1666: Amsterdam's Early Access Met With Mixed Reviews Following AI Controversy

After The AI Controversy, 1666: Amsterdam Is Struggling To Find An Audience Published Sep 8, 2026, 8:22 AM EDT 1666: Amsterdam looked pretty neat when it was revealed at Summer Game Fest. This witchy mystery showcased a faithful recreation of Amsterdam in two different time periods, and gameplay that saw us switch between practising the dark arts and trying to blend in with the crowd. However, now that it's out in early access, 1666: Amsterdam is struggling. On Steam, reviews are mixed, with complaints about the gameplay, game design, and, of course, the AI controversy that was bubbling before release. The player figures we have access to are also concerning, with the concurrent player count slipping into the double digits. 1666: Amsterdam Is Two Weeks Into Early Access, But Many Players Are Waiting For More Updates At the time of writing, 1666: Amsterdam has a concurrent player count of 75, with a 24-hour high of 252. Its all-time peak was 2,081, back when it launched in early access on August 25. Of course, concurrent player counts aren't the be-all and end-all for single-player games, particularly smaller releases like this, but in this case, the numbers are quite low and didn't even start out too positively on launch day. Adding to this, overall reviews are mixed. The most common complaint I am seeing amongst the negative reviews is that the gameplay makes for a frustrating experience. "I really wanted to like this game," reads one review. "Combat is probably my biggest issue. It feels broken and frustrating rather than genuinely challenging. Spell casting doesn’t seem to work properly during combat, and you can only take three hits before dying." "I am extremely sad to say that this game is not even close to being ready to be released," reads another review. "It was frustrating to play the game with this level of inconsistencies within the first 2.4 hours of playing. I am still hopeful for where this may end, but right now I had to quit." Many others take issue with the studio's publicly acknowledged use of AI during game development. This first became an issue when promotional art was strongly suspected to be AI-generated, and worsened when AI-generated art assets were found in the demo. When I previewed the game in Amsterdam ahead of its early access release, I asked game director Patrice Désilets about the AI controversy. He said that all of the offending assets had been removed. I followed up by asking if that meant he could guarantee there would be no traces of generative AI in the early access build, and got a rather sarcastic answer. Then, in Eurogamer's preview, he admitted that generative AI was indeed used throughout game development and defended its use. Given the backlash, there will likely still be an effort to ensure that the AI-generated art is removed, but Désilets himself admitted that they struggled to identify all of the examples left in the game because they are so used to working with it. That isn't going to impress audiences who largely reject generative AI, at least when they find out about it being used in a game before that game gets big. There have been some examples of developers getting away with it - just look at Arc Raiders before it started to remove its own examples. But when we're in a stacked release period, you can't be giving people a reason not to play your game like this. In any case, ongoing development of 1666: Amsterdam continues. It remains to be seen if updates can bring in more players and improve the user reviews. Systems Released August 25, 2026 Developer(s) Panache Digital Games Publisher(s) Panache Digital Games Number of Players Single-player Steam Deck Compatibility Unknown Genre(s) Action, Adventure, Open-World