{"id":21121,"date":"2026-10-11T12:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T12:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=21121"},"modified":"2026-10-11T12:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T12:08:10","slug":"free-steam-demo-runs-up-1000-daily-ai-bill-and-forces-devs-to-take-out-bank-loan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=21121","title":{"rendered":"Free Steam demo runs up $1,000 daily AI bill and forces devs to take out bank loan"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI-rewritten:<\/strong> This is a summary of an article from Tom’s Hardware, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.<\/p>\n

Tom’s Hardware • Jowi Morales • October 10, 2026<\/strong><\/div>\n\n

Easy Fox, the developers behind a free AI-powered game demo on Steam, has taken out a bank loan due to rising costs. The game, titled Teach My Little Sister How To Drive, uses Google Gemini to process voice commands, with ChatGPT acting as a backup system. In its latest update, the team reported that player numbers have grown over 20 times compared to expectations, causing daily expenses to exceed $1,000. This surge in usage has also resulted in lower-quality responses from cheaper fallback models, negatively affecting the user experience.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Steam data shows the game’s popularity spiked significantly starting in late August. While the average player count was under 10 earlier, it reached approximately 50 by late September and peaked at 431 players on October 1. The developers explained that individual player costs remain low; the total expense increased because so many people are playing simultaneously. They confirmed they have secured a bank loan to keep the demo operational while they plan to include AI usage costs in the final release price, ensuring players are not charged separately for tokens after purchase.<\/p>\n

To address potential limits on external services, Easy Fox is testing local AI models for users with capable hardware and exploring alternatives for regions like Russia where Western models face access issues due to sanctions. The team noted that Ukraine has struck Russia’s largest data center, which may complicate finding suitable replacements. Additionally, the article explains that while AI prices have fallen relative to other technologies, AI agents consume far more tokens than chatbots, making them unexpectedly expensive as subscription pricing walls are reached.<\/p>\n

\n

Source:<\/strong> Tom’s Hardware • Jowi Morales • October 10, 2026<\/p>\n

Read the original article at Tom’s Hardware →<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Tom’s Hardware, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story. Tom’s Hardware • Jowi Morales • October 10, 2026 Easy Fox, the developers behind a free AI-powered game<\/p>\n

READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-hardware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}