Saber Interactive CEO privately apologises to writer he publicly insulted after AI replacement dispute

Saber Interactive CEO Matt Karch has privately apologised to former lead writer Stella Sacco after publicly questioning her abilities and reputation in a week-long dispute over whether AI tools replaced her on the game Rideshare 'Stimulator'.

Sacco, a trans woman, said she received a "long email" from Karch in which he apologised unreservedly for how he spoke about her in the press and said he regretted escalating, according to VideogamesChronicle. The apology closed out a public back-and-forth that began when Sacco said she was replaced on the project by ChatGPT midway through development.

Sacco posted on Instagram on 16 August that she was the lead writer on Rideshare 'Stimulator' and that Saber replaced her with ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot from OpenAI. She had earlier claimed on Bluesky that Karch insisted on the AI use despite pushback from her direct supervisor.

Saber initially denied replacing Sacco or any other writer with AI. "Neither Saber nor Unigine have replaced any writers with AI," Karch said in a statement reported by The Verge on 12 August. The company acknowledged, however, that it was using AI in the game's development — a disclosure that had not yet appeared on the game's Steam page.

Karch then gave a statement to the outlet This Week in Video Games that escalated the conflict sharply. He said "Stella who?" and claimed he had asked Claude — another AI chatbot, made by the company Anthropic — because he had never spoken to or seen Sacco. His statement said she was "replaced by someone more talented and terminated for a variety of reasons a few months later," and that in retrospect he would have been happy to replace her with AI.

The private apology came after that roughly week-long public exchange, as Kotaku reported on 15 August.

Separately, an AI-generated content disclosure has now been added to the Rideshare 'Stimulator' page on Steam, the PC games storefront operated by Valve. The disclosure, visible on the store page, describes how the game uses AI-generated content including the main campaign story and characters. Valve requires developers to declare AI use on Steam store pages so buyers know before purchase.

Rideshare 'Stimulator' is listed on Steam under app ID 2366590.

For a player browsing Steam, the disclosure means the game's story and characters were at least partly produced with generative AI. For the industry, the dispute lands as studios and storefronts alike are still drawing lines around when and how AI enters the creative pipeline — and what developers owe the people it displaces.