SEGA recently revealed the new Crazy Taxi: World Tour, a game many were excited about but it's another that was instantly hit with controversy thanks to AI.
Initially everyone was excited - finally, a proper modern Crazy Taxi game - SEGA had answered the great many calls from fans of the classic series and initial thoughts is that it looked pretty good. But then, the Steam page went up, and an AI notice was added to it. Much like what happened with Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.
Here's what it says:
At SEGA Corporation, we utilize generative AI as a support tool for developers, aiming to provide better content to our users and enable developers to focus more on creative tasks.
We have used such generative AI support tools during development of Crazy Taxi: World Tour. No AI was used in reference to the performers in the game.
I expect we just going to keep seeing more of this from bigger studios that want to cut corners wherever possible. And it's also using Denuvo.
Anyway, the trailer is below if you want to see:
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Direct Link
Direct Link
Perhaps not surprising, since SEGA did previously say they would leverage generative AI.
More about the game from the Steam page:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.It's time for crazy driving, crazy adventure, and crazy money! Crazy Taxi is back and going global!
In this new high-octane adventure, follow Axel as he chases down the mysterious masked villains who stole his beloved taxi. Tackle extreme missions around the world all while earning some CRAZY money!
• Extreme Driving
Perform outrageous drifts, catch insane air, and drive at crazy speeds across five different cities as you work to deliver passengers and complete a variety of missions and challenges.
• World Tour Campaign
Embark on a globetrotting adventure to recover Axel’s stolen car from a mysterious group of international car thieves in a compelling story-driven campaign. Encounter quirky characters, tackle a variety of missions, and navigate diverse terrain across five unique cities around the world.
• Play Your Way
From transporting passengers at top speed to tackling unique side missions and odd jobs across dynamic maps, there are countless ways to drive crazy and rake in big money. Unlock a wide variety of vehicles and customization options to create your own one-of-a-kind ride.
• Modernizing A Classic
The classic gameplay of Crazy Taxi is back and better than ever! Revisit the thrills of the original games in Arcade Mode, featuring a pulse-pounding race against the clock to earn the most cash possible.
• Multiplayer Madness
Turn up the crazy and show off your outrageous driving skills against your friends or online competitors around the world and across platforms in multiple action-packed multiplayer modes.
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17 comments
crazy taxi is dead to me.
9 Likes 👍 (8)❤️ (1) See more...
Lizthestrange 15 hours ago
This is so disappointing, I was really exited at first but this is a dealbraker to me. What really makes me sad is that this could be done in any other way, especially in a game so anticipated, but it is what it is.
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Well, they had a somewhat liked franchise with which they were sure to sell a fair amount, they *had* to make it not work somehow.
I'll never get corporate greed.
I'll never get corporate greed.
5 Likes 👍 (5) See more...
SilverCode 14 hours ago
Saying your game uses "Generative AI" could mean anything though, and I feel that people may be punishing studios for using a tool to do a job which no one else wants to do anyway.
For example, we use generative AI in our team to do supplemental PR reviews, write unit tests, create first-pass documentation, clean up user stories and task tickets, and answer questions in our IDE that we might have about how to implement something, fix something what something does etc.
So we use generative AI, and thus I guess we would need to declare it on Steam, but does that mean our usage of it is bad and people should punish us for it? (we are not developing games, but the point is transferable)
For example, we use generative AI in our team to do supplemental PR reviews, write unit tests, create first-pass documentation, clean up user stories and task tickets, and answer questions in our IDE that we might have about how to implement something, fix something what something does etc.
So we use generative AI, and thus I guess we would need to declare it on Steam, but does that mean our usage of it is bad and people should punish us for it? (we are not developing games, but the point is transferable)
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Quoting: elmapulcrazy taxi is dead to me.3rd party DRM alone bring death to many things for me...
Quoting: SilverCodeSaying your game uses "Generative AI" could mean anything though, and I feel that people may be punishing studios for using a tool to do a job which no one else wants to do anyway...Asset flipping (atleast in the past, many were store bought) even cheaper (as no real work or effort put-in/done) and sold for premium too. Generative "AI" fixing, correcting... only seen doing slopificaton, corporate (or just crappy) homogenization.
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We just have to wait until they take a deep look at all the colourful tables and see if the loss in sales (if any) is worth the savings brought by implementing AI (if any).
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Quoting: SilverCodeFor example, we use generative AI in our team to do supplemental PR reviews, write unit tests, create first-pass documentation, clean up user stories and task tickets, and answer questions in our IDE that we might have about how to implement something, fix something what something does etc.Just describe in detail your use of AI in the project and let the customers decide. It's really that simple.
So we use generative AI, and thus I guess we would need to declare it on Steam, but does that mean our usage of it is bad and people should punish us for it?
(we are not developing games, but the point is transferable)If you're doing work for clients, you should do the same to them (i.e. describe it in detail and ask for acceptance). One thing is that your clients might not be keen on receiving potential slop (especially if they pay the same for it as they would for human-made work), and the other is that AI work cannot be copyrighted, so depending on your contract, the use of AI might not even be allowed (contracts usually contain a clause about transferring all rights to the client).
The only case where you get a free pass is if you're working on your own site. As of today you have no legal obligations to mention that it was created with the help of AI. Just remember that you can't put (c) in the footer. I mean you can, but it will be void. (Yeah, it's still a grey area until there's some high profile case/precedent.)
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Well.
The original game didn't go anywhere and I still playing it... so... I can use the money for something else.
I miss those days playing my Master System, my Mega Drive (my absolute favourite), my Saturn and my Dreamcast, I still have them right here. But that time will never return to me, nor that Sega that I love to remember replaying its games.
The original game didn't go anywhere and I still playing it... so... I can use the money for something else.
I miss those days playing my Master System, my Mega Drive (my absolute favourite), my Saturn and my Dreamcast, I still have them right here. But that time will never return to me, nor that Sega that I love to remember replaying its games.
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Quoting: SilverCodeSaying your game uses "Generative AI" could mean anything though, and I feel that people may be punishing studios for using a tool to do a job which no one else wants to do anyway.For some people, that's still a red line considering gen AI data centers are destroying communities, farms, etc. The amount of electricity required to power those data centers just so you can have a little convenience in your development far exceeds the threshold of what most would consider absurd.
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"Major studio uses ubiquitous tool"
No surprise there. That's just the way the sausage is being made these days.
Last edited by poke86 on 8 Jun 2026 at 10:26 am UTC
No surprise there. That's just the way the sausage is being made these days.
For some people, that's still a red line considering gen AI data centers are destroying communities, farms, etcAnd Coke should produce less plastic and Nestle should not own water rights. Corpos are fucking up the world as usual and putting the blame on users/consumers is not productive.
Last edited by poke86 on 8 Jun 2026 at 10:26 am UTC
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Stupid DRM...😡
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Quoting: poke86And Coke should produce less plastic and Nestle should not own water rights.Yes, and? Whataboutit?
Corpos are fucking up the world as usual and putting the blame on users/consumers is not productive.Everyone makes their own choices. I can't blame the game's creator for using AI, and they can't blame me for dissing it and refusing to buy the game. Where's the problem? I can't blame Valve for setting ridiculous regional price recommendations in 2022 and failing to update them until recently, and I can't blame publishers for following said recommendations, but what I can do (and did) is boycotting all the games that set these prices. Where's the problem?
Well, it depends on the POV. From societal point of view the problem is the fact that bigger entities set the rules and consumers need to live with them, often leading to a so-called Hobson's Choice. Obviously we as a society would prefer that to improve. From the market point of view, the problem is that bad choices made by clueless CEOs can lead to worse sales performance of the products, thus worsening the condition of the company and leading to further deterioration of the products and services. As consumers we might say "serves them right", but realistically we would be better off if companies making games we like were doing well and continued providing great products and services. So basically we (the consumers) are equally worried about our own well-being and our favourite companies' future, and we are doing what we can (yelling at them in the forums and voting with our wallets) to let them know that we care.
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I was looking forward to this as well, I'll still keep my eye on it and see how much People enjoy the game but first Tomb Raider now this, feels bad man!
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GenAI AND Denuvo DRM? That's quite the poison pill to swallow. For another crazy taxi iteration??
Nope.
Nope.
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Quoting: SilverCodeSaying your game uses "Generative AI" could mean anything thoughThey've got dedicated PR flacks who might in theory tell the fans what exactly it means. If they're too lazy to do that, I'm certainly too lazy to buy the game.
When people object to people refusing to buy games just because they have AI, or just because they have Denuvo, or just because some other thing people find annoying, I don't think they get it. There are gajillions of games. We don't need to compromise, hold our nose to get X specific game. We don't need a massive reason to make the tremendous sacrifice of not buying the remake of a game we vaguely remember enjoying once, or hear that other people kind of enjoyed once. We can strike lots of games from our list for the most trivial of reasons and be just fine. If anything it's a mercy if some games offend us and reduce the vast shoals of games people have to decide among!
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Saying that a studio shouldn't use GenAI at all feels a bit to me like saying I won't buy furniture if the carpenter used a power saw
I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if it's the very artists people are trying to protect, who wants to use GenAI for the same reason... Is does donkey work faster.
Imagine you're creating the new assets for a game and you want to trial some ideas. GenAI allows you to give it what you have and direct some tweaks, and the easily visualise that in multiple in-game contexts. And yes, the bottom line is that takes some work away from artists by making each artist able to work quicker, but so did power tools for the trades.
I also think a lot of people seem to view GenAI as "give it a sentence and it will draw whatever you need" but if you've ever actually used it to make something where you have a specific vision, you know how much of the artistic direction still comes from you. Again, the power saw does not make the table, but it sure makes it easier
I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if it's the very artists people are trying to protect, who wants to use GenAI for the same reason... Is does donkey work faster.
Imagine you're creating the new assets for a game and you want to trial some ideas. GenAI allows you to give it what you have and direct some tweaks, and the easily visualise that in multiple in-game contexts. And yes, the bottom line is that takes some work away from artists by making each artist able to work quicker, but so did power tools for the trades.
I also think a lot of people seem to view GenAI as "give it a sentence and it will draw whatever you need" but if you've ever actually used it to make something where you have a specific vision, you know how much of the artistic direction still comes from you. Again, the power saw does not make the table, but it sure makes it easier
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Quoting: spymastermattSaying that a studio shouldn't use GenAI at all feels a bit to me like saying I won't buy furniture if the carpenter used a power sawAh, the "it's just a tool" argument. I'm not a fan of this. Powertools genuinely made very specific drudge work easier for skilled tradesmen, unlike genAI, which is more akin to robot automation taking jobs away from car factory workers. But the metaphor entirely breaks down when you realise that genAI isn't just taking jobs away, it's also spurring massive datacentre investment - which is impacting water and electricity supplies in the American (mostly) towns where they're being thrown up, while driving up prices of RAM and GPUs. It's spurring nuclear re-investment over a long term (25 years minimum). It's definitely ending jobs far faster than powertools ever could. And then there's the illegally obtained training data, the cost of training, the loss-leading pricing, the billionaire's and corpos funding all this, the top-heavy, bubble-like investment, the insane marketing, the force-fed product "enhancements" and everything else that's wrong with this car-crash tech.
I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if it's the very artists people are trying to protect, who wants to use GenAI for the same reason... Is does donkey work faster.
Imagine you're creating the new assets for a game and you want to trial some ideas. GenAI allows you to give it what you have and direct some tweaks, and the easily visualise that in multiple in-game contexts. And yes, the bottom line is that takes some work away from artists by making each artist able to work quicker, but so did power tools for the trades.
I also think a lot of people seem to view GenAI as "give it a sentence and it will draw whatever you need" but if you've ever actually used it to make something where you have a specific vision, you know how much of the artistic direction still comes from you. Again, the power saw does not make the table, but it sure makes it easier
One thing I do like about your analogy is this - if you give me, personally, a powersaw, I'll give you an absolutely shitty table because I have no idea about carpentry. And that's what we get with genAI - pure slop. It doesn't matter how much "artistic direction" you're going to fit into a prompt if you have no idea about art.
I'd prefer that creatives are given the freedom and time to not use the plagiarism machine and just create something that they're paid for and probably love doing, and we can enjoy that work without wondering how many households experienced brownouts and contaminated water to produce such shitty art.
I read a lot of fiction - mainly fantasy and sci-fi, right? I challenge you to ask anyone like me, "would you rather wait a year to read your favourite author's next book, or would you prefer to have genAI write a new book in the same style as that author, and you can read it next week?"
No-one - absolutely not a single reader - would choose genAI.
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