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Generative AI is triggering an industry-wide reckoning in gaming—and some studios won’t survive the fallout.

That’s the warning from Jack Buser, global games director at Google Cloud, who says the industry is entering an upheaval as big as any in its history.

“Some of these game companies are going to make it, and some of them are not,” Buser told Decrypt. “And some are going to be born through this revolution.”

Buser, a 30-year industry veteran, works with publishers and studios to adopt cloud infrastructure and AI, from scaling multiplayer systems to analyzing player data and testing generative tools. That role puts him at the intersection of big tech and game development, where studios connect to Google’s servers and AI models to build, or sustain, their titles.

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He pointed out that AI is arriving just as developers face mounting financial pressure and shrinking player engagement with new games.

“Over half of play time is in games more than six years old,” he said. “So if you’re making a new game, you’re competing for less than half of the available play time. And if you’re the creator of one of those older games, you’re struggling to keep it relevant and keep players engaged.”

Following decades of growth, the global games industry dipped post-pandemic, with revenues falling in 2022 before recovering. In 2024, it generated $182.7 billion, up 3.2% from the year before. Revenues are expected to rise to $188.9 billion in 2025, a 3.4% increase.

“You have a broken business model, and the result is layoffs, game cancellations, and other problems across the games industry in recent years,” Buser said.

However, Buser believes generative AI could be the industry’s way out. A Harris Poll commissioned by Google found that nine out of 10 developers are already using AI tools in some part of the production process.

“If you go use case by use case in your development pipeline, from concept to quality assurance, and you attack every use case with AI, you can have quite a radical reduction in development time,” he said.

Developers are testing generative tools aimed at changing how games look, feel, and evolve in real time. Buser called this the era of the “living game”—titles that use AI in real time to analyze player behavior and generate new content on the fly. Unlike traditional games, which rely on patches and downloadable content (DLC) drops, these systems could adapt in minutes rather than months.

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“Take Darth Vader in Fortnite, for example—the player reaction was strong,” Buser said. “We’re just scratching the surface.”