Less than a day after the developers of Neverness to Everness announced they would be “reworking” the AI-generated images in their recently released open-world gacha game, a new patch for the game has dropped–and, apparently, a few of the “flagged assets” in question have indeed been replaced. However, some fans believe the game’s most notorious genAI image has been replaced with…a different genAI image.
Roughly a week after Twitch VTuber Ironmouse stated that she was pulling out of her Neverness to Everness sponsored content deal due to the developers having reportedly “assured” her that the game wouldn’t contain genAI assets only for her to find that it did, the official NtE Global X account announced that developer Hotta Games was “already reviewing and reworking” the AI slop assets that fans had flagged.
Today, a new patch for Neverness to Everness dropped, and, true to its word, it would seem Hotta Games has removed at least some of these assets. However, some fans think the most notorious AI slop example, an in-game billboard artwork that looked a lot like a promotional image for the anime film Weathering with You, has been replaced with an AI-generated image of a soda can.
I guess it didn’t matter enough because the assets you replaced are STILL AI generated. What is the point if you’re just going to keep lying to your playerbase? https://t.co/sdn4SFlFs1 pic.twitter.com/sBKr1sgHBN
— ✨ViviVovo ✨ (@_ViviVovo_) May 7, 2026
“There are way too many different types of clouds, the shadows don’t make sense…and overall just a lot of extra unnecessary things happening for what should’ve been a low-effort background poster,” commented X user ViviVovo.
While the new replacement image does have some of the hallmarks of AI slop, it would be awfully strange for Hotta Games to replace AI art with AI art…especially when there are examples of them outright removing other pieces of GenAI content in the new update, such as the video that plays before the Pink Paws Heist mission (which has now been replaced with a TV static placeholder).
If it is true that the new image is AI too, perhaps the decision to replace the AI art wasn’t influenced by the public outcry, but instead by the similarities between it and images promoting Weathering with You. After all, I highly doubt the copyright holders of the film were particularly pleased about being ripped off.