Crimson Desert finally arrived yesterday after multiple delays and years of waiting, and its launch has been mixed, to say the least. On the one hand, the game has already sold 2 million copies . On the other, critic and user consensus is decidedly mixed, while some critics ( like Wccftech's Francesco De Meo ) have loved their time with it, many are on the very opposite end, resulting in a , while its user reviews on Steam launched at 'Mixed' but

While the game caught a fair amount of flak online for adding Denuvo a week before release , it seems like another wave of criticism is about to hit it because players have already discovered what is believed to be AI-generated art used in the game, particularly for an asset that is supposed to be some kind of historical painting.

Found and shared online by user the image is very clearly not the kind of thing you'd expect a human to draw if they were trying to draw a scene from a historical battle, even in a fictional world. Unless of course, Crimson Desert's setting of Pywell is a place where human faces just stopped having features, and horse legs grow out of humans (or human bodies out of horse legs, it's difficult to tell).

This also isn't the only example, but it is the most obvious one. Other posts on Reddit have that appear to be AI-generated based on the fact that they miss the mark on key details a human artist wouldn't.

Players online have already begun to criticize Pearl Abyss for including assets like this while the game's Steam page does not include a disclosure that GenAI tools or AI-generated assets were used in making the game or included in the final product. While Valve changed its policy back in 2024 requiring that developers include such disclosures, the onus is on the developers themselves to be honest about it.

Some are, but there's no guarantee that everyone will be forthcoming about any GenAI tech used in their game-making, considering how controversial GenAI tools in game development are. There are also questions about how Valve's process works. While a recent survey indicated that a majority of developers believe there should be such disclosures , they weren't as aligned on how it should be done, with most believing Valve's current approach to be flawed.

What's certain is that players will certainly be on the look out for more assets like this in Crimson Desert, and it'll be interesting to see if Pearl Abyss decides to change them, or simply leave them and add the disclosure to their Steam page. Ultimately, while it's immersion-breaking in the moment, AI-generated assets like this won't have a major impact on your experience with the game, since there's a lot more to do in the open world of Pywell beyond staring at paintings.

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