How unprecedented, a person with a realistic opinion on IDVReddit that's neither overly-cynical nor overly-optimistic? It must be 2020 again!
Joking aside, something I think needs to be emphasized too, and it's hard to notice unless you explore the IDV CN communities is that, even when there's notable degrees of upset, NetEase won't apologize for something unless it's a matter of extreme unrest, or someone "shows the knife." There's still a significant number of people upset about the AI and even more so who will riot if they smell it again. That's still not enough.
When there have been apologies in the past before, I want to establish some of the context of them. Regarding the Boob Optimization apology, there was an extreme amount of upset. I misplaced the link, but on the Weibo there were hundreds of thousands of comments protesting. It was also accusations of sexualization in a co-ed to mostly-female side of the fanbase who could and would "show the knife." As for the tracing incident, the tracer was caught tracing League of Legends art. Riot is not a small fish, so this was also a case of they had to change it out of extreme urgency. Especially since Riot sued them before. Even on the CN side of the fandom this is unusual. Most of the time they change it without an apology, such as silently removing Grace's Jiggle Physics in the Nymph Story, or silently attempting to appease some Richard fans by changing the New Year Quote. Many of the players here that I've talked to are fans of unpopular characters; they feel just as unhappy and appreciated as unpopular character fans on NAEU.
This is not me saying NetEase doesn't favor the CN community. They do, in part due to culture, and also sheer scale, and the ability to "show the knife." But I do want to emphasize that people being upset in CN isn't the guarantee of change. If it was, there'd be a Kreacher Essence, there'd be so many letter rewrites, there wouldn't be Hydemare. Point is, it has to either get a lot of people upset or a certain kind of people upset to get a change. And a change is not the same as an apology. Combine both together and you'll see how difficult it is to get something like the Boob Optimization statement or the Traced Arm statement. Now try getting it for something like Gen AI on the NAEU side of things.
This is also going to be blunt, but it's not that different from Western developers. I think there's often a misunderstanding that "Corporatease" is communication. Since I sometimes see discussion about DBD and BHVR as the boycott has floated around on Reddit, I need to point out that BHVR's comment that they won't be using "anything generated by AI in Dead by Daylight [or other BHVR games]" (while they use Gen AI behind the scenes) is worded very carefully. Carefully enough that there are whispers going around BHVR fired some developers who were particularly concerned about Gen AI and unionizing. Any statement on Gen AI from a large studio, right now, must be taken with the acknowledgement they are trying to word it in a way that is mitigates their actions as much as possible. They will not tell the truth unless they feel hubristically confident in their own survival. Do not trust them.
The problem is, Live Service Is Evil. It is also dying. And in those death throes it will do strange, bizarre things, such as the Gen AI buzz. It's just a tragedy that IDV is a Live Service game instead of a paid anthology series. But it was likely that Live Service that gave us a lot of interesting, messy, and messily interesting things.
The publishers I've seen apologize about Gen AI are medium or small-sized like Frontier, who has around 700 employees. And whose most iconic games are the Tycoons which, while formative for me, aren't the same money-makers as big live service fish like League of Legends, or even non-LS AAA Studios. Party Animals' Recreate Games (a development team mostly based in China) also apologized for a Gen AI art contest but, again, not a big fish. The biggest fish such as the likes of Microsoft feel no shame in chasing Gen AI even as the studios they own try to keep silent or use Corporatease on the subject. Netease is one of these big fish. They've worked with Microsoft, they've worked with Nintendo. They have bragged about using Gen AI before because they feel they have the size to survive the blowback.
All of this is not saying we should give up on the boycott or that it was meaningless. We are seeing impacts. They've certainly grown more hesitant with showing Gen AI and know they will get blowback. They are also getting more blowback for more "accepted" forms of Gen AI like Gen AI upscaling, both in IDV and in their other games like Marvel Rivals. And, need I remind for a glimmer of hope, back in 2022, Joker Studios reversed the whitewashing on the Horoscope avatars for William, Patricia, and Ganji. Two years after Will and Patty had theirs added, one month after Ganji had his. I was on hiatus then, but I don't recall them making a statement. But they did it.
The fact that a tiny fandom of a few thousand NAEU players made NetEase rant and complain in spite them spending millions investing into Gen AI is an impact, that some content creators NetEase did rely on such as Zeus and Zeez are either becoming indefinite or leaving is an impact. Combine that with Asia and CN fans also boycotting. I still see comments from various CN fans of Jack and Richard on Weibo asking for a statement still. People who were upset about the Jiggle Physics aren't doing that. Now add the possibility of targeting Sea of Remnants this year when NetEase is concerned it will flop globally? That's a lot.
It's not a fight that's over.
But I think we need to reevaluate how we set the goals.
I said in the beginning of the boycott that if we can save just one artist it will be a victory. I stand by that comment. Whether you leave IDV entirely, become a "news only" fan, remain boycotting, become F2P only, or something else, none of these are bad choices. They all help in their own way. We very likely saved that one artist.
And I think we need to focus on these wins rather than driving ourselves mad in impatience.
