Saber's AI dispute: CEO denies replacing writers, but former lead writer says otherwise

Saber Interactive's leadership is pushing back against allegations that it swapped out human writers for ChatGPT while developing Rideshare "Stimulator," a new driving sim. The claim emerged when Stella Sacco, who led the game's writing effort, took to social media to assert that the studio had replaced her with AI midway through production, and that all passenger dialogue had been generated synthetically.

The studio's response#

CEO Matthew Karch disputed the narrative in a statement, insisting that "the game's story was written entirely by real people" with one exception. He acknowledged that an upcoming "experimental, free-ride mode" would necessarily rely on AI to populate an unlimited number of passenger characters. The studio also defended its broader stance on automation, noting that Saber employs more than 3,000 people and remains committed to hiring rather than displacing staff.

What the evidence suggests#

Glimpses from a teaser trailer and the Steam storefront both hint at AI-generated content in passenger interactions. Notably, the game's official listing contains no disclosure about generative AI use—a detail that Sacco flagged in her response.

The contradiction#

Sacco rejected Karch's framing, arguing that it attempts to claim victory on both fronts. "You can't meaningfully say both 'writers wrote the story' and 'computers wrote the text,'" she said in a message to press. She noted that if both human-authored and AI-written rides coexist in the final product, then AI was still used to do work originally assigned to human labor—making the replacement real, regardless of whether all passengers were machine-generated.

The dispute underscores the ongoing tension between automation and creative employment as studios experiment with generative tools across game development.