The video
game industry has just added a new scandal to the list, and this time
the protagonist is Neverness to Everness. What promised to be one
of the most attractive open-world installments of the year,
crashed into a wall of criticism a few days after its release. All the charm of
its urban aesthetic went to the floor when players began to notice quite
strange details in the scenarios, unleashing a massive funa due
to the evident use of generative artificial intelligence in
its graphics.
Broken
promises and deformed hands
Ahead of
the official release, the developers at Hotta Studio were
mouth-watering that the image generation tools would only be used as initial
reference material and would never make it into the final product. However, the
community does not forgive a single pixel. When exploring the big city, users
found dozens of billboards and posters in the background with the classic AI
mistakes: melted shapes, inconsistent art styles, and, of course, characters
with completely deformed hands. As if that wasn't enough, they also
discovered cinematic sequences that are suspiciously identical to
director Makoto Shinkai's acclaimed film Weathering
With You.
The
rejection of content creators
The scandal
escalated to such a serious level that public figures began to abandon ship to
protect their image. The famous VTuber Ironmouse announced the
immediate cancellation of a promotional broadcast it had scheduled for the
title. The creator explained that the advertising agency had formally assured
her that there was no trace of AI in the final resources of
the game, feeling completely deceived by the visual evidence that flooded
social networks. This cancellation highlighted the serious problems of
transparency between the studio and the influencers they hire.
So far, the
development team has remained in absolute silence, which has only managed to
further infuriate a gamer community that is already tired of
debating the ethics of these new technologies and their negative impact on the
work of real artists. Knowing that studios are cutting costs at the expense of
visual quality.
