Party Animals is a pretty uncontroversial game. It’s a casual physics sim party game where players brawl as adorable animals while completing Mario Party-like mini-game objectives. After its release in 2023, it received pretty solid reviews, and quite a few players racked up hundreds of hours in it. Its reputation has quickly been torched, however, after the developers promoted possibly the one thing that could set such a dedicated community ablaze: a generative AI contest.
On May 12, the Party Animals Twitter account announced the “Party Animals AI Video Contest,” which encouraged players to share AI-generated videos featuring “positive content centered around the Party Animals IP” for a chance to earn real cash from a massive $75,000 prize pool.
Party Animals AI Video Contest is about to begin!
What wild ideas have you had for Party Animals? Join the “Golden Paw Awards” now — Party Animals 1st AI Video Contest!
A short film you’ve been dreaming of making, a story that breaks all the rules, a character tribute to your… pic.twitter.com/kWgY4zvQT0
— Party Animals (@party_animals) May 13, 2026
To clarify, this wasn’t even a regular fan video contest that just happened to allow AI or anything like that, which I’m sure would still have stirred up a lot of controversy. The rules actually required that “AIGC must be the core creative tool, including but not limited to AI-generated images, video, music, voiceovers, 3D assets, etc.” The post also noted that “all submissions must be original works” and that “any plagiarism or unauthorized use of others’ work will result in disqualification,” which is hilarious because most generative AI models are built on stolen art, so it’s all technically plagiarism anyway.
Players are now, as expected, pretty pissed off. Commenters who vowed to never buy the game or play it again earned have thousands of upvotes on social media. The game’s recent rating on Steam quickly hit that dreaded “Mostly Negative” status, too, and avid players have left reviews stating things like “Rest in peace, loved this game but they’re leaning into AI now so I will no longer support this company” and “The game itself is pretty decent, but do not support these developers for their blatant support of genAI.”
Two days after the announcement, the Party Animals team apologized and presumably canceled the contest, claiming that their “original goal was to lower the barrier to creation.” The Twitter account is now hosting a vote to determine the next steps for the contest. There are three options: cancel the contest, turn it into an AI-free contest, or keep the AI category and add a separate category for actual art. Unsurprisingly, that last choice isn’t doing too hot, while the first is currently in the lead by over 20%.
It’s a little heartwarming to see so many people banding together to hate on AI once again, but, really, the damage has already been done.
Hi everyone. We’d like to address the recent discussion around the AI video contest, and first of all, we’re sorry for upsetting players with this event. We’re also sorry that we didn’t communicate with everyone clearly enough before the event started.
Our original goal was to…
— Party Animals (@party_animals) May 14, 2026
The pro-AI rhetoric that the contest promoted is kind of ridiculous, and it’s the type of thing that players probably aren’t going to forget about at any point in the near future. The post reads: “A short film you’ve been dreaming of making, a story that breaks all the rules, a character tribute to your favorite beast… In the past, ideas like these could only exist in your head. Now, with AI, they finally have a chance to become reality.” But that’s never been the case! People have always been able to create things on their own!
Possibly the worst part of this whole debacle, though, is that the contest was set to offer a $75,000 dollar prize pool, which is a little nauseating to think about. $75,000! For videos generated by AI! I know quite a few devs who have been laid off due to the growth of AI and would get on their hands and knees for the chance to earn $75,000. Instead, here we are, giving it all away to promote a tool that encourages the loss of human creativity, which is the very thing that makes Party Animals an enjoyable game in the first place. What are we even doing here?