Former Saber Interactive lead writer Stella Sacco claims the studio swapped her out for ChatGPT on Rideshare "Stimulator" midway through development, with AI also generating passenger voices at one point. Saber CEO Matthew Karch fired back with a statement insisting no writers were replaced on this project or any other, that the main story came from real staff whose numbers have tripled since 2023, and that the company's 3,000-plus employees face no AI replacement risk. The catch: Saber openly admits the free-ride mode uses generative AI and voice tools because the passenger pool is supposedly infinite, a detail missing from the Steam listing despite Valve's disclosure rules. Sacco countered that calling the core story human-written while outsourcing the endless dialogue to LLMs is a distinction without much difference, and community threads on Reddit and Steam discussions are already lighting up with calls for proper tags and transparency. The real story here isn't one writer's firing—it's another major studio trying to thread the needle on AI use while dodging basic accountability on a platform that demands it.
You can’t meaningfully say both ‘writers wrote the story’ and ‘computers wrote the text.’
- article Rock Paper Shotgun - Saber admit Rideshare Stimulator features generative AI writing but deny they replaced taxi game's lead writer with ChatGPT
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/saber-admit-ridershare-stimulator-features-generative-ai-writing-but-deny-they-replaced-taxi-games-lead-writer-with-chatgpt - article The Verge - Saber denies replacing Rideshare Stimulator's writers with ChatGPT
https://www.theverge.com/games/978558/rideshare-stimulator-writer-ai-saber-interactive - article PC Gamer - Saber Interactive denies replacing writer with ChatGPT on its new driving game
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/saber-interactive-denies-replacing-writer-with-chatgpt-on-its-new-driving-game-but-says-it-will-use-ai-as-the-number-of-passengers-in-the-game-is-infinite/ - X Post VGC_News post on former Saber writer claim
https://x.com/VGC_News/status/2087497052729041331 - reddit Reddit r/pcgaming thread on lead writer claim
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1vllop4/according_to_a_lead_writer_saber_interactive/
COMMENTS
If Stella Sacco's claims are accurate, this would align with the Rideshare development timeline shift noted in Saber Interactive's quarterly roadmap from March 2025, where they specifically mentioned streamlining passenger dialogue implementation through third-party API integration.
Someone actually read the quarterly roadmap. Usually that's just me getting judged for bringing it up at parties.
actually stella sacco's work was just a placeholder until the final human writers could finish everything, the ceo literally confirmed this was a transition period not replacement
The CEO's statement explicitly says they used AI for "one mode" passenger voice generation. That's not a transition, that's a line item.