Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis uses gen-AI, Amazon Games defends the tech

Polygon RSS Feed✍ Elijah Gonzalez📅 June 3, 2026⏱ 3 min read(3 months ago)

Overview & Key Takeaways

GM of Amazon Games Jeff Gattis spoke to Polygon about why the company is “bullish” on AI.

In a deflating bit of news, it appears that Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is the latest game to embrace generative AI in its development process. Crystal Dynamics and Amazon Games added the following disclosure to the game’s Steam page: “AI-assisted tools were used during development to support some early exploration and temporary development content. Any AI-assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team.”

While that statement suggests Crystal Dynamics aims to remove or touch up AI-generated art from its remake of the 1996 original Tomb Raider, its use in the artistic process will likely prove controversial. The early response to the news has been mixed to negative on the Tomb Raider subreddit, ranging from vague hopes that the generative-AI craze will simply go away to grim resignation that this is the future of game development.

GM of Amazon Games Jeff Gattis told Polygon why the company has been embracing generative AI.

"We’ve been pretty bullish on GenAI and I know that’s a very controversial topic, but not so much GenAI in terms of how we make games, but games that can be made on large language models that could not have been made three to five years ago," Gattis said. "We think there’s opportunities to make interesting new types of games made by humans, but games that couldn’t have been made three to five years ago."

It isn’t entirely clear what Gattis means by “games […] made on large language models.” He may be referring to something like Nvidia’s generative AI-powered NPCs or perhaps some new form of procedural generation. In more concrete terms, Amazon has already released an AI-powered party game on Luna called Courtroom Chaos - Starring Snoop Dogg. The store page description describes how players take turns improvising fictionalized testimony to defend their case, and “it’s all moderated by the dynamic, AI-powered Judge Snoop Dogg.” The game’s store page features abundant AI-generated imagery that looks like a surreal Judge Judy episode, and frankly, it’s all pretty bleak.

To say that AI has been poorly received by many gamers is an understatement. Hideo Kojima fans hung their heads in shame as the auteur was featured in an AI-generated Prada video last week; Nvidia got roasted for its new DLSS toggle tech that yassified Grace from Resident Evil: Requiem; and Party Animals’ AI art contest sparked a wave of negative reviews on Steam. Beyond labor concerns, art theft worries, and environmental issues, the most straightforward reason AI art has been unpopular is that many players find it hideous. We’ll find out for sure whether Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis’ use of AI is particularly blatant when itcomes out in February 2027.

We also learned that the game is coming to Nintendo Switch 2

✈ Read Original at Polygon RSS Feed ← Back to All News

More in PC, Multi-platform

🖥 PC, Multi-platform

Wardogs Devs Are Watching Economy Cheaters Like Hawks

With the FPS Wardogs(https://www.gamespot.com/games/wardogs/) dominating the Steam charts, developer Bulkhead is paying close attention to the game's various systems. The studio recently dropped a new patch that makes some necessary changes(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-patch-notes-scheduled-maintenance-and-patch-0-11/) for server stability, while confirming that the team has their eyes on cheaters and exploiters. As part of Patch 0.11(https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1867240/view/701027323413005176?l=english), which came out on September 14, Bulkhead announced that should any dogs of war take advantage of Wardogs' economy by farming servers, they'll find themselves either temporarily or permanently banned from the game. "As an early access game, we’re not perfect, and we never will be," Bulkhead said in the patch notes. "But if you do find something and take advantage of it, we have decided to come down hard." To be specific, Bulkhead outlined three different scenarios that will come with three different repercussions depending on the type of exploit you partake in. Scenario 1: Stockpiling money by abusing cash exploits and bugs will result in a timed ban, with the length determined by whether you were banned previously. Your cash and experience will get reset, too. Scenario 2: Showing economy exploits through tutorial content will be treated as "advertising cheats," resulting in a permanent ban. However, if you happen to stumble upon an exploit and share that with Bulkhead on Discord or social media, that'll be seen as an "alert," which prevents you from being permanently banned. Scenario 3: If you're farming experience via server exploits, which Bulkhead says will result in "the most serious bans," your account will get banned permanently. The studio clarified, though, that it's open to feedback on this policy, stating that these positions could change if enough people believe they're too harsh. "In the very early stages of finding these issues you may find yourself getting away with it, but it doesn't take long for our backend data to flag abusers," Bulkhead said, "Effectively, if you find something and you then keep doing it, over and over again, that is abuse of an exploit. If you figure something out and test it once or twice, no biggy, thanks for helping us QA." Wardogs is currently Steam's hottest game right now, with over 320,000 people playing at the time of writing. It didn't have the smoothest of starts(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-has-a-massive-start-on-steam-but-players-face-brutal-sever-queues/), but the kinks are getting ironed out as the days go on. Players are a little riled up at the moment, though, particularly because people don't know how to close the door behind them(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-players-really-want-you-to-close-the-doors-or-else/).

