“I Would Have Been Happy to Replace Her With AI,” Saber CEO Says In Bizarre Attack On Writer

A Trailer Reignites An Old Accusation

The trouble started on August 11, when Saber Interactive published the trailer for Rideshare “Stimulator,” an upcoming driving sim developed by Unigine where players run their own rideshare business, ferrying “quirky passengers” with stories that are supposed to be “captivating, hilarious, or just plain weird.” Former Saber lead writer Stella Sacco saw it and recognized the project immediately. “I was lead writer on this one!” she wrote on Bluesky.

“And Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development. All the passenger voices were AI too. Either they changed direction at some point or they’re not disclosing it on Steam.” – Stella Sacco

It wasn’t the first time she’d said this. Sacco, who worked at Saber as lead writer from July 2023 to July 2024 on Stuntman: Hollywood and other titles, had referenced being “replaced with ChatGPT on a project at Saber” before, without naming the game. She also resurfaced a December 2023 post where she’d written, “I got replaced on one of my games at work. By ChatGPT.”

Saber Denied Replacing Writers With AI

Saber’s official response, provided to PC Gamer, was a flat denial. “Neither Saber nor Unigine have replaced any writers with AI for Rideshare or any other game,” the studio said. “In fact, Saber’s staff of writers has tripled since 2023. Rideshare’s story was written entirely by real people.”

That denial came with an admission attached. “The game will also feature an experimental, free-ride mode that by necessity incorporates AI as the number of passengers in the game is infinite,” Saber continued.

We are firm believers in using AI tools to improve or enhance gameplay experiences and improve NPC behavior as we have done since Saber was founded in 2001. As the industry has continued to contract, Saber continues to hire. None of our 3000+ employees have to worry about being replaced by AI.” – Saber Interactive

The admission mattered for a specific reason: Rideshare “Stimulator’s” Steam page had no AI disclosure at the time, despite Valve’s Content Survey rules requiring developers to detail any AI used in content that ships with the game, including narrative, dialog, and localization. Asked about the gap, Saber told PC Gamer the page “will be updated once the feature set is finalized,” insisting it was “touting this experimental mode as a feature, not shying away from it.”

Sacco wasn’t satisfied. “They can say what they want, I was there,” she told PC Gamer. “They took me off the project to use ChatGPT to write the rest of the text, including planned live updates. If they changed plans in the intervening years, that’s great, but again: I was there, and it was my job to write the game, and then it wasn’t once Matt Karch decided using ChatGPT would be great publicity for the game.”

In a follow-up post, she added more detail, saying the decision came from “one to two AI dummy higher-ups at Saber,” and that her direct boss had pushed back against it internally. In another post, she claimed:

we already have Stella and she’s funny and she’s good at this, she’s done live games before so live ops are no problem, etc, but the suit insisted ‘gamers love new tech’ so using AI would be ‘great marketing.'” She also clarified she had “no beef” with the Unigine team specifically. – Stella Sacco

Karch’s Response Makes Things Worse

Saber CEO Matthew Karch then gave a second, considerably more combative statement directly to This Week in Videogames. He opened by claiming not to know who Sacco was:

Stella who? I had to ask Claude because I have never spoken to her or seen her.”  – Matthew Karch

He then argued that Sacco had violated a confidentiality agreement by disclosing the AI use before Saber was ready to reveal it: “It was always our intention to reveal this until Stella violated her confidentiality clause and revealed this before we were ready.” He also credited the game’s “entire story script” to an unnamed writer, saying that if it won an award, that person would be the one to accept it.

Then came the line that escalated everything. “As far as Stella is concerned, she was replaced by someone more talented and terminated for a variety of reasons a few months later,” Karch said.

From what I can gather she enjoys controversy even more than I do. I would frankly in retrospect have been happy to replace her with AI. At least we would be dealing with someone programmed to be honest.” – Matthew Karch

Sacco responded directly to Karch’s statement in a public post. “I’ve seen the statement by Matt Karch, the CEO of Saber Entertainment, and all of the truly horrendous things he said about me,” she wrote. “I think it should be obvious to anyone who reads that statement that he’s lashing out because he did not want people to know there was AI use in the game.”

She followed up:

“Everything I said was true. Here’s more truth: that statement is remarkably pathetic for the CEO of any company to be making, and combined with the AI use it will do far more damage to Saber’s reputation than it ever could mine. This screed will be many people’s first exposure to the Saber brand.”

– Stella Sacco in response to Karch’s statement.

Where This Leaves Things

What began as a denial has, by Saber’s own CEO’s admission, turned into confirmation that the studio does use AI in Rideshare “Stimulator,” that its Steam page didn’t disclose that at the time, and that its CEO would have been willing to replace a specific former employee with AI given the chance.

Karch’s statement doesn’t actually deny that AI was used to finish parts of the writing Sacco started; it argues instead that doing so was justified because she was, in his telling, replaced for performance reasons and then bound by confidentiality about what replaced her.

None of that resolves the central factual dispute. Sacco maintains she was pulled off the project specifically so Saber could use ChatGPT to finish the writing and handle live updates. Saber maintains the “story” was written by people while conceding AI handles the game’s dialog systems for its effectively unlimited passenger roster. Both things can’t fully be true at once, and for now, only Saber has both the receipts and the motive to clarify which.