AI submissions cause end of game coding contest

The Australian STEM Videogame Challenge, a free national videogame development competition for students, has confirmed that its 2026 edition will be the last, with the Australian Council for Educational Research citing the rapid and complex rise of generative AI in game development as the reason. ACER's Cathy Zemaitis said the technology makes it harder to judge what students made themselves and moves the program away from its original purpose, and that there are no plans to pursue alternative options for delivering the challenge.