The CEO of Shift Up has responded to backlash surrounding the release of an AI-generated music video promoting Stellar Blade’s sequel game, Blood Rain.
The video, published on July 31, showed the game’s main character, Evie, singing and dancing to an upbeat pop song titled "Wanna be in Love." It’s very obviously AI-generated, containing all the signature tells of such content, including nonsensical written wording, inconsistencies in character models, and a blurred, airbrushed filter over it all.
This has soured players on the otherwise highly-anticipated title, prompting a harsh wave of criticism that warranted a response from developer Shift Up’s CEO, Kim Hyung Tae.
"Wanna be in LOVE" feat. EVIE from Stellar Blade : BLOODRAIN
EVIE’s new music video is now available in YouTube. I would be very grateful if you could watch the video and share your thoughts! https://t.co/n1bhFiH1IJ#StellarBlade #BLOODRAIN #EVIE pic.twitter.com/eNiLyZAQ5W
Speaking on X (formerly Twitter), Kim praised the artists responsible for the design of the game’s main character, Evie, arguing that an AI merely used their work to compile the scenes showing her dancing and singing rather than making anything on its own from scratch.
“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,” he wrote.
Unsurprisingly, this explanation didn’t put players’ minds at ease. If anything, it left them even more frustrated and somewhat confused, with some pointing out that training an AI model on the designs of Shift Up’s designers does them a disservice and even bastardizes the artistry behind all their hard work.
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…
“The AI is doing your character a disservice, distorting her appearance, and in turn, making your team's art look bad, when in reality, they're so talented,” one fan wrote on X. “I would rather have fewer, shorter cinematics of your characters made by animators than hours of uncanny AI generations.”
“That’s the issue though, it does not look like her a lot of the time, even if they might use the base model as part of the input. You're diminishing the quality of your own work, the brand, the studio, and Evie as a character,” another argued.
“You also risk associating the brand with AI slop, even if that might be true or not. You risk being in a position where the game might have some amazing set pieces or city backdrops that designers and developers made, and people will dismiss it as AI-generated.”
It’s worth noting that this is merely a music video promoting Stellar Blade: Blood Rain and not the game itself. However, Kim has previously remarked on AI in reference to Korea’s competition with China in the gaming space, claiming Shift Up doesn’t have the manpower to compete with Chinese studios.
"80% of our company's revenue comes from overseas, and when we go abroad, the first opponent we encounter is Chinese games. 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,” he said back in January, per GameMeca.
"I do not think people will lose their jobs even if AI becomes widespread. Even if we mobilize all available manpower, it will not be enough, and I believe that we can only barely compete with industries like China or the United States that require massive workforce deployments if all these people are proficient in AI and one person can perform the role of 100."
What’s more, Kim predicted a future where AI is central to the games industry, pointing out how quickly young people are picking it up as an essential tool in daily life.
"(Korea's) ChatGPT paid subscription rate ranks second after the United States. The new generation is natural to AI. I believe that AI is the future of the younger generation and can become a new vision applicable to industry."
The Stellar Blade games themselves are no stranger to controversy, with Kim most recently addressing the debate that cropped up around Evie’s youthful design following Blood Rain’s reveal at Summer Game Fest. Given how sexualized Eve was in Stellar Blade, players were worried about how Evie might be perceived by some fans.
Speaking with IGN, the Shift Up CEO promised that “if you actually play the game, you will not think that,” telling us that, when combined with her scrappy nature and other features, players will “see that she’s a very lovable character.”
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