GameSpotNewsabout 4 hours ago

🖥 PC, Multi-platform

Wardogs Players Really Want You To Close The Doors … Or Else

The hottest game on PC right now is Wardogs(https://www.gamespot.com/games/wardogs/), the Battlefield-like mass multiplayer FPS by developer Bulkhead that's soaring up the Steam charts. While it may not be as hot as the game itself, the game's subreddit is full of hotheads demanding you do one teeny-tiny thing. Close. The. Doors. Behind. You. Released in a closed beta state in August 2026 before entering early access in September 2026, Wardogs has taken PC gaming by storm. It's not only the number-one trending game(https://steamdb.info/stats/trendingfollowers/) according to SteamDB, with an all-time peak of 428,666 concurrent players on September 13(https://steamdb.info/app/1867240/charts/), but it's also the fourth-most-played game on Steam(https://steamdb.info/charts/), trailing behind Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. Folks can't get enough of being a dog of war. Something folks would love to get enough of, though? Players leaving those gosh-darn doors and gates open when venturing out onto the battlefield. All over the official Wardogs subreddit are a ton of players decrying the carelessness of other players when it comes to not closing doors and gates behind them. Redditor demonmit1 posted on September 14(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wfvgws/stopbuildingsomanygates/), pleading for people to stop building so many gates and close the ones they open. "If you're helping build a FOB, please… We only need one air locked gate for logistics," demonmit1 said. "No one closes them anyways, so adding more is not good. Stop it. If someone wants to leave the base, they can jump over a wall. They don't need to leave through a door they'll forget to close." https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wdpm7n/closeyourfobgatesplease/ "PSA: stop leaving my doors and gates open at my fobs," wrote Redditor novastar17 on September 12(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1we3cmr/psastopleavingmydoorsandgatesopenatmy/). "i have been trying to build mortar complexes and random allies come open doors and let enemies in to just wipe all of us while im busy building. stop that, thanks." "There should be upgraded doors / gates that auto shut after a few seconds," user GOpencyprep suggested on August 23(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1vwmx4f/spendingsomuchtimebuildingupafobonlyto/) in a very potty-mouthed Reddit post. "Or teammates who forget to close the door behind them should be fired into the sun...one or the other. Seriously though this is a problem." What these FOBBs, or Forward Operating Base builders(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/what-is-a-fob-in-wardogs-and-why-do-you-need-one/), are talking about are the doors and gates you can add when constructing bases that act as central operating hubs for your team. These FOBs allow you to create fortified defenses, as well as construct weapons and other armaments to keep your team ready for when the fighting gets particularly intense. Unfortunately, because the doors and the gates don't close behind you once opened, this gives the enemy team the opportunity to waltz in, shoot up the place, and leave as if they were invited in the first place. Even though only you and your teammates can open and close doors and gates, meaning the enemy can't just pry your FOB open, leaving any access point open leaves you, ahem, open to a raid. You can imagine how frustrating this would be. https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wf7gwf/friendlytutorialonhowtoclosedoors/ "While Servers are down CLOSE THE DAMN DOORS," Redditor xMrStonex put it bluntly on September 14(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wfxm4d/whileserversaredownclosethedamndoors/). "Title. Thank you." "I get killed so often when using mortars or working on the FOB, because lazy people can't be bothered to close the door when they leave the FOB," AutomaticReach32 suggested on September 14(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wfdd2x/paypeopleforclosingdoors/). "You can't force people to close the doors, but I think this could be helped with some monetary encouragement. Pay people if they close the door behind them! Nothing game changing, something modest like the revive / heal tips, $15 to players who close the door, reward good behavour!!" "I just have to say one thing," Icy-Sock-2388 said in the title of their September 5 Reddit post(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1w8fihl/ijusthavetosayonething/). "CLOSE THE FING DOORS! Countless times now I've meticulously spent tens of thousands to rapidly build a mortar, AA, and respawn fob...only for it to be taken by the enemy because they casually walked through the front door, past the multi-layered airlocks, into the tower airlock, and then into the fob airlock room because EVERY one of those doors was open." There have been some threats in the subreddit(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wbhwt7/theonlyrealwayoffixingtheproblemofpeople/), too! It's really just people announcing that, if you leave a FOB door or gate open, you'll get a chest full of lead from your own team(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wdpm7n/closeyourfobgatesplease/) if the enemy team hasn't pumped you full of it already. Clearly, no one wants to let the AC out and the enemies in. Speaking of being let in, Wardogs suffered brutal server queues(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-has-a-massive-start-on-steam-but-players-face-brutal-sever-queues/) once it entered early access. Thankfully, Bulkhead released a hotfix that kinda-sorta addresses the long server wait times, but you may still encounter the dreaded WD-L014 Error Code. We've broken down how to get past that(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-to-fix-the-wardogs-wd-l014-error-code/) so you can be a dog of war again.

GameSpotNewsabout 5 hours ago

🖥 PC, Multi-platform

The World's Coolest New Indie Gaming Showcase Officially Returns Next Month

After a successful spring outing, Evil Empire's Triple-i Initiative Showcase will return this fall, promising 'No ads, no host, just games.'

PolygonIndie, Newsabout 6 hours ago

← Back to GameSky Home