The biggest single player game to be released this year, or at least ever (your Grand Theft Auto 6), is the Red Desert. His latest creation Black desert developers Pearl Abyss, Red desertis a massive open world game set in the same universe as the previous game.
On its first day, the game almost managed to reach 240,000 simultaneous players. It has been saddled with a mix of mixed reviews, both on Metacritic play areas In general, an onslaught of players who want to take over the continent of Pywel.
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At least, I thought it would.
Pearl Abyss apologizes
On the morning of Sunday, March 22, Pearl Abyss reached out to X to apologize to players for abusing AI in generated assets. To begin with, Pearl Abyss took the issue by stating that these assets are intended for the development phase only.
“We would like to answer questions about the use of artificial intelligence in the Red Desert.
During development, some 2D visual props were created as part of an early stage iteration using experimental AI generative tools. These assets helped us quickly explore tone and atmosphere in the earlier stages of production. However, it has always been our intention to replace such assets with work that meets our quality standards and creative direction, following final work and review by our art and development teams.
Following reports from our community, we discovered that some of these assets were intentionally included in the final release. It does not meet our internal standards and we take full responsibility for it.”
We at Crimson Desert would like to answer questions about the use of artificial intelligence. During development, some 2D visual props were created as part of an early stage iteration using experimental AI generative tools. These assets helped us quickly explore the tone and atmosphere of earlier…March 22, 2026
Later, they admitted they had to disclose their use of AI before and promised to replace the affected assets:
“We also acknowledge that we should have publicly disclosed our use of artificial intelligence. While these tools are primarily used during initial production, we acknowledge that this does not excuse a lack of transparency, with the expectation that these assets will be modified prior to release.
We apologize for these errors.
We are currently conducting a thorough audit of all in-game assets and are taking steps to replace any affected content. Updated assets will be introduced in upcoming patches. In parallel, we are reviewing and strengthening our internal processes to ensure greater transparency and consistency in our communications with players moving forward.”
Are we really sorry or did the hand get stuck in the cookie jar?
I’ve had a chance to observe a lot of social media chatter about this apology, and like the feedback, the responses have been all over the place.
On the one hand, you have some apologists who go above and beyond the ridiculous by saying that their use of AI is no problem. I want to dive into the reasons why replacing art entirely with artificial intelligence is a terrible idea best reserved for the hundreds of articles already written about it.
Then another one where people punish them just for apologizing for being caught. Maybe there is a middle ground for all this?
Look Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33. Another example of a game that was released a year ago revealed that the assets in the game were created by artificial intelligence. After being seen by the masses, Sandfall Interactive quickly removed the affected textures.
In the summer of that year, Sandfall admitted to using Gen-AI in the early stages of development, but was quickly replaced. François Meurisseeven, producer of Clair Obscur, told EL PAIS“We use some AI, but not a lot.
So when it comes to Crimson Desert, why don’t we entertain the idea of a developer using Gen-AI in a similar way? Is this a case of people picking favorites or is there more to the story?
I can say that the story and quest did not help the discussion. A lot of people have asked if these quests are also created by AI, which I can understand to some extent, but at the same time I don’t agree.
I’ve played a few Korean-style MMOs, and while Crimson Desert isn’t an MMO, you can never get the MMO DNA out of the MMO developer. These early quests, for better or worse, are tailored to introduce the game system more than anything else. Story be damned, games like that Lost ArkThrone and Liberty had equally funny “bad” stories.
Another sign of shame from the developer comes in the form of the Spanish version. As he shared Kopakolondrios In X, “The Spanish translation of the game is completely broken. It completely changes some quests, skills, and challenge texts, making them impossible to complete in Spanish. These are not minor translation errors; they break the game. Please fix!”
🔴The Spanish translation of the game is completely broken 🔴Completely changing some quests, skills and challenge texts to make them impossible to complete in Spanish, these are not minor translation errors, the game is broken, please fix it! @WillJPowers @CrimsonDesert_ pic.twitter.com/8h1UedVyvQMarch 22, 2026
As you can see from the pictures above and a quick Google Translate, “Walk 10m with a rope” is not the same as “Walk 10m with a hook arrow”. Did Pearl Abyss use AI in Crimson Desert for the Spanish translation?
How do you feel about the use of artificial intelligence in Crimson Desert? Let me know in the comments below! He is eager to hear what others have to say.
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