Members of the video game modding community have warned players that seemingly cool mods that combine two or more video games are actually slop created by Claude, Anthropic’s AI, and they pose a huge danger to the entire community.
For example, the recent viral video that shows Mario from Super Mario 64 up against Margit in Elden Ring,
That’s but one of a long list of AI slop mashup mods that have recently taken the Internet by storm.
As caught by VGC, one of the earliest examples of this new trend showed Modern Warfare 2’s Rust map turned into a skate park, Skate 3 style.
First off, Rust is a sacred place meant for a 1v1 with people who have disrespected you online. Secondly, that’s trash. If it looks good in that video, it’s because—as with all things AI—you’re looking at a very specific recording that stops shortly before reality completely falls apart. As true modders who have looked into these mashups have attested, anything that looks even remotely passable is a rudimentary and barely playable mashup at best.
The example above, specifically, is incredibly sad for anyone who cares about the long history of the modding community, because the same thing has already been pulled off years ago properly and in a much cooler way.
I remember how AI videos replaced most funny animal videos overnight. If you haven’t noticed yet, sorry, but cats haven’t suddenly learned how to play guitar. As a gamer, few things feel as cool as seeing an individual or a small team conjure this new mod that allows you to perform something completely unbelievable in an already incredible game, like adding portals to Half-Life 2. We now risk seeing AI sloppers taking that from us as well, and for nothing.
Modders understand the threat this poses to everyone. Even those who admittedly resort to some AI tools to create their mods hate this new trend, calling it complete slop. I much prefer my mods completely AI-free, thank you, but it’s interesting to see how people who aren’t 100% skeptical of AI are turning against this. Many modders are threatening to leave the scene because of this, and I can’t really fault them for at least considering it.
Even if you don’t care about mods because you’d rather experience the game the exact way the devs have developed it for you, one cannot ignore how modding has served as one of the most important formative platforms for many of the greatest developers you see today, ever since the release of the original DOOM. Losing mods to something that just looks like a mod would prove to be a massive blow to the whole industry, one whose consequences we’d take years to realize.
