Saber's CEO answered an AI accusation by insulting the writer who made it
A former Saber lead writer says she was taken off a game and replaced with ChatGPT. Saber denies it, but CEO Matt Karch’s response mocked her personally while confirming the game does use generative AI, which isn’t disclosed on its Steam page.
A former Saber Interactive writer accused the studio of replacing her with ChatGPT. The company’s CEO replied by saying he’d needed an AI chatbot to work out who she was.
The dispute started on August 11, when narrative designer Stella Sacco saw the reveal trailer for Saber’s upcoming driving-sim satire Rideshare “Stimulator.” Sacco worked at Saber as a lead writer from July 2023 to July 2024.
She posted that she’d been lead writer on the game, and that Saber had “replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development.” She added that the passenger voices sounded AI-generated, and that none of it was disclosed on Steam.
What Saber said first
The company’s initial response was straightforward enough.
Saber told PC Gamer that neither it nor its partner studio had replaced any writers with AI, on this game or any other, and noted that its writing staff has tripled since 2023. It also said the game includes an experimental free-ride mode that uses AI by design.
That could have been the end of it.
Then the CEO wrote his own statement
CEO Matt Karch sent a longer, personal statement to This Week in Video Games, and it went somewhere else entirely.
It opened with “Stella who? I had to ask Claude,” referring to consulting an AI chatbot about a person who worked at his company for a year.
He went on to say she’d been replaced by someone more talented, terminated later for unrelated reasons, and that in hindsight he’d have been glad to swap her for AI, adding that AI is at least honest.
He also said Sacco had violated a confidentiality clause, while separately confirming that generative AI is used in parts of the game and that the Steam page will be updated once the feature set is final.
Sacco stood by her account, calling the statement “remarkably pathetic” and arguing it would damage Saber’s reputation more than hers.
What’s actually established
Strip out the insults and a few things are clear, and a few aren’t.
Confirmed: Rideshare “Stimulator” uses generative AI. Karch told Game File that writers generate batches of driver-passenger dialogue offline using their own prompts, then edit them for an experimental endless mode, on top of a human-written main script.
The Steam page currently carries no AI disclosure.
Disputed: whether Sacco was removed from the project to make room for ChatGPT. She says yes and says she documented it at the time. Saber says no, and credits the finished script to a different writer. Both accounts are on the record, and neither has been independently verified.
What isn’t in dispute is how the company chose to answer. A studio facing an AI accusation had the option of a plain denial and a Steam-page update. Instead its CEO published a statement mocking a former employee by name, in the middle of an industry where thousands of developers have lost jobs and many are genuinely afraid AI is coming for the rest.
The AI question will get sorted out by the game’s disclosures. The rest of it is already sorted.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
This Week in Video Games (August 2026), verified for Karch’s full statement including the opening line, Sacco’s employment dates and roles, the confidentiality-clause claim, and Karch’s follow-up about the Steam page being updated once the feature set is finalized
PC Gamer (August 2026), verified for Saber’s initial denial, the tripled writing staff, Sacco’s response calling the statement pathetic, and her reiteration that she was taken off the project
Game File (August 2026), verified for Karch’s technical explanation that writers generate dialogue batches offline via their own prompts and edit them for the experimental mode, alongside a human-authored main script
Kotaku and Aftermath (August 2026), verified for Karch’s “replaced by someone more talented” and retrospective AI comments, Sacco’s original Bluesky post, the absence of AI disclosure on the Steam page, and Saber’s 2024 split from Embracer