Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash

Quoting: GerarderloperMeh, results matter. But also if stolen code ends up appearing; you don't want that happening.

There is a risk when using AI coding tools where eventually it could turn into bloatware. So hopefully that isn't what will end up happening a couple years down the line.

The bigger problem is that how fo you really even say code is stolen. A website built on tailwinds vs bootstrap and similar setups on both will look very close to the same, minus bootstrap being way more blaoted because it loads in everything.. Their structures can be different and you can even do similar features, bur much of the CSS and visuals for many sites based on bootstrap and css just go default routes and have a "samey" feel even when coded by hand
...

There is only so many ways to do something in code that unless its kike a section by section copy you'd never know and in some instances its going tl be a direct copy outside of naming conventions just because that is the way for it to perform.

The biggest problem claude has really is attribution because most of the stuff they train on is open source

Quoting: MakiThe big problem here is not so much whether AI was being used for it, but that the AI contributions are being hidden when there's feedback on it.

If it wasn't, then anyone could have forked the project if they didn't want to use the AI contributions.

The forked project could then just weed out the AI contributions in a simple manner without having to go through the code line-by-line to hopefully spot whatever vulnerabilities or bugs the AI might have added.

Start fresh with just the human-made code and fix whatever was wrong with that.

Wherever the rights of AI or projects using AI end up at, it would have secured the potential for a project like Lutris to exist without it.

Lutris' maintainers could have just said "Yep, we're using AI. Fork it if you're not happy with it."

Done.

No knee-jerk reaction. They could have kept up complaining about not having enough contributors as they have for years now.

It's the assholery of it which is egregious and a point of concern for many beyond the use of AI.

Having said that, I vehemetly disagree with the use of AI for any FOSS projects. Please keep it far away from me.

It is redundant to be so against these tools. Also he removed it and put it back because if people just acting like fools about it. There is nothing wrong with ai tools.

My projects all shown what contributed as they are web yhkngs. All show Tailwinds. Symphony, laravel and so on used. Was using grapejs for a bit but just couldn't make it do what I wanted in a clean enough way even with the help of ai.

People that can code and develop use these things as tools and we might be plugging in code bases we already have made or used ourselves and are developing off that code. I took some ideas from other products similar to mine, but my tech stack differs. My architecture differs, my front end differs i have features sets they don't that allow for better SaaS like control and lets multiple people use it etc. Ive painstakingly still had to go test every little thing and fix certain things and so on. There are still little bits I want to add likr revision tracking, two-factor, changing over to industry standards for some stuff. Maybe get translations going and the add on/module support and tracking or a down payment

Quoting: CreepioAnother thing I wanted to quickly say is that, the Lutris dev mentioned he has depression and he's using Claude as a way to stay motivated to continue working on his project (my interpretation of things). He's doing this to try to make more progress on something that otherwise risks becoming abandonware, and right now I feel like he's being bullied for using AI. He felt bullied so he removed the claude attribution, and then he felt bullied again so he put it back. And now after reading a few comments here, I see people are canceling their Patreons over this. Bizarre. I don't know what the end-game is here. If being bullied is going to be the result of using AI, I question if applying any AI attribution in the first place is the right answer. This situation affects how I will choose to go about doing things in the near future if I plan to release any software.

It's hard to find the motivation to do anything when you're depressed, I can understand the decision to use AI to make his workflow easier. It's more so the way he responded to everything that I think is the problem.

He seems to have known that people would react negatively to AI code, and his decision to deliberately hide what's hand-made and what's AI and say "lol good luck finding the code now" is just a really bad look. For one thing, as the initial article states, it makes it hard to trust what he puts out. It's also just kind of antithetical to the whole idea of open source projects when you're obfuscating code. He may have reversed his decision, but the damage is already done.

Last edited by Evanjellion on 13 Mar 2026 at 6:04 pm UTC

Quoting: CreepioAnother thing I wanted to quickly say is that, the Lutris dev mentioned he has depression and he's using Claude as a way to stay motivated to continue working on his project (my interpretation of things). He's doing this to try to make more progress on something that otherwise risks becoming abandonware, and right now I feel like he's being bullied for using AI. He felt bullied so he removed the claude attribution, and then he felt bullied again so he put it back. And now after reading a few comments here, I see people are canceling their Patreons over this. Bizarre. I don't know what the end-game is here. If being bullied is going to be the result of using AI, I question if applying any AI attribution in the first place is the right answer. This situation affects how I will choose to go about doing things in the near future if I plan to release any software.

