Developers of AI-powered driving game take out loan to keep Steam demo running after surge in players pushes AI costs past $1,000 a day

Easy Fox, the developers of upcoming driving simulator Teach My Little Sister How To Drive, have announced that they’re considering taking down the game’s Steam demo early. This comes after unexpectedly high engagement from players drove the cost of running the demo to over $1,000 per day (as spotted by Game*Spark).

As its name suggests, Teach My Little Sister How To Drive is a game in which you get trapped in the passenger seat of a car and must instruct your novice sister on how to drive, park, and navigate obstacles using only your voice. The game relies on generative AI for real-time conversations, with your sister responding to everything you say both verbally and by interacting with the car (i.e. stepping on the gas, braking).

The demo for the game has been out since February this year, but as of recently, it has exploded in popularity among gaming streamers, particularly in Japan, thanks to the chaotic misunderstandings created by the language model and the AI sister’s unexpectedly sharp tongue.

According to an update from Easy Fox made on October 7, the number of demo players has increased more than twentyfold in the past month, which has created issues. Teach My Little Sister How To Drive sends players’ voices to external AI services (Gemini and ChatGPT) to listen and generate in-game replies. Now that traffic has surged, the resulting token usage is costing the developers over $1,000 a day. The four-member dev team has taken out a bank loan just to keep the demo running. Although they have not made a final decision yet, they are considering shutting down the demo earlier than planned due to the financial burden.

As for the game’s full release, Easy Fox is considering introducing local AI models as a supplementary option, as well as adjusting pricing to account for projected AI usage.