An indie developer is delisting his Steam game because his new girlfriend convinced him its use of AI is ‘a disgrace’

An indie developer says he’s pulling his game from Steam because his new girlfriend has criticised its use of AI.

Hardest is a free-to-play roguelike card game which uses Rock Paper Scissors rules but adds numerous new abilities like stopping time and summoning tsunamis.

The game was released on Steam on July 1, 2025, but developer Rakuel –real name Eero Laine – says he will now be delisting it on January 30.

According to Laine, the game will be removed because the card illustrations were created using AI image generation, which he initially didn’t see an issue with.

However, Laine says his new girlfriend has convinced him that generative AI is ethically wrong, and rather than replace all the images with his own original work he has decided to remove the game from Steam entirely.

“I made this game during the summer in a couple of months and thought to use AI because in university there is so much brainwashing on students and all the tools are given for free, so I could generate unlimited images for free and so,” he said.

“But I have realized the AI is not actually free, and it has a major effect on the economy and environment. Some AI companies can use this game just existing as a reason to get more investment for their AI companies, that benefit no one, but rather suck resources from the economy from hard working people.

“I coded everything myself, so I can in the future make a new game with real assets if I feel like it, but the game existing in its current form is a disgrace to all game makers and players.

“Ethically the only logical [decision] is to delete the game from Steam. The girl I’ve been dating for a month made me realize this.”

Since 2024, Steam has required developers to disclose whether generative AI is used in their game when submitting it to Steam. This then appears on the game’s store page in a section called ‘AI Generated Content Disclosure’.

In July 2025, an analysis found that nearly 8,000 titles released on Steam in the first six months of 2025 had disclosed the use of generative AI, compared to around 1,000 during the entirety of 2024.