WORLDTECHFree Steam demo runs up $1,000 daily AI bill and forces devs to take out bank loan
What happened
SteamDB showed an average player count of under 10 people until late August, when it started gaining steam. Easy Fox were surprised by the number of users and didn't expect that the demo's popularity would cause its AI expenses to go that high.
Easy Fox, the developers behind a free, AI-powered game demo on Steam, has been forced to take out a bank loan as more players tried out its title. In its latest update , Easy Fox said that the number of players trying out the game has grown over 20 times, which is more than what it expected.
This led its costs to skyrocket to more than a thousand dollars daily, and cheaper fallback AI models have led to slop injected into gameplay, impacting the user experience. Since the game’s sole control method is your voice, AI is a critical part of its programming to recognize your commands and translate them into instructions for the virtual little sister.
Sources & evidence
- Tom's Hardware Reporting source
Free Steam demo runs up $1,000 daily AI bill and forces devs to take out bank loan ↗
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