Crimson Desert recently dropped and was being hailed as a potential competitor against GTA 6 because of the story, gameplay, and other elements. However, things took a wild turn when a lot of gamers started posting screenshots of the game, suggesting that multiple elements are straight-up AI-generated. What started as a doubt, a rather solid one, ended with an official apology from Crimson Desert Studio Pear Abyss.
A Reddit user Rex_Spy shared the image found in Oakenshield Manor in the southwest part of the first city/town. Another one, shared by a user named Due-Perspective9206 on Reddit, showed swordsmen fighting each other, where we came up with only two conclusions – either one of them has deformed hands, or it is definitely AI generated.
Pear Abyss took it to X to issue an apology, where they wrote a long note on why the players are seeing AI art in the game. The developers said they used AI to create early visual assets during game development. Now, those assets were supposed to be replaced before the official release of the game, but we already know what happened in the latter half of the story.
To save their image in the masses, Pear Abyss accepted their fault and took full responsibility for the scene. And the studio also said that they should have been transparent about the use of AI in the game. In response, all the game elements are being audited and we will soon get to see improvement in the upcoming patches.
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And Then They Hype It Like Anything
When Strauss Zelnick said that a game like GTA cannot be created by AI, he was right. And now I feel that all those delays we get to see in the reale of GTA 6 are justified. Because if to meet a deadline a publisher this big is using AI art and not being transparent about it until the moment players started pointing the stuff out, the respect for Rockstar Games has reached a new level for me. And this is not happening for the first time.
The Game of Year 2025, Clair Obscur Expedition 33, also used AI generated elements, due to which it also faced elimination from the Indie Game Awards. Even if AI art is being used as a placeholder and the developers are forgetting to remove it before the final phase, that too is becoming a pattern and players don’t expect something like this from AAA games. All eyes now will be on big titles like Marvel’s Wolverine and GTA 6, and high chances are that they will not malign their studio’s legacy – not like this.
