gaming

Lawyer: No-AI clauses are now boilerplate in videogame publishing contracts

Haley MacLean, a corporate IP lawyer and videogame specialist at Voyer Law, says publishers have increasingly added no-generative-AI clauses to contracts, and that practice has become boilerplate over the past year. She urges including clauses whenever a publisher will create assets to prevent publisher use of generative AI in marketing, porting or QA. The shift is driven by legal risk from generative AI, which often reproduces or depends on copyrighted works and can create liability for companies that use it.

• No-generative-AI clauses have moved from occasional to standard boilerplate in publishing contracts within roughly the last year.
• Smaller, simpler publishing studios are routinely inserting these clauses to limit legal exposure.
• MacLean recommends pushing for an AI clause whenever a publisher will create assets so the publisher cannot use generative AI for marketing, porting, or QA.
• The broader driver is copyright risk: generative AI frequently outputs material derived from copyrighted works, increasing potential legal liability for developers and publishers.