Dev Deletes AI Steam Game After New Girlfriend Convinces Him It’s Bad

An indie developer behind a Balatro-looking AI-generated roguelike card game that launched in 2025 has announced that he is deleting the game from Steam after a girl he’s been dating for a bit helped him realize it was a “disgrace to all game makers.”

On January 10, the store page for indie card game Hardest on Steam posted a surprising update. According to developer Eero Laine, he’ll be removing Hardest completely from the Steam store on January 30. According to the update, Hardest was made in Summer 2025 using free tools provided by the developer’s university, and according to him, at the time, he didn’t realize the effect that AI tech can have on people’s jobs and the environment. Hardest was released on Steam in July 2025 and is free to play.

“I made [Hardest] during the summer in couple months [sic] and thought to use AI because in university there is so much brainwashing on students and all the tools are given for free, so I could generate unlimited images for free,” said the developer on Steam in a post titled AI Is Bad. “But I have realized the AI is not actually free, and it has a major effect on the economy and environment. Some AI companies can use this game just existing as a reason the get more investment for their AI companies[sic], that benefit no one, but rather suck resources from the economy from hard working people.”

According to Laine, he coded “everything” himself in Hardest, so in the future, he might try to build a new game with “real assets” using his past non-AI code. Laine concluded the Steam update with: “But the game existing in its current form is a disgrace to all game makers and players. Ethically only logical reason is to delete the game from Steam. The girl I’ve been dating for a month made me realize this.”

I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think this might be the first time someone has deleted a game from Steam because their new partner convinced them it was a disgrace and should be removed from the planet. Harsh, but in the case of AI-generated slop, accurate. Kudos to that young woman for doing some good work. And I hope Laine’s next game is great and not filled with ugly AI-generated art.