{"id":535623,"date":"2026-03-20T23:20:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/535623\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T23:20:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:20:06","slug":"crimson-desert-players-debate-if-the-game-secretly-uses-ai-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/535623\/","title":{"rendered":"Crimson Desert Players Debate If The Game Secretly Uses AI Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between players criticizing convoluted controls<\/a>, investors dumping the developer\u2019s stock<\/a>, and reviewers sharing mixed opinions<\/a>, the colossally hyped action-adventure game Crimson Desert has had a rollercoaster ride of a launch week. Now, players are adding to the mix by debating whether Pearl Abyss\u2019 latest release incorporates AI-generated art.<\/p>\n

Since Crimson Desert came out on Thursday, several players have shared screenshots of in-game art they suspect to be AI-generated. One in-game painting, shared by Lex Luddy on Bluesky<\/a>, looks so absurd it\u2019s hard to believe it wasn\u2019t sloppified. It looks like it\u2019s supposed to depict some kind of historical battle, but scrutinize it for an extra moment or two and you see a mosh pit of centaurs and other strange half-man half-horse abominations holding up spears.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The people on the ground next to them seem to morph into rocks, too. (This painting is also displayed in the most ornate gold frame I\u2019ve ever seen. That horrific art is not worthy of such a nice frame!)<\/p>\n

Players have debated whether some other in-game paintings were created by AI as well, such as this woodcut painting shared by Reddit user Ok-Error-403<\/a>. \u201cBeen playing for 6 hours now and honestly am loving the game, but damn is it really disappointing to see Pearl Abyss use AI art every now and then throughout the world,\u201d they wrote. However, plenty of other players have responded to say they disagree and don\u2019t believe this particular painting was made by AI.<\/p>\n

Whether these paintings are just placeholder art accidentally left in for release, a poor attempt at getting away with AI art, or just wonky for some other non-AI-related reason is unclear. Crimson Desert is an overwhelmingly big game with a sprawling world and tons of details and systems sprinkled throughout it. Poor in-game paintings could just be the result of sloppy quality control.
Since early 2024, Steam has required publishers to disclose generative AI use on their games\u2019 store pages. If Crimson Desert really does use generative AI art, even accidentally, developer\/publisher Pearl Abyss is breaking a pretty big rule here. It\u2019s unlikely that Crimson Desert will get in any sort of serious trouble with Valve (after all, the game did just sell two million copies in a single day), but it might have to add a disclosure notice after the fact or quickly patch out the offending examples.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Either way, I\u2019m sure there will be plenty of unhappy players, including me, who\u2019re now dreading running into these images as we make our way further into the game\u2019s world of Pywel.<\/p>\n

Pearl Abyss did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Between players criticizing convoluted controls, investors dumping the developer\u2019s stock, and reviewers sharing mixed opinions, the colossally hyped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[194922,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-535623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-crimson-desert","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}