Free Steam demo runs up $1,000 daily AI bill and forces devs to take out bank loan
Easy Fox were surprised by the number of users and didn't expect that the demo's popularity would cause its AI expenses to go that high.
Easy Fox, the developers behind a free AI-powered game demo on Steam, has had to take out a bank loan due to soaring AI costs. The game, "Teach My Little Sister How To Drive," employs Google Gemini for voice command recognition and ChatGPT as a backup system. Over the past month, player numbers have surged 20-fold, far exceeding expectations.
This spike has driven daily AI service expenses to over $1,000. The team explains that despite each player not individually costing much, the overall expense has risen because of the large user base. To keep the demo running, Easy Fox has secured a bank loan. The developers plan to incorporate AI costs into the game's final price when it launches.
They also aim to offer local AI models for gamers with suitable hardware to bypass external service limits. The game has faced issues due to Google Gemini's usage limits, leading to reliance on the less capable ChatGPT Realtime Mini 2.1 model, which has caused delayed responses and inaccurate inputs. The developers are testing alternative AI models in Russia, where Western models are inaccessible due to sanctions.
However, locating suitable replacements might prove challenging for Ukraine due to Russia's recent strikes on its largest data center. The escalating AI costs have prompted some companies to abandon tokenmaxxing. Though AI prices are falling relative to other technologies, the high token usage of AI agents has made the technology more costly than initially anticipated, especially with AI subscriptions reaching a pricing ceiling.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
