Amazon Is Awash With AI-Written Guideslop For Games That Aren’t Even Out
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Amazon Is Awash With AI-Written Guideslop For Games That Aren’t Even Out
Buy your novel-like, image-free, hallucinated guide to _Alien: Isolation 2_ today!
AIAlien: Isolation 2AmazonGears Of War: E-Day
By John Walker Published June 29, 2026 |Comments (16)|
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!Image 6: Four of the AI guideslop books you shouldn't buy today.
Four of the AI guideslop books you shouldn't buy today. © Amazon / Kotaku
The issue of AI-written garbage on Amazon is one that is likely only in its infancy. Given Amazon’s recent $50 billion investment into OpenAI, and the deeply unwelcome infiltration of its pisspoor in-built AI helper Rufus, the site hardly seems poised to defend itself from slop books becoming an ever-more present feature. And if there’s one example of just how farcical this situation is becoming, it’s the appearance of AI-delusion “guidebooks” for unfinished, unreleased games.
This phenomenon has been superbly written about on Substack site _Rick’s Game Blacklog_, where on searching Amazon to learn game release dates, the author instead found listings for expensive guidebooks for the likes of _Alien: Isolation 2_ (release date unknown),_Control: Resonant_ (release date September 24) and _Gear_(sic)_of War: E-Day_ (October 6), all available to buy right now!
Each book’s cover is AI-generated and accompanied by AI-written blurbs, and in case you were left in any doubt,_Rick’s Game Backlog_ points out that the text for _Gear of War_ (official title: _Gear of War E-Day Game Guide: Tactical Breakdown of Conflict, Characters, and Urban Survival Systems_) unimprovably begins:
> Here is a high-converting Amazon-style book description crafted to sell your book while keeping it emotionally engaging, persuasive, and read-focused.
Well _I’m_ persuaded!
!Image 7: Please enjoy the irony of Rufus's appearance.
© Amazon / Kotaku
Thankfully for us, heroic Rick ordered a couple of these books for himself, and has posted examples of what lies within. And it’s glorious. It’s glorious before it even begins in fact, with a table of contents that’s printed as a series of hyperlinks and without page numbers. The guidebook then doesn’t even pretend to be, well, a guidebook, laid out like a novel and lacking any pictures. 60-ish pages of AI-written lore based on the _Gears of War_‘s Wikipedia are followed by a series of chapters providing “guides” for features that absolutely aren’t going to be in the game, like “Survival Mechanics” and “Psychological Warfare.”
Meanwhile, the _Alien: Isolation 2_ book has a whole chapter devoted to the as-yet unrevealed system requirements! A novel-like chapter!_Rick’s Game Backlog_ called Amazon’s customer support and had the books flagged and taken down. But they’re right back up again.
Prima Content
Genuine gaming guidebooks _can_ be released before a game is out. I know people who write them, and they’re given incredibly advanced access to incomplete versions of the games such that they can be meticulously broken down and explained, laid out, and published in time for the game’s launch. But these are something else entirely: entirely hallucinated tomes of gibberish based on plagiarizing online information about a game. And it’s a smart con, too, given Amazon’s propensity to promote associated items if you’ve pre-ordered a copy of any of these games. At $20 or more, it’s not a cheap trick to fall for, too. The cover images are pretty convincing at a glance, and a parent looking to pick up a kid a gift, or just a regular games player having it show up in their Amazon recommendations, could very easily and innocently fall for it.
The same sorts of AI-slop guides are also listed for released games, like this_Lies of P_ book from the same “author” behind the _Alien: Isolation 2_ entry, George D. Brogon, or prolific guidebot Donald C. Campbell and his guides for_The Adventures of Elliot_,_Mina the Hollower_, and_Star Fox_. (My favorite thing about all of these and many others is that they all contain a variation of the phrase “Step into the world of…” in their AI-bilge descriptions. God AI sucks so hard.)
Rick gets into where quality guides can be found, as well as a lot more in-depth mocking of the drivel he discovered, and it’s well-worth a read.
An Amazon spokesperson, meanwhile, told _Kotaku_, “We have content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale and promptly investigate any book when a concern is raised. We invest significant time and resources to ensure our guidelines are followed, and remove books that do not adhere to these guidelines.”
**Update: 07/01/2026, 5:23 a.m. ET:** Since the original publication of this story, some of the books above have been removed, albeit immediately replaced.
[](https://kotaku.com/amazon-ai-game-guidebooks-alien-isolation-gears-of-war-2000711365)
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