#everbyte moonvale statement

[hacked-by-jake]

I'm especially sad about the AI art statement.

No one ever said they can't use AI in general. Nobody said this. As long as they don't let the chats be written by AI they can use it for whatever they want.

Me personally, I'm a little fan of AI in general. ChatGPT took Googles place in many situations for me. It's super easy, super interesting and faster. I use it instead of reading millions of Google sites. (of course I don't trust everything right away, check your sources, lovelies)

But that's not what I want to say.

I saw no one complaining about the usage of AI in general. As long as its not creating the whole game and especially not what the characters say etc.

The critism was about the usage of AI ART, not AI in general, completely missing the point in my eyes.

And yes, they're right. AI became a huge part of our lives now. We find it everywhere and we won't get rid of it again. That won't happen. For me, it's okay as long as it's not used to generate money by letting it write texts and stuff.

And I'm completely fine with them using it. Of course, it's still stealing and I won't deny that, but as I said, we won't get rid of it again.

But the usage of AI generated Art is wrong and should actually be illegal. They, as a small developer studio, they should know and they do know, how it is when your work gets stolen and used by strangers.

And that's exactly what AI does. And that's not okay. It simply isn't. Every generated art is based on hundreds of real arts our there. The smallest artist who posts their work will be a victim of that. Because AI pulls it's knowledge and the ability for art out of every little art source there is. And that's wrong.

And I'm disappointed about their statement with this point.

And the second statement about AI art...

Yes, it's wonderful that you will introduce new actors to us. Great, amazing. And yes, we do remember how it was in Duskwood. And we do remember that actors were introduced after some time. Hannah joined in the last episode, and this was great.

But the huge difference is, you used stock photos. Real photography. Real designs. Created by photographers or whoever. The point here is: Real human. And real work.

I don’t think I'm the only one. But the first second I saw the profile picture of Ash, immediately I was like "Hm, that reminds me straight up of arcane"

Which is logical when you use AI generated art because the AI of course uses at first the most popular references.

Fact is: We don't support the usage of AI Art in Moonvale.

Question is: Why didn't you use stock photos just like you did before?

Everbytes answer: Yes, okay, we can change their profile pictures. (Point done)

And I mean, come on. Violet has a freaking cat as profile picture. Where was the problem with just using a real cat for that? Nothing easier than finding a good picture of cats! 😭

And if you didn't want to use stock photos. Have you seen how many incredibly talented digital artists your fandom has? Have you seen the insanely good work they created for your game?

How about contacting a few of them? How about asking them to draw the characters you wanted to have? I'm 100% sure you wouldn't even have to pay them for. Most of them would do it for free right away.

Plus: Real art created by real people

Plus two: No money spending.

Yeeey.

And if you don’t want that...., ✨STOCK PHOTOS✨

To be honest, they took a crumb of the criticism, twisted it a bit. Used the word AI, twisted a bit more, left their statement and at the end they gave us a small little victory by saying "They get new profile picture, see we're listening to you". They gave us a little "victory" so that we hopefully will be satisfied and not mention it again.

That's it for this topic. For now

[hacked-by-jake]

Is it just me , but doesn't it seem like they aren't taking accountability?

Well, partly they did. I mean, I wasn't expecting a statement that fast, definitely not. But I'm glad they sat down immediately and talked about it. And I also think they really read things we said. At least, it feels like that to me.

Of course, they statement isn't the best one and I don't agree with a couple of things. (I'm still not done with speaking about it.)

And I also understand why people are still disappointed and also not satisfied. And it's true, their words weren't what we were hoping for.

And I repeat, nothing of it makes me forget the problems about it. But I still want to point something out. Because I want the best for both sides.

So, here's the thing. Everbyte is still the small studio they were before. Three young people creating games. And one of those games blow up completely in a blink. All of sudden they had thousands of people looking at them. I mean, Duskwood has over 10 Million Downloads on Google play. It's impossible to imagine that.

So, and here's the thing. They're not any influencer with marketing team or social media team. They don't have a company that is specialised on this matter. It's them and only them.

And back then, Duskwood jumped from 0 to 100. And now, with Moonvale, sadly, they fell down from there again. I don't think they expected this to happen. In another blink they had an unbelievable amount of people criticising them, hating them, even others demanding to boycott them.

They don't have a management to write them the perfect statement for the world like any influencer or youtuber or celebrity has.

I mean, imagine you're suddenly in a position were many people demanding a statement. This alone is already a situation that's completely overwhelming. Because you know, no matter you're going to say, some people will still hate, and I don't mean criticising them, but hate them. And every word you say will be put on a gold scale. Fact is, no matter how your statement is, in most cases you still can only lose..

Three normal people facing a huge wall of criticism. And I don't think any of them knew how to handle this. And there's no real way to handle this. And we also should not forget, we don't see the behind the scenes. We don't see the problems they have to face.

And of course, we all see this critical. What happened. And we have the right to point that out. But I believe that we should have a little forbearance and tolerance for Everbyte.

They were probably in panic, scared to lose everything and they had not time to really figure things out. Of course their statement is very vague and I am not satisfied with most of it.

But we still should give them some time to figure things out and especially to think about everything that happened. The fandom was incredibly emotional, and Everbyte, they're humans as well. And also they were incredibly emotional. We can't imagine how they felt in that situation.

But until episode 2 they have a lot of time now. They can figure things out, they can find ways to change things. And I actually trust them so far. We saw they can do differently.

And especially, they just see everything completely different. They created this this game, for two years. They saw it every single days. They worked on it every single day.

I don’t know if you can relate. But if a writer reads their own text over and over again, at some point they won't see any mistakes anymore. Even if there are some. But for some thing you just become blind. That's a process you can't stop.

I want to repeat, it doesn't make the problems any better. Especially the AI thing. They right thing would have been to say "we will delete it completely"

But Everbyte can't be neutral on that because it's their game. We all have completely different view for it.

So I do think we should give them some time to figure things out. They deserve it. And no matter how disappointed we are, we should not forget that empathy cost nothing. And even if everything ended up in a little disaster, Everbyte still deserves our empathy.

We can keep firing against them but I fear at some point it might fire back and they won't listen at all.

Keep showing them constructive criticism. Leave reviews in your app stores etc. And then the time will show what is going to happen. But right now, it's still too emotional for everyone.

I'm still sorry you're feeling this way, Anon. I definitely know what you mean and I even agree with you. But everything I want is peace and I want to keep up the hope.

Thank you for sending your ask, sorry my answer isn't probably exactly what you expected but I really hope you understand my point of view and I hope even if my answer is differently, I hope you want be mad at me because of it.

I hope you will have a fantastic day/evening/night. Take care of yourself and stay healthy and safe. 💚