ShiftUp's AI-Generated Music Video for Stellar Blade: Blood Rain Draws Widespread Player Backlash

Stellar Blade boss completely misses the point of why people are upset with Blood Rain's AI slop video: 'The AI is not creating [Evie] from scratch'

ShiftUp is marketing its Stellar Blade sequel with an AI-generated music video. 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. Well, ShiftUp CEO Hyung Tae Kim has now come out to tell us that we're just misunderstanding, guys! "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," a tweet from him read. "The AI is not creating her from scratch. It is rendering and presenting the character based on the data, design, and craftsmanship our team created. We would truly appreciate it if you could view the work with that understanding in mind." I think if anyone here is misunderstanding, it's Hyung Tae Kim himself. Anyone could deduce that Evie's design wasn't the thing being created with AI. But when almost every other aspect of your video is generated with AI -- parts of her suit literally morph in and out of existence, the food she eats has that horrible AI slime effect to it, signs plastered along walls and vending machines are in garbled nonsense AI language -- it not only undermines whatever vision you had in mind for your character's design, it cheapens your overall image. And that's before you even get into the fact that the song is also AI-generated, despite ShiftUp having some crazy talented composers on board. If you really wanted to go all-in on a music video to market your game, you could at least get a real human to whip up a song. Unfortunately, I don't envision ShiftUp or Hyung Tae Kim slowing down on AI usage anytime soon. South Korea is a huge consumer of AI, and its embrace of it has rippled into the development cycles of studios who reside there. Kim himself has been on the AI train since around 2022 (despite being a talented artist himself) which makes this unsurprising, but most certainly disappointing nevertheless.

"We would truly appreciate it if you could view the work with understanding in mind" - Shift Up CEO defends Stellar Blade: Blood Rain's AI music video as online backlash grows

The CEO of Stellar Blade developer, Shift Up, has taken to social media to respond to players criticising the release of an AI-generated music video promoting a sequel to the company's breakout hit, Blood Rain. At the end of July, the video (which was uploaded to the official Shift Up YouTube channel) shows Bloodrain's protagonist EVIE singing an original song by the developer called 'Wanna be in Love'. The video was immediately controversial, with disgruntled players immediately taking to social media to register their disappointment in the company and the shonky end product. Many of the lyrics are nonsensical, there is graphical warping in parts, there's a horrible soft-blurred filter over everything - generally, the video is a good example of why AI-generated content is still pretty bad. Now, Shift Up CEO Kim Hyung Tae has taken to X to respond to players commenting on the video. One user tweeted the CEO directly to ask why the company used AI-generated content in the video, instead of using assets developed and created by the studio itself. Kim Hyung Tae replied: "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." It's not surprising that the CEO of the company is backing the AI trend; earlier in the year, Kim Hyung Tae spoke openly about how he believes the technology is "essential" and is a must-use aspect of development for studios that want to go toe-to-toe with Chinese developers. "80 percent of our company's revenue comes from overseas, and when we go abroad, the first opponent we encounter is Chinese games," he noted in an interview. "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." We probably haven't seen the end of Shift Up's experiments with AI-generated content, then. Stellar Blade Blood Rain goes without a release date, though it seems we could expect the game to land sometime in 2027.

Stellar Blade: Blood Rain's AI slop music video is terrible for us all

ShiftUP CEO Kim Hyung Tae hasn't exactly been lowkey with his pro-AI stance over the years, but he and his company have now made it clearer than ever with one of the most god-awful videos I've ever had the displeasure of witnessing from a company with enough money to do better. Stellar Blade: Blood Rain -- the sequel to 2024's Stellar Blade, which I thought was just fine -- is due to come out later this year. And what better way to market it than with a terrible AI-generated music video where Evie's skin-tight suit has a belly button and fingernails, and parts of her outfit phase in and out of existence all while she smiles at the camera in a deeply unsettling manner. As if that wasn't bad enough, it's all to accompany a song that is also AI-generated. Shrill computerised bleeps masquerade as Evie "singing" high notes during the chorus -- which eventually melt into an ear-splitting cacophony of robotic words -- and a musical composition that barely understands the fundamentals of what makes music good in the first place. It is a song so utterly devoid of soul, and also of anything that feels even remotely related to Stellar Blade: Blood Rain and its universe. It actively undermines the game, its theme, and any visual identity it's attempting to present in favour of something that looks shit, sounds shit, and completely discredits any goodwill ShiftUp may have had. And it makes me worry about the way a hobby I have spent so many years loving is going. For all of the videogame soundtracks that have made me cry, or pumped up, or irrevocably happy. Because they were crafted by a human who understood exactly what they had to do to make me feel those things. Humans who also feel the things they were trying to make me feel through their music. Videogames are a form of art, and art needs a human touch. Parading around a song that feels so utterly lifeless, that doesn't tell me what Stellar Blade: Blood Rain is actually about? It's frustrating, but especially coming from ShiftUp -- a company that is certainly not short of money thanks to the revenue it makes from gacha game Nikke: Goddess of Victory. One which consistently finds itself estimated in the top 10 to 20 gacha earners alongside giants like Hoyoverse. It can do better. It does do better! Nikke is home to some of my all-time favourite videogame bangers. It literally has a long-time rhythm game composer on its team who is responsible for a good chunk of Nikke's discography. I cannot understand why anyone would think that some of the worst AI-generated music I've heard in a hot sec is the better option. I'm not entirely sure what effect ShiftUp was hoping to have with this video, but it has completely turned me off trying Blood Rain entirely. I was actually rather looking forward to seeing how the team could expand upon the Stellar Blade universe -- I thought the first game's narrative was surprisingly underbaked considering the company's chops for storytelling in Nikke, and I was hoping to see more good stuff in Blood Rain. And big companies normalising this behaviour only paves the way for more to follow suit. It threatens to open the floodgates, to no longer relegate this kind of garbage to those AI YouTube playlists made with some terrible 80s-themed thumbnail while everything looks and sounds diabolically crusty and deep-fried. It has the very real possibility to continue showing up in our games in a big way, while still demanding the same kind of money we were paying to have a human involved in its creation. That sort of domino effect is how we have the very real possibility of ending up with reams of samey, soulless games that feel like the very antithesis of why this hobby exists in the first place. And that's why it's so important to call this garbage out for what it is the moment we lay eyes on it, to let companies like ShiftUp know that this ain't it, and we don't want it.

"Are We Deadass?" - Shift-Up promotes Stellar Blade 2 with AI-generated KPop music video featuring the game's main character

Stellar Blade: Bloodrain developer Shift-Up has promoted its upcoming action game with seemingly fully generative AI KPop music video. This music video, uploaded to the official Shift Up YouTube channel, shows Bloodrain's protagonist Evie singing an original song by Shift Up called 'Wanna be in Love'. She can be seen singing into a microphone, and exploring the sci-fi city we caught a glimpse of during its Summer Games Fest reveal trailer. At the end of the trailer, members of the Shift Up development team can be seen filming, chatting, eating, and high-fiving the fully AI generated character. This shouldn't come as too big a surprise. Earlier this year, Shift Up CEO and Stellar Blade's director went all in on AI, saying the technology was essential for going up against large competitors like China. We don't know to what extent generative AI will be featured in the actual game, but this bullish perspective on the tech indicates it could play a role. As for the reception to this music video, the comments are littered with some confused fans. TheBlackCoatedMan6794 wrote "The CEO wasn't kidding, huh?", referencing the aforementioned statement. Hanzb.7438 chimed in, writing; "I mean...you could have made an animated loop with her actual model, you own the game and its assets after all...". Fashl offered their straightforward reaction as well, commenting: "Are We Deadass?". We still don't know when Stellar Blade Bloodrain will release, with initial estimates placing the launch some time before 2027. It's looking far more likely today that a release next year is on the cards, though again, we're still waiting for an official word from Shift Up on the matter.

Even Stellar Rain: Blood Rain Fans Hate Its AI-Slop Music Video

Kim Hyung-tae, the director behind the 2024 game Stellar Blade and the CEO and founder of its developer, Shift Up, has asked fans to "share [their] thoughts with" him regarding his new AI-generated music video featuring the protagonist of his upcoming game, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain-and, well, turns out the fans' thoughts aren't too positive. Shift Up released the "'Wanna be in LOVE' Feat. Evie" music video late last night, and, before anyone rushes to its defense, the team has been quite upfront about the fact that it's AI-generated slop. If you head over to the YouTube upload of the video, its description features the "Made with AI" and "Sounds or visuals were altered or fully generated" disclaimers. That being said, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that genAI was involved, as Evie's face is completely different between shots. But, in case you needed any more evidence, the AI-hallucinated text throughout the music video is borked beyond comprehension. The vending machine Evie stares longingly into features such text as "Preduet Spee," "Refiil Natice," and, my favorite, "Custemef Service." There's also a shot of Evie leaning against a bookshelf with dozens of indiscernible books, including one that appears to be Marcus Aurelius' Meditations-or, as it's spelled in the video, "Meaiiatations." Surprisingly though, considering Kim Hyung-tae's love of AI and the backlash to the AI-gen'd elements spotted in Stellar Blade: Blood Rain's reveal trailer at Summer Games Fest in June, fans of Shift Up's work aren't too pleased with the slop that its CEO has presented them with. "You need to stop using Gen AI to promote Stellar Blade," replied one user on X. "The backlash will be horrible for the IP and it will not be reverseable." "Who the fuck likes this garbage," replied another. "Shift ups music composition was one of their best qualities, this ain't it." "I seriously do not understand this guy's obsession with garbage when he's got such a talented team of actual creators who create purely with their sheer talent," stated Twitch streamer BasedLEDA. "What are you trying to prove with this slop??? I loved Stellar Blade and its beautiful soundtrack, then I got into Nikke and realized how amazing this guy's team is, only for him to push this slop on my TL. I'm afraid that Stellar Blade Bloodrain might be full of this bullshit. It's so over." But, again, while disappointing, it's still not massively surprising. During an interview in January, Kim Hyung-tae sung AI's praises, stating that "one person can perform the work of 100 people" by utilizing the tech. "We devote around 150 people to a single game, but China puts in between 1,000 to 2,000... We lack the capacity to compete, both in terms of quality and volume of content."

Stellar Blade: Blood Rain studio CEO defends AI music video because Evie was originally "created from head to toe" by the devs, but fans say that's not the point

Generally speaking, using generative AI is a quick way to annoy your fanbase, and that's exactly what happened when Stellar Blade: Blood Rain developer Shift Up revealed a music video using the tech for the upcoming game. The head of the company has now responded to the waves of backlash, clarifying that the original design of the sequel's protagonist was made by human beings. On Twitter, Kim Hyung Tae, the CEO of Shift Up, responds to someone asking if the developer could rely more on its actual workforce rather than AI. "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," he starts. "The AI is not creating her from scratch," he explains. "It is rendering and presenting the character based on the data, designs, and craftsmanship our team created." It sounds like Shift Up created its own AI tool, then fed it various models and ideas for it to spew out the video on the other side. Developers and publishers adopting the tech have been using it similarly, essentially creating their own, in-house ChatGPT for whatever they need it for. Even if everything given to the interface was manmade, it's still resource-intensive technology for what you get that comes with a myriad of ethical concerns, including how labor is deployed and valued. To finish, the studio's CEO asks that we view the Stellar Blade: Blood Rain clip, made for the song 'Wanna Be In Love,' through a lens of meshing human creativity and AI. "We would truly appreciate it if you could view the work with that understanding in mind," he adds. While it's helpful to get more context for how this thing came to exist, I'm not sure he's going to convince anyone to change their perspectives. "If this is your defense then you're not getting it," says one fan on Twitter. "Nobody is debating that you made the character, but you then used the big old AI shortcut to make content with that character." But then, this is all in line with previous comments, as the Shift Up lead considers AI necessary to the South Korean game industry. Prepare to take more hikes through the uncanny valley courtesy of Shift Up.

Shift Up receives backlash for AI-generated Stellar Blade music video

Everything, from the visuals to the song itself, appears to have been churned out by a machine. Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2024 action hit, is opting for quite an odd marketing strategy. As most games show off more gameplay or cinematics, Blood Rain is giving us a new music video. One that's entirely made by AI... AI-generated content still proves to be controversial, no matter how much it's shoved down people's throats on the internet. As reported by VGC, YouTube has identified Stellar Blade developer Shift Up's new video for "Wanna be in LOVE" as having "sounds or visuals were altered or fully generated." Watching the video below for yourself, it's easy to see that probably none of it was made with the human hand. The comments, as you'd expect, aren't kind to the video. "Your RAM just went up in prices while watching this video," reads one comment. "Ah i see trying to accelerate the world of stellar blade to exist irl," said another. The video itself adds insult to injury, showing a fake behind-the-scenes segment, as well as an inexplicable tie-in to KPop Demon Hunters. It's unlikely to ruin the hype people have for Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, but it's not exactly got people's excitement up.

Stellar Blade: Blood Rain gets official music video full of AI slop, and fans aren't happy: "It's a slap in the face to your artists"

"You have such talented artists and programmers at Shift Up, please stop using this AI nonsense" Many fans are dragging Shift Up, the studio behind Stellar Blade and its upcoming sequel Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, through the mud for promoting its action game with an official music video generated by AI. Hot off Stellar Blade: Blood Rain's reveal earlier this summer, the South Korean studio today released a music video for a song called Wanna Be in Love, featuring the star of the sequel, Evie, seen singing and dancing in a futuristic city. The uncanny tell-tale signs of AI generation are confirmed in the video's small print: "This video was created using the Game resource from Stellar Blade: Blood Rain and regenerated with AI support." The ending also contains logos for Shift Up's Second Eve Studio and AI Labs, which fans were very quick to take note of. "You have such talented artists and programmers at Shift Up, please stop using this AI nonsense to stifle their work and give it a bad rep. The series doesn't need this dragging it down because this is all people unfamiliar with your games will see," one fan writes on social media. Another says, "You guys have the models and everything to create this without the slop..." That's a sentiment echoed across the player base: "You have all the in house resources and funds you could ever want to make this for real. It's a slap in the face to your artists and your fans to churn out lazy, ugly, subpar garbage when you employ some of the most talented people in the industry. No one wants this but you." Funnily enough, the music video concludes with outtakes of what looks like a real, human production crew 'filming' and high fiving with an AI-generated Evie, though it can be quite hard to tell after it's been filtered through AI generation. By and large, at least on primarily English-speaking online forums, fans of the first game are seemingly upset with how the AI-assisted video devalues the work of Shift Up's otherwise talented team - not to mention the ethical questions that naturally stem from using the tech. South Korea has reportedly adopted generative AI faster than most countries, and high-profile K-Pop music videos have been using AI generation together with real recorded footage with increasing regularity for a couple of years now.

'View the Work With That Understanding in Mind' -- Shift Up CEO Defends Stellar Blade: Blood Rain AI Music Video Against Player Backlash

'We would truly appreciate it if you could view the work with that understanding in mind.' 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. Speaking on X (formerly Twitter), Hyung Tae 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. "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, Hyung Tae 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, Hyung Tae 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 Hyung Tae 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.

Stellar Blade: Blood Rain Dev Shift Up Releases Entirely AI-Generated K-Pop Music Video Starring Evie and Pretty Much Everyone Hates It

Stellar Blade: Blood Rain developer Shift Up has sparked a backlash for releasing an entirely AI-generated music video starring protagonist Evie. "Wanna be in LOVE" Feat. Evie | Stellar Blade: BLOODRAIN was published to South Korean developer Shift Up's YouTube channel on July 31, as a K-pop twist on the upcoming action game. It shows Evie singing an upbeat pop song in Stellar Blade's future setting. But fans have pointed out a number of oddities in the video, including facial changes and visual inaccuracies, with some comparing it to the AI-generated adverts you often see before YouTube videos. After the music video ends, we see a mock 'making of' segment where the Shift Up crew pretend to interact with Evie. The video description confirms it was made with AI, and the small print at the end of the video includes the following description: "This video was created using the game resource from Stellar Blade: Bloodrain and regenerated with AI support." The logo for Shift Up's A.I. Labs department is at the bottom. The reception not only on the YouTube video itself but across the internet is overwhelmingly negative. "They really thought they were cooking with this AI slop," one person commented. "Deleting this from my memory, SGF trailer was amazing," another said. "Could've made an actual music video and paid the team another bonus check. Hopefully this was a one time thing and pray the game doesn't have AI cutscenes," one person wrote. "Your RAM just went up in prices while watching this video," another said. "Since there's no name for the singer in the description. I guess the song was made with AI as well?" pointed out another. It's a similar sentiment over on the Stellar Blade subreddit. "Such a f***ing shame man," one redditor said. "I love almost everything about this company and its games, but the damn CEO's obsession with AI is seriously bringing the whole thing down. You HAVE the talent and resources to make quality content. Despite all that, you decide to make slop like this. My hype for this game has been genuinely damaged with this s**t." That's a reference to Shift Up boss Kim Hyung-Tae, who is a vocal proponent of generative AI. In January, he said that without the use of AI, developers in smaller nations would struggle to keep up with studios in places like the U.S. and China. "We devote around 150 people to a single game, but China puts in between 1,000 to 2,000. We lack the capacity to compete, both in terms of quality and volume of content," Hyung-Tae said (via machine translation). Using AI would not result in job losses, Hyung-Tae insisted at the time, but instead make employees more valuable, as "one person can perform the work of 100 people." Hyung-Tae promoted the music video on X / Twitter, asking viewers to share their thoughts with the studio. He got his wish. "I think you guys have enough budget to animate a music video instead of using AI," one person replied. It would be a good way to actually advertise the in-game assets instead of faking content." "This is an absolute shame and disgrace to art," another replied. "You have one of the most INSANE budgets to develop your game without AI involved at 1%, but still, you produced this slop. And don't throw at me the 'we use AI to compete with US/China market,' that's a literal BS." "My thoughts are that this is s**t," another declared. "Shame that you are using AI instead of paying artists to animate this. Is this type of thing going to be in the game too? Cause if that's the case I don't want it now." In June, Hyung-Tae discussed the design of new main character Evie, highlighting the differences between her and the protagonist of the first game, Eve. Shift Up announced Stellar Blade: Blood Rain at Summer Game Fest with an eye-catching trailer that revealed Evie, a brand new main character who prefers to punch her way through enemies than take the slice and dice approach favored by her predecessor. The biggest talking point coming out of the trailer reveal was the design of Evie herself, with some expressing concern about her seemingly child-like face in the context of her more adult-sounding voice acting and body design. In an interview with IGN following the Summer Game Fest reveal, Hyung-Tae confirmed that Evie being Eve's junior was a conscious design decision. "Yes. She is younger. She's smaller in size. She's shorter than Eve," he said, "but she has a stronger personality and engages in much tougher battles. And she's actually part of a special squad that chases after a group of terrorists who cause terror attacks here and there in the city." Eve in Stellar Blade is a highly sexualized character, so we asked Hyung-Tae if he was worried that by using a young-looking character for Blood Rain, Shift Up was running the risk that some people would view Evie in a way the developer doesn't want. "If you actually play the game, you will not think that," he replied. "I definitely like how Eve looked in the previous Stellar Blade. But this time, Evie, not just her physical looks, but her personality, the way she talks, the way she engages in battles, all that will combine together, and you'll see that she's a very lovable character." Opinion on the use of AI in games continues to divide studios and their fans, with some vehemently against its use, while others claim it's an inevitable part of the future. Rockstar co-founder and former Grand Theft Auto writer Dan Houser recently likened AI to mad cow disease, but the CEO of Genvid -- the company behind choose-your-own-adventure interactive series like Silent Hill Ascension -- has claimed "consumers generally do not care" about generative AI in games, and stated that: "Gen Z loves AI slop." EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said AI is "the very core of our business," and Square Enix recently implemented mass layoffs and reorganized, saying it needed to be "aggressive in applying AI." Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].