That is exactly what happens now. You use ai at all they try and bully you for it even if is plugging in code you made to develop it further. We are not allowed to use AI and open frameworks to develop straight forward things either. Its just ridiculous. Claude's only real problem is attribution stripping at times which you can specifically ask it not to do

Quoting: Evanjellion

Quoting: CreepioAnother thing I wanted to quickly say is that, the Lutris dev mentioned he has depression and he's using Claude as a way to stay motivated to continue working on his project (my interpretation of things). He's doing this to try to make more progress on something that otherwise risks becoming abandonware, and right now I feel like he's being bullied for using AI. He felt bullied so he removed the claude attribution, and then he felt bullied again so he put it back. And now after reading a few comments here, I see people are canceling their Patreons over this. Bizarre. I don't know what the end-game is here. If being bullied is going to be the result of using AI, I question if applying any AI attribution in the first place is the right answer. This situation affects how I will choose to go about doing things in the near future if I plan to release any software.

It's hard to find the motivation to do anything when you're depressed, I can understand the decision to use AI to make his workflow easier. It's more so the way he responded to everything that I think is the problem.

He seems to have known that people would react negatively to AI code, and his decision to deliberately hide what's hand-made and what's AI and say "lol good just finding the code now" is just a really bad look. For one thing, as the initial article states, it makes it hard to trust what he puts out. It's also just kind of antithetical to the whole idea of open source projects when you're obfuscating code. He may have reversed his decision, but the damage is already done.

He did not initially hide it though. He hid it after basically being bullied gor using AI to finish work he hasn't had the motivation to do on his own codebase... he then got bullied for removing the attribution because now he was trying to hide it. As another pointed out and I responded to it is basically coming down to people bullying developers using AI no matter what

Quoting: Evanjellion

Quoting: CreepioAnother thing I wanted to quickly say is that, the Lutris dev mentioned he has depression and he's using Claude as a way to stay motivated to continue working on his project (my interpretation of things). He's doing this to try to make more progress on something that otherwise risks becoming abandonware, and right now I feel like he's being bullied for using AI. He felt bullied so he removed the claude attribution, and then he felt bullied again so he put it back. And now after reading a few comments here, I see people are canceling their Patreons over this. Bizarre. I don't know what the end-game is here. If being bullied is going to be the result of using AI, I question if applying any AI attribution in the first place is the right answer. This situation affects how I will choose to go about doing things in the near future if I plan to release any software.

It's hard to find the motivation to do anything when you're depressed, I can understand the decision to use AI to make his workflow easier. It's more so the way he responded to everything that I think is the problem.

He seems to have known that people would react negatively to AI code, and his decision to deliberately hide what's hand-made and what's AI and say "lol good just finding the code now" is just a really bad look. For one thing, as the initial article states, it makes it hard to trust what he puts out. It's also just kind of antithetical to the whole idea of open source projects when you're obfuscating code. He may have reversed his decision, but the damage is already done.

I don't agree. I haven't thoroughly looked into this but if the only thing he's obfuscating is Claude attribution then that's massively exaggerating the severity of the situation.

And yes, him being acutely aware of how others feel and think about Ai probably does play a part in his attitude and seeing how people have reacted so far, I'd say his feeling aren't entirely unwarranted.

Quoting: Antonio StorckeThis is getting ridiculous. The author knows his software. I fully support this author. As I side note, I fully support the use of Claude. It is the ONLY AI That I am able to trust with my code. The hts-time app.

You trust a war AI? A AI that delete all your work? I don't trus any AI. AI is the reason for the Ram crysis and you know that.

People are willing to forgive, forget, and accept just about anything except an arrogant attitude.

Oh boy - that's so sad. :(

While I feel sorry for the circumstances which lead to the usage of the LLM stuff I've to say that I don't want it anywhere near my hobby. So for me this is good bye Lutris. :(

Quoting: dragonherder He did not initially hide it though. He hid it after basically being bullied gor using AI to finish work he hasn't had the motivation to do on his own codebase... he then got bullied for removing the attribution because now he was trying to hide it. As another pointed out and I responded to it is basically coming down to people bullying developers using AI no matter what

That's also partially untrue. At the very first he didn't hide it, BUT he did hid it BEFORE being bothered. See his own statement :

" No, I removed the Claude attribution way before anyone complained. Looking at the git history, it seems to have happened on Feb 18th. The only thing I did as a result of this thread was putting them back. As a bonus, it fucks over every news source saying I've hidden Claude usage, making their articles wrong and outdated. "

The last sentence gives me everything I need to know about the guy though.

