Saber Interactive says it won't change how it communicates after AI writer controversy
Saber Interactive's chief creative officer Tim Willits says the studio has no plans to change its communications strategy, weeks after CEO Matthew Karch publicly insulted a former writer and said he would have been happy to replace her with AI.
"Sometimes we say what we mean too much," Willits told PC Gamer, reflecting on the blunt public comments from Saber's leadership. When pressed on whether the recent backlash had prompted any internal reflection, his answer was reportedly a flat "no" (Eurogamer).
The controversy began on 12 August 2026, when GamesIndustry.biz reported that Saber had denied replacing a writer with ChatGPT on its upcoming driving game Rideshare Stimulator. The studio acknowledged using AI in an "experimental" mode on the game but rejected the claim that it had fired its lead writer, Stella Sacco, to replace her with the tool. Karch said Sacco was "replaced by someone more talented" and had been "terminated for a variety of reasons a few months" earlier (GamesIndustry.biz). He also privately apologised to Sacco for saying he would have been happy to swap a writer for AI, according to PC Gamer.
The following day, Gamefile reported that Karch had publicly insulted Sacco even as the studio denied her account. The episode drew attention partly because of what was missing from Rideshare Stimulator's Steam page: an AI disclosure, required by Valve's storefront rules, that had been absent since the game went live for wishlisting on 30 July. Karch initially said the disclaimer would appear once the game was finalised. It has since been added (Eurogamer).
Karch later posted on LinkedIn that he had an "insightful week" but added that "the digital ecosystem thrives on outrage and surface-level takes" (LinkedIn). He also apologised to Sacco, as Eurogamer confirmed on 6 September.
Willits, who serves as CCO at a studio employing over 3,500 people worldwide, framed the backlash as nothing unusual for Saber. He pointed to the anger the studio faced when it put World War Z on the Epic Games Store — a platform some players boycotted at the time over exclusive deals — and noted that 30 million people have now played the game (Eurogamer). "There's always some dust-up in the industry," he said.
Saber's slate remains busy. The studio is developing Turok Origins, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3. None of those projects has been directly drawn into the AI discussion, but the question of how Saber talks about its tools and its people now sits alongside every press cycle the studio enters.
For a studio that says it will not change course, the scrutiny is unlikely to settle as quickly as a LinkedIn post suggests it should.
