On the face of it, the launch of Pearl Abyss's Crimson Desert this week has been a big success. The ambitious, single-player open-world action-adventure game sold over 2 million copies within a day of release, and the reviews on Steam are mainly positive. Critics have also generally received the game with enthusiasm, praising the combat and the breadth of the game's world.
Alas, the launch has been now overshadowed by accusations around undeclared use of generative AI. For now, I've seen no suggestions that core elements were made with AI, but quite a number of examples have been found of odd-looking in-game art that bears the hallmarks of AI image generation. Does that matter? For some players, it does.
