THE CRUNCH
A wave of AI-generated websites posing as fan wikis is filling search results with false information about video games, particularly indie titles without large communities to defend themselves. Eurogamer traced one example, a fake Nighthawks Wiki that was not editable at all and listed companions and skills that do not exist, alongside irrelevant material about the 1981 film and the Edward Hopper painting of the same name. The domain traced to Spaceship, a website building service that also offers an AI website builder; an email to the site's contact address bounced.
Tim Bender, chief executive of publisher Hooded Horse, said his company builds wikis for its own games but has had to "play whack-a-mole" with AI-generated competitors. One appeared for its game Corsair Cove as part of a collection of more than 20 such sites run by GameDB, whose creator admitted using generative AI. Attempts to reach GameDB for comment returned a server error.
The economics make the problem hard to stop. Fan wikis rarely make money, but Bender noted that even a little ad revenue is enough: "Because the barrier is so low, why not just spew out a mountain of it and flood the search results?" FlamingMojo of the Independent Game Wiki Network saw at least five fake wikis appear for the shooter Wardogs in the days after its September release, and said misinformed players are bouncing off legitimate wikis entirely, hurting volunteer reputations.
The squeeze lands on an already contested corner of games culture. Hosting giant Fandom dominates the space and has itself rolled back AI features after inaccuracies and unpopularity, while independent wikis that leave such hosts often struggle to rank in Google against the umbrella sites.