NTE Developers forget to remove AI watermark

[u/YourLilyInaPot]

In their newest update 1.3, a new area has been added, along with it came new fishing spots and fishing catches.

One of their fishing assets contains the watermark from Doubao (豆包) a popular Chinese AI chatbot assistant with image and video generation powered by Seedance (Bytedance).

This has sparked heated debate amongst Chinese players, while not hardly criticizing the use of AI they do make fun of the fact that Doubao’s AI image generation watermark comes from the free version of the app, with many comments calling them cheap, criticizing their carelessness and questioning the real reason behind their low production costs.

To quote one of the comments:

“AI is fine, but using Doubao is just funny. The free version no less.”

Other comments talk about AI across the Chinese gaming industry, how other companies such as Hoyoverse and Netease have self-developed AI tools while Hotta Studio uses an AI chatbot assistant.

To put it on perspective, asking Doubao to generate an image is very similar to asking ChatGPT.

Quote from another comment:

“Doubao Doubao, help me generate a game asset of a purple crowned seahorse.”

I’ll add that the Chinese community already knew about the extent of AI usage in Neverness to Everness, though they weren’t expecting to see Doubao of all things.

As of this post, the watermark has been removed with the asset remaining the same otherwise.

[u/FoRiZon3]

I mean theres a reason to that. Same reason when people ask for "cheaper prices" without thinking about its consequences.

[u/HellfirePassion → u/FoRiZon3]

"consequences" as in a studio not having enough money to make 2-5 other games at the same time on top of funding the updates for the current game, instead the poor indie gacha studios will only have enough money to upkeep the game easily and maybe fund 1 game and have millions every month on top still?

God, I shudder to think how they'd manage.

[u/tiger_kittie → u/FoRiZon3]

consequences.

Lmao. The consequence is that your background assets were made by AI.

Oh booohoooo. Some art asset that you're not going to look at for more than 1 second didn't take some poor intern 10 hours to draw booohooo.

[u/bioknight99 → u/tiger_kittie]

No the consequence is that you earn less money. AI is a work around. I know you want to defend your game but you dont have to be butthurt. Also i have to sadly say, this isn't a background asset you will see only once.

[u/Popular-Use-8703 → u/bioknight99]

No need to argue with this kind of people. Pro AI mostly listens to their hatred of artists and his exaggerating of "artists will spend 10 hours for a single asset" is quite the telling.

They like criticizing the artists even though they don't know jack shit.

[u/TunderBlood → u/bioknight99]

It is litterally an important background asset you only see once tho