#and its especially egregious bc a lot of the content for cytus for ex. is paid so youre paying for AI Art instead of funding the contractor

[multitrackdrifting]

me: oh whats going on with rayark (dev. of cytus/sdorica/deemo/voez etc.)

twitter: most if not all of their new artworks are AI generated (MtL'd but native speakers have corroborated that the key idea is in-tact here). [see addendum below].

here's a former art director of cytus 2:

image in case it goes down

other [musical] artists who have worked on the game (such as kurokotei) have denounced the game and the company's attitude about AI art.

there's been pretty substantive backlash from each of the communities and the rhythm game community in general is not super enthusiastic about AI art. word has spread across their fanbases to universal disdain - there's a general agreement that this company should be buried within our memories because yeah, it's easy to say that "if it looks good why do you care where it came from", but that's just it - it lacks the technical polish and art direction that makes those games memorable but it's impossible to understand that argument if you're only interested in engaging with ai art discourse as a means of arguing about aesthetics or "real art" as opposed to the practical consequences of something a very loyal fanbase cherishes that has actually been tarnished by this new direction. art direction in particular is a huge part of the appeal of this company's works, and a lack of consistent aesthetic and artworks really does bring the roof down. whether you like things like vocaloid or rhythm games, you probably understand that the accompanying art for a song is a lot more than just a picture - the visuals are tied deeply to the impact and legacy of a song. the ui in those games is so barebones but the art carries them heavily.

this really stinks.

Addendum: A popular claim on twitter is that a lot of their artists were fired (one I did not make, given that there was no tangible proof of this). Rayark has issued their own statement clarifying that they have not fired their art team but doubled down on their commitment to AI art in a move to "adapt to the times" (a claim which is questionable given that industry leaders in the Mobage space don't really use AI-content for international titles but it might be more applicable to other regions).

While this assuages some fears (namely the shift to 100% AI Art, a fear which was largely a reaction to the yahoo article), the lack of transparency around the art direction (given that Sdorica and Cytus II have both been using AI Art to promote for a while now) is still something the broader fanbase is worried about. The reception from KR & EN audiences has been largely negative, JP is mixed but less intense. This still begs the question of whether AI-generated content will mean less collaboration with artists in the in-game content.

People have speculated that the press statement is written by ChatGPT, but text AI-gen detection is far less sophisticated than reading Stable Diffusion outputs (which has come a long way in terms of certainty).