Last week, developer ShiftUp released a video marketing its upcoming sequel Stellar Blade: Blood Rain. A so-called "music video" which was riddled with generative AI, from Evie's harrowing grin to a very rubbish song with cringeworthy robotic vocals.
The video has garnered a whole bunch of backlash—from myself included—as people wondered why on earth a company raking in good gacha money (its other game, Nikke: Goddess of Victory, is a consistent high ranker on gacha revenue charts) felt the need to put out something so utterly devoid of soul. Or really, that didn't have anything to do with Stellar Blade: Blood Rain in the first place.