It seems like he just doesn't like having to face the consequences of his own actions (about using AI then about hiding it, trying to justify that he hid it precisely to not have to face consequences about using it, making it 10 times worse). And now being petty against " news sources ", which just did their job of informing people when HE should have been the one to inform them about using AI in a clear manner.

Why is it so hard for him to take ownership of his mistakes and choices ? There, have what I would consider a decent statement (not perfect since he still will be using AI for Lutris, at least mindful of people) :

Quoting: What The Statement Should Have been according to me" I have a stance on AI that can be divisive, I'm aware of the issues of the tech just like what I feel it brings to me, I chose to hid it because I was trying to protect myself from the consequences of using it, especially regarding harassment and toxicity which I didn't want to have to handle after having struggled with my own mental health.

I realize it was a mistake trying to hide it because it made it worse, by deceiving people who expected transparency and honesty in a FOSS project, and while people aren't entitled to me working for them, they're still entitled to honesty and respect, and it left them feeling betrayed because of how divisive this subject can touch core values, and prompted a lot more negative reactions than I would have gotten had I left the attribution to Claude, I understand that now.

In fact, I should have made it clearer that I was going to use AIGen the first time I did, to give time to people to move to an alternative and not catch them by surprising by having already done it for weeks / months now.

I can't take back how I acted, but I want to make it right by correctly attributing which parts of the code are made by Claude so people can fork the non AI generated parts if they do not want the AI code inside Lutris.

I know this won't fix the issue of me using AIGen for some people, but whatever your stances on AI are, when I stated that I failed you and you're entitled to my respect, please also be mindful and respectful in return, do it with kindness and in a place of constructive feedback and discussion. I wish good luck to people who will be looking for other similar projects without AIGen coding assistance.

Thank you all. "

That would have fixed lots of things for me. I still would have uninstalled it because the use of AI is an issue for me, but the biggest offense here for me was the betrayal of trust, you should never hide what you do in a FOSS project. This would have addressed that.

Quoting: doragasuUsing Generative AI tools to "fix Linux gaming" does not make sense, because Generative AI tools is killing gaming (in Linux and everywhere else) along with many other things, like many tech startups that will have to close because the magnificent 7 are hoarding all resources. And Anthropic is among the culprits here.

He also states the problem is capitalism, but it's difficult imagining this tech would work in a non capitalist heavy scenario, because for models to be effective they have to suck tons and tons of energy and data. Does he want to use AI but not "bad, capitalist AI"? OK, he can buy an RTX6000 Blackwell GPU and train his own model on non copyrighted/licensed code. But good luck getting the GPU at a decent price and getting that model to get the same level of performance as Claude.

He could just said something in the lines "I don't mind ethics, I just want to get things done", and although not OK, that would have been a better response. But his justification does not stand. **There is no ethical use case for Generative AI tech**, because it can only work if you waste enormous amounts of resources and train on tons of copyrighted and licensed work, without giving a shit for that copyright/licenses.

american billionaires prefers Generative AIs over any other technologies for spending their money on

Quoting: CreepioAnother thing I wanted to quickly say is that, the Lutris dev mentioned he has depression and he's using Claude as a way to stay motivated to continue working on his project (my interpretation of things). He's doing this to try to make more progress on something that otherwise risks becoming abandonware, and right now I feel like he's being bullied for using AI. He felt bullied so he removed the claude attribution, and then he felt bullied again so he put it back. And now after reading a few comments here, I see people are canceling their Patreons over this. Bizarre. I don't know what the end-game is here. If being bullied is going to be the result of using AI, I question if applying any AI attribution in the first place is the right answer. This situation affects how I will choose to go about doing things in the near future if I plan to release any software.

In time you will learn to accept that some decisions lead to situations without a good outcome or recourse. Regardless if you try to go forward, or back, or step aside - the damage has already been done. The attitude is important, too, but not the most important. My only hope is that this situation will serve as a guidance to others, because the others are definitely observing.