Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch is making his stance on AI very clear. In a statement to IGN, he said that the publisher won’t be “shying away” from AI-powered features like generative speech and text in the company’s upcoming game Rideshare Stimulator. He added that he would have “been happy” to have replaced a former writer who worked for Saber with AI.
Controversy around the upcoming Rideshare Stimulator began earlier this week when the game’s former lead writer, Stella Sacco, wrote that she was replaced by ChatGPT partway through development. She posted on Bluesky in response to the game’s reveal, “I didn’t even see this had been announced. I was lead writer on this one! 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.” Rideshare Stimulator still doesn’t currently have Steam’s required AI disclosure on the platform.
Saber Interactive denied the claim in a statement to PC Gamer, saying, “Neither Saber nor Unigine have replaced any writers with AI for Rideshare or any other game.” However, they went on to clarify that Sacco was correct that the game does use generative AI, and it will feature a previously undisclosed “free ride” mode that has “infinite” passengers.
Sacco pushed back on the claim she wasn’t replaced by the technology, saying to PC Gamer, “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.”
My boss, to his credit, argued over and over with the c-level who pushed the AI — “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”
— Stella Sacco (@antlervel.vet) 2026-08-11T16:40:32.103Z
In response, Karch took a combative tone in a statement to This Week In Video Games, “Stella who? I had to ask Claude because I have never spoken to her or seen her. We have already said we are using AI for certain parts of the game and will update the Steam page once we have finalized the feature set.”
“As far as Stella is concerned, she was replaced by someone more talented and terminated for a variety of reasons a few months later. 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.”
“I’ve seen the statement by Matt Karch, the CEO of Saber Entertainment, and all of the truly horrendous things he said about me,” Sacco responded in This Week In Video Games. “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 added, “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.”
This isn’t the first time Karch has made controversial statements. He recently admitted to taking a “dig” at Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford in the announcement trailer for Rideshare Stimulator, and said that “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.”
After the release of Saber Interactive’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, YouTuber Asmongold made a video praising the game — for those unfamiliar with Asmongold, he is a right-wing content creator who was banned from Twitch after saying that Palestinians are part of an “inferior culture” in response to the Israeli military bombing civilians in Gaza.
Karch appeared to post a comment on Asmongold’s Space Marine 2 video saying, “Hey man, CEO of Saber here. I love your videos.” He added, “I hope that games like Space Marine 2 and Wukong are the start of a reversion to a time when games were simply about fun and immersion. I spent some time as Chief Operating Officer at Embracer and I saw games there that made me want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers.” Many perceived the phrase “imposing morals on gamers” as an “anti-woke” dogwhistle, the kind used by right-wing culture warriors whenever minorities or women are playable characters in video games. In the video, Asmongold railed against the game Dustborn, which was a common target of right-wing reactionaries at the time for its diverse cast.
Saber refused to clarify whether Karch’s comment on the Asmongold video belonged to the CEO, but Karch later wrote on LinkedIn that “whoever wrote that seems pretty sharp.”