Image credit: Eurogamer

The CEO of Stellar Blade developer, Shift Up, has taken to social media to respond to players criticising the release of an AI-generated music video promoting a sequel to the company's breakout hit, Blood Rain.

At the end of July, the video (which was uploaded to the official Shift Up YouTube channel) shows Bloodrain's protagonist EVIE singing an original song by the developer called 'Wanna be in Love'. The video was immediately controversial, with disgruntled players immediately taking to social media to register their disappointment in the company and the shonky end product. Many of the lyrics are nonsensical, there is graphical warping in parts, there's a horrible soft-blurred filter over everything - generally, the video is a good example of why AI-generated content is still pretty bad.

Watch on YouTube

Now, Shift Up CEO Kim Hyung Tae has taken to X to respond to players commenting on the video. One user tweeted the CEO directly to ask why the company used AI-generated content in the video, instead of using assets developed and created by the studio itself. Kim Hyung Tae replied:

"EVIE, the character at the heart of this video, was created from head to toe by our talented artists and modelers through more than a year of dedicated work. The AI is not creating her from scratch. It is rendering and presenting the character based on the data, designs, and craftsmanship our team created. We would truly appreciate it if you could view the work with that understanding in mind."

It's not surprising that the CEO of the company is backing the AI trend; earlier in the year, Kim Hyung Tae spoke openly about how he believes the technology is "essential" and is a must-use aspect of development for studios that want to go toe-to-toe with Chinese developers.

"80 percent of our company's revenue comes from overseas, and when we go abroad, the first opponent we encounter is Chinese games," he noted in an interview. "We pour about 150 people into a single game, but China invests 1,000 to 2,000. We lack the capability to compete in terms of the quality or quantity of content." We probably haven't seen the end of Shift Up's experiments with AI-generated content, then.

Stellar Blade Blood Rain goes without a release date, though it seems we could expect the game to land sometime in 2027.

Mentioned in this article