Our case

In late November 2025, we announced our first game, The Idles. The announcement was very cryptic, with just a cover and some text detailing the theme. We promised to reveal more information in the coming weeks.

The cover had a few deliberate and obvious issues easily spotted upon closer scrutiny, like a pathway leading to a house with no door. It wasn’t long until we got our first couple of negative reviews, and the game was flagged on an AI blacklist we didn’t even know existed at the time.

A few weeks after that, as promised, we opened pre-orders and released more information about the game. That included an AI disclaimer, both on our website and linked in the announcement post. In it, we challenged common anti-AI mantras and discussed the reasoning behind using AI in the process of making the game, its theme, and our political stance regarding the technology—which we could define as nuanced and critical. We also decided to open up a specific thread where we engaged message by message with anyone willing to partake. Overall, it was a success, but there was no shortage of users more eager to complain than to have a meaningful debate. A bunch of them even left negative reviews for a game they hadn’t played, or positive ones in protest against those reviews.

While that happened, news about the disclaimer and announcement resonated on some social networks, with some rather large and well-known publishers and influencers taking aggressively critical stances about a game that wasn’t even released yet. Two things were surprising about this behavior coming from public figures: first, the lack of effort in trying to engage with or even read the arguments presented in the disclaimer; and second, how they decided to show their discontent—on a social network we were not a part of. It seemed clear the intention was not to discuss or rebut our stance, particularly considering a neutral space had been provided to that end, but to virtue signal in front of their audiences.

This reaction was in stark contrast to what we were finding while doing initial interviews about the project in Spain. Out of a combined audience of a few hundred, nobody—not one person—came forward or flinched at the notion of having used AI to illustrate a game. This led us to think that these concerns are considerably more limited in scope than they may seem in certain internet spaces, and are also heavily focused on the Anglosphere. There, AI as a tool seems to have been intrinsically mixed up with a rejection of the current US establishment and the negative sentiment toward Big Tech that a certain part of the electorate, highly represented in the gaming community, harbors. This seems to have effectively turned anti-AI stances into a political identity prone to eliciting intense passions. What is amusing is that none of these views seemed to stop and contemplate the different outlooks and uses for AI that other cultures may have. We would recommend that these people take a close look at how the adoption of AI is being perceived in China, for example. Is the problem a piece of tech, or the societies through which we perceive it?

Eventually, things got a bit quieter on the public front. Privately, there was no shortage of conversations with other media outlets, preparing for the usual review cycle, demo copies, and so on. A bunch of them turned us down because the game had been announced as using AI. Again, the regional bias was largely confirmed.

In one especially aggravating case, we sent our only English copy out to an influencer who had previously reached out to us proposing to do an official, paid "How to Play" video. The AI disclaimer was very much public by the time the copy was sent to them—it had been for months. After a long conversation explaining the whole vision behind the project, which ended in an impasse, we decided it was best that they return the copy, despite the harm already done to our operations. The bottom line was, for now, it didn’t work for them to come out supporting a game tied to AI. It was made clear that this stance was not about principles, but a calculated business decision, which made it all the more disappointing.

This is a pattern we have seen repeated over the last few months: publishers pledging not to use AI asking for advice on how to use it, media outlets refusing to cover AI content as long as it wasn't in their interest, etc.

[Spoiler]

At the time of publishing this, we will finally be publicly revealing that a human artist, Gerard Pamies, has been the hand behind the game. Up to now, this is a fact that has only been known to those what got hold of an early copy. It will be extremely interesting to see how this information is received.

[/End Spoiler]

What is AI, really?

AI is fundamentally a leap in computation. Where previously computation was largely deterministic and guided by scripted programs, AI now enables a stochastic layer—one that we are learning to understand and harness as we go.

I personally work in the IT industry, with a current focus on AI tooling. We are probably the fastest adopters of this new tech, and it is already having deep repercussions. Manual coding, the craft that I practiced for the last twenty years, is largely not practiced anymore. A good part of my industry is in tatters, and the rest of us standing are struggling both with a sense of loss for our beloved craft and the difficulties of the transition.

I expect most industries, board games included, to eventually go through a very similar phase sooner rather than later. I have no doubt that the political and social repercussions of this, when combined across all industries, will be huge. This is not intended to downplay our well-founded worries and anxieties regarding AI—rather, it is to provide perspective on something that is already underway.

Let’s not kid ourselves: AI is the new compute. This is the technology with the fastest adoption rate in human history. It’s not slop, and it’s not a bluff. Artists in the industry use it to speed up their work, designers pitch ideas with it, and publishers use it to translate rulebooks and draft email replies. Not using it is not an option for most of us, in the exact same way that refusing to use a computer hasn't been an option for decades. Drawing the line between which kinds of jobs are ethical to replace or speed up is a rather moot debate; nobody wants theirs taken away. If you have the financial backing or time to avoid using AI entirely, congratulations. But don't assume your privilege extends to everybody. Pretending our industry is somehow different is just self-serving posturing or shortsightedness.

Current industry issues

Today, however, very few of the issues the board game industry struggles with have to do with AI. One could even argue that any industrialized form of culture already leads to a lot of contradictions.

First and foremost is the precarization of designers. Very few designers would even consider making a living out of board games, even those with moderate success. Designers shoulder all the risk of investing countless hours into making games that very often flop, and even if they don’t, they see very little economic upside from them. It is ironic how, out of a whole industry that stems from their creativity, they are the last ones to get a paycheck.

Publishers, especially smaller ones, follow right after. This is an oversaturated, low-margin industry with a clear glass ceiling. Most games don’t sell past the first few thousand copies. Publishers are incentivized to release a lot of games every year, making license buying and selling markets considerably more lucrative than risking the investment of creating novel games. In this scenario, very few are willing to take risks, leading to a myriad of samey releases every year. Crowdfunding platforms, originally intended as a means to make original projects happen, have become marketing platforms for larger publishers to outsource risk to customers, often showing up with almost-finished products and using the platforms purely for pre-orders.

If neither designers nor small publishers are making bank, where does the good money you pay for your games go? Distribution, which is getting harder and more expensive by the day. Ad campaigns paid to large tech firms—Meta, Google Ads—and the influencers operating under them, or the few large game media outlets that exist. Retailer discounts, for shops that have to keep the lights on, pay large rents, and compete with monopolies like Amazon, which isn’t easy. In other words, the rentier economy is also preying on this industry.

This is where public perception has become completely warped. The industry is quietly suffocating under massive structural issues, middleman costs, and broken development economics—yet the discourse treats AI as the ultimate existential threat to tabletop gaming. Fixating on a single technological tool while ignoring the systemic traps eating this industry alive is missing the forest for the trees.

The positives of AI

Every industry is different, and certainly nobody wants to see AI-assisted military drones. For our industry, however, it is our belief that AI can bring more net positives than negatives—from helping playtest, assisting brainstorming sessions, or proofreading rulebooks, to simply enabling projects that could not happen without AI.

This is especially true for smaller publishers and indie creators who don’t have the budget, or who come from less privileged backgrounds where the capital to make games is not readily available. Let’s be real: the current board game industry is mostly Western-centric and middle-class, with a tendency toward selling expensive, overproduced products. Games, however, are ancient pieces of culture. The board game industry is fundamentally the capitalization of something far more relevant than itself. The more accessible making games becomes, the better it is for those of us who actually care more about the creative expression of the authors and less about making a buck off them.

Some games will use AI art, and some will not. Most customers are fine with it or will become fine with it given time; others won't. That is simply the new reality. The sooner we stop policing the tools creators use to express themselves and start looking forward, the better off the industry will be.

Call to action

Some have turned the adoption of a new tool into an identitarian political issue. Others are just being opportunistic. But all of us bear a degree of responsibility in making this better, and the main tool we have at our disposal is disclaimers:

Publishers have a moral obligation to be straight with their customers and flag AI usage as long as there’s enough demand for it. However, at the moment, they have every incentive not to. The truth is, AI usage is hard to prove—a situation that is extremely unlikely to get better; on the contrary. According to the latest EU AI Act, board games are not even required to disclose it, as they are considered low-risk products. Still, we can only hope that disclaimers become more generalized so we can create an environment based on trust. Are we brave enough to come forward with it? That is the question.

Consumers have a right to demand disclaimers. Review bombings and other forms of harassment are not only disrespectful to others' work, but also immature and counterproductive if we want to encourage publishers to be straightforward about how they do or don't use AI.

Media outlets, especially larger ones, have a responsibility to open their doors to games that use AI. You can and should demand AI disclaimers so that the audience is informed about their purchases. But you should also acknowledge your dominant position in influencing purchases and be responsible about it.

BGG has to live up to its monopolistic position in the industry and help alleviate these issues. Conversations about AI should be allowed to happen freely while keeping an eye out for toxic behavior. There should be a clear section where AI disclaimers can be placed per game. They should have a consistent policy regarding paid and unpaid (developer diaries) advertisements for products using AI. Sadly, this is not the case today. We should also rethink the rating model so that this situation doesn't happen. Clearly, nobody should be able to rate a game they haven’t played; it actively undermines the credibility of the whole platform.

More importantly, nobody should feel entitled to engage in any form of bigotry against others, even less so considering we are talking about games here. The transition to an AI world will be a hard enough path as it stands for most of us; what we need is to be able to share our experiences in a supportive environment. For a community that prides itself on being safe, inclusive, and welcoming, we surely seem to be doing a poor job of upholding these values.

Finally, to end on a positive note, we’d like to give a shout-out to those who have accompanied us through these last few months, keeping the debates open and civil. As usual, the angry voices may be the loudest, but the quiet ones carry more weight. It’s thanks to your support that we finally decided to come forward like this. We hope this hits home with a lot of you.

Unai & The Team