Indie Game Engine Mandates Human-Authored Code After AI Code Controversy

Back in February, the open-source indie game engine Godot, known for powering popular titles like Slay the Spire 2, faced a significant challenge: its GitHub repository was overwhelmed with AI-generated pull requests. Developers expressed frustration over the chaotic situation, describing it as a “shitshow” where clarity was lacking. This influx led to a noticeable slowdown in the approval process for pull requests, with over 5,000 still unresolved. The project manager, Rémi Verschelde, even addressed the issue publicly.

“Honestly, AI slop [pull requests] are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for #Godot maintainers,” Verschelde shared on Bluesky in February.

Recently, Godot announced updates to its contribution policy aimed at tackling the flood of AI-generated submissions. The new rules mandate that “all code must be human-authored” to help reduce the influx of irrelevant contributions. The policy also reinforces an existing ban on vibe coding, while still permitting the use of AI for simpler tasks like phrase replacement or code autocompletion, provided there’s proper disclosure.

“AI contributions have the added pain of being demoralizing,” the update stated. “Reviewing PRs is already tedious work, but it is rewarding because reviewers generally feel that their efforts are contributing to educating a new contributor (who may become a future maintainer/reviewer). If your feedback on PRs is just being absorbed by a machine and not going towards mentoring a potential future maintainer, it becomes much harder to justify spending your free time on PR review.”

Additionally, the policy stipulates that all communication in messages, such as descriptions of GitHub issues or pull requests, must be authored by humans.

“When our maintainers volunteer their time to review your issue, PR, or proposal, they do not want to talk to a machine,” the policy emphasizes. “This is a basic principle of respect.”

Godot’s contribution policy was already leaning against AI contributions, asserting that human effort leads to better and more relevant input. This new, clearer policy could help alleviate the bottleneck caused by contributors who overlooked the team’s preferences. Feedback from the community has been positive as well.

“Thank god, hope this helps out in the long run,” one user commented on Reddit.

Godot is a fantastic engine (I’ve used it myself!) that has become even more attractive as major engines like Unity and Unreal have started integrating generative AI tools and implementing policies that have left some developers feeling alienated. I know I’ll be turning to Godot again for my next game development project.