Unreal Tournament (the first one) when it was new, and playing Fortnite, it's a lot of the same motions. The game moves exactly how I expect it to, and I value that. No, it's not like Unreal Tournament or Deus Ex, but it's the same feel. I love how it plays, and it's absolutely gorgeous to look at.