Exclusive: Game Studio Petitions for 'Ethical AI in Games' With New Creator Agreement
Studio Atelico has drafted an Artists Rights Contract (ARC) designed to help ensure artists give explicit consent and receive compensation when their work is used in AI-assisted game development. 80 Level has the exclusive.
As generative AI tools rapidly spread across the games industry, one of the most pressing debates centers around how artists’ work is used to train and power those systems. Concerns around consent, attribution, and compensation have become a defining issue for developers and creators alike, particularly as studios experiment with new AI-driven pipelines for concept art, assets, and procedural content generation.
Studio Atelico, an independent game studio advocating for a more human-centered approach to AI development, is proposing a new framework aimed at addressing those concerns. The team has published a draft Creator Agreement called the Artists Rights Contract (ARC), intended to establish clearer boundaries between studios and artists when AI tools are involved, with an emphasis on transparency, consent, and revenue participation.
It's worth noting that the studio is working on a game that uses some of the technology they allude to in today's announcement. The game, Bobium Brawlers, uses integrated AI tools that allow players to create their own original monster designs and concepts.
Last year, the studio outlined a bit of their vision pretty explicitly in a blog post titled "How to use AI in video games without losing your soul," which covers a lot of the most pressing topics in this conversation.
The proposed agreement outlines several principles designed to protect creators, including explicit consent for AI training, project-scoped usage rights, upfront compensation, and a potential share of project revenue when an artist’s style or assets are used in AI-generated content. The framework also gives creators access to models trained primarily on their own work, allowing them to use those tools for portfolio development, experimentation, or additional contributions to the project.
Rather than presenting the document as a finalized legal template, Atelico is releasing the agreement publicly to encourage discussion within the development and art communities. By opening the framework to feedback from artists, studios, and legal experts, the team hopes to spark a broader conversation about how ethical, consent-based AI collaboration can be built into game development pipelines from the ground up.
A particularly unusual element of the agreement is that creators may receive access to AI models trained primarily on their own assets.
Under the draft framework, artists can use those models for purposes such as experimentation, creating additional content for the project, or portfolio development. However, restrictions are included to prevent those models from being used to train competing AI systems or contribute to unrelated commercial projects.
Bobium Brawlers, from Studio Atelico
Beyond the legal framework itself, the agreement also includes a statement of intent outlining the studio’s guiding philosophy for AI usage.
Among those principles are commitments to:
Use AI to augment rather than replace human creativity
Seek ethically sourced foundation models
Respect the labor and authorship of creators contributing to projects
They're actively seeking feedback on this approach and the contract itself via email (hello@atelico.studio) or on the official company Discord.
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