Credit: Joker Studio and NetEase Inc.
Soon after Identity V’s reveal show on Friday, June 5th, where they unveiled upcoming content for the next few months, players were quick to notice some discrepancies in the poster promoting the Time Raiders crossover and it was accused of having mistakes that no human artist would make. Accusations of NetEase using GenAI again started to circulate within the community across social media.
The poster in question. The poster used as the header got less suspicion. Credit: Joker Studio and NetEase Inc.
As this was occurring, a Chinese cosplayer for one of the characters featured in the crossover came forward accusing the company of stealing his cosplay and possibly running it through AI in order to create the character, “Wang Panzi,” who is to be given to Aeroplanist. It is to be said that Time Raiders is a Chinese online novel, thus there are no appropriate references for the characters to use through the novel. On the other hand, there is a Time Raiders movie that could have possibly been used as reference instead.
The second user is blacked out for privacy reasons. idvlogic is an unofficial IDV news account on Twitter who first reported on the controversy and has been featured before on this website.
After a weekend of silence due to communicating between the copyright holders and the cosplayer in question, on June 9th, NetEase released an official statement on their social media platforms.
They acknowledged that they first noticed the concerns about the crossover on June 6th, a day after the livestream, and quickly contacted the copyright holders to explain the situation and the cosplayer to straighten things out the following day after doing an internal review of the situation.
They first confirm that the outfit for Aeroplanist, “Wang Pangzi” and the poster were not made with AI or any sort of image altering techniques and were hand-drawn by their artists. In addition, detailed images explaining more in-depth about how they went about checking the poster and the Aeroplanist costume were uploaded on their social media accounts.
Credit: IDV Official Weibo.
The image on the left shows the concepts for the poster before they settled on poster B with approval from the copyright holders. The image on the left is text conversation between the copyright holders and the cosplayer. The cosplayer demanded that NetEase issue an apology and clear answer on the similarities between his cosplay and the crossover costume before saying they should provide their players appropriate compensation. If not, they planned to pursue legal action. The copyright holders and NetEase apologized to the cosplayer and talks continued in a friendly manner.
It seems during the initial process of gathering reference materials to create the costume, the controversial image of the cosplayer was given to NetEase’s project team by the copyright holders. They acknowledged that the project team failed to verify the reference images which then lead to this controversy.
As for the poster, they explained there was some details that they were initially unsatisfied with and had to have the artist team redraw and adjust though that unfortunately led to some leftover mistakes that could appear like the work of AI.
The official statement concludes with the promise that they will standardize their review procedures and strengthen internal oversight for promotional artwork. In addition, the original artwork for Aeroplanist’s “Wang Pangzi” costume will be redesigned and the posters will be revised and updated. For causing such a negative experience from their mistakes and mishandling of the project, players will now receive the A-costume, “Wang Panzi,” and it’s matching accessory, “Mojin Talisman,” for free when the crossover launches.
The Time Raiders crossover will launch in game on July 16th with additional A-costumes for Novelist and Mercenary. Originally, Naiad was scheduled to be receiving a free A-costume as well and as of right now, that remains unchanged.
For a more detailed official translation of the statement, check out idvlogic’s Twitter thread here.