Earlier this week we reported on fan reaction to the latest update to the Tomb Raider I-III Remastered collection, in which the game received a new Challenge Mode, while Lara received a suite of new outfits to wear as rewards. And oh wow, they were bad. Comically bad. So bad, in fact, that one of the remaster’s original artists posted on X to distance himself and his colleagues from the dross. Alongside all of this was the suspicion that genAI might have been involved in the fits’ creation, given just how dreadful they looked. Publisher Aspyr has now finally responded to the claims to insist no AI was used at all, instead stating they were created by “our team of artists.” Which raises more questions.
“We hear and appreciate your feedback regarding the recent Challenge Mode update for Tomb Raider I-III Remastered,” says Aspyr in a belated post to its X account, three days after the fuss occurred. “Our top priority is the delivery of a patch that will fix the texture issues and technical bugs.”
If you’d like to help us prioritize fixes you can report bugs at https://t.co/YAGgQvk1t2 pic.twitter.com/23fsimBimy
— Aspyr (@AspyrMedia) March 18, 2026
It seems Challenge Mode not only introduced the awful outfits but also a range of new bugs and issues, as Aspyr adds, “In addition, a series of updates are on the way to address a variety of technical issues across all platforms.”
So good, it’s getting addressed, and that’s what everyone wants. This must all be especially galling to Aspyr, given the update was free, and I imagine has now caused them far more trouble than it was ever worth. Still, the game itself wasn’t free, and others will have bought the game in response to the promotion, so people have absolutely paid for this content, and are right to be frustrated by such sloppy work. What’s more peculiar, however, is how Aspyr goes on to seemingly throw its own artists under the bus as it desperately makes clear that genAI wasn’t ever a part of this.
“This is also an opportunity to correct some mistaken information:” says the note. “The outfits in the update were created by our team of artists; no AI generated assets were used in the update.”
It’s understandable that the studio wants to make clear it’s not using genAI at a time when this draws in the most furious wolves, but it would at least made sense of how the outfits came to be quite so broken. But it’s also not the core issue here at all: in our original post we mentioned “AI” once, and that was a passing comment to say some had mentioned it on Reddit. The question remains: how did they come to be added to the game in this state?
Yes, on one level this is a lot of noise about some dress-up options for a video game character, and no one paid extra for any of them. It’s important to keