Neverness to Everness, the 2026 gacha game from developer Hotta Games that was mercilessly dragged online in April for its overabundance of AI-looking assets, is, for the third time this year, embroiled in another genAI controversy. It comes less than four months after the devs stated that the game “is built on human creativity” and that they were “committed to delivering the quality [players] deserve.”
Apparently, the “quality” that said players “deserve” is this: an AI-generated image of a seahorse that was featured in in the latest 1.3 update for Neverness to Everness, which released on August 12 in China.
However, it gets worse, as users on China’s live-streaming and social media platform Bilibili noticed that said image was seemingly generated using the free version of ByteDance’s AI chatbot assistant Doubao. But how did they figure this out? Did they run it through AI-detection software?
No, the answer is much dumber than that: the seahorse asset in Neverness to Everness’s 1.3 update features a watermark for Doubao AI that somebody at Hotta Games apparently forgot to remove.
BREAKING 🔴: NTE has been caught using generative AI for art assets again—and this time, they forgot to remove the watermark.
Despite their past public apologies, Hotta Studio shows zero remorse and continues to push hidden gen-AI assets behind the scenes. #NTE #NTEネバエバ pic.twitter.com/7XaZ5GDPCe
— John Семён (@JhnSMem) August 17, 2026
If you’re curious as to how multiple players in China have already spotted this when Neverness to Everness’s 1.3 update isn’t set to go live globally until tomorrow on August 19, that’s because NTE’s updates are released in China a week early.
Now, to be completely fair, Hotta Games never stated that it would stop using AI-generated assets in Neverness to Everness when they were caught the first time around, or even the second time for that matter. Instead, Hotta Games admitted that “AI-assisted tools were used only on a small number of background and environmental assets,” and not for any of “the characters or stories that define this game.”
I suppose the asset for a seahorse doesn’t technically count as game-defining, so I can’t fault them on that front, but it’s still pretty laughable that Hotta Games has chosen to phone it in to this degree. I mean come on, you couldn’t even shell out for the premium version of Doubao AI for your game that earned over $200 million in its first two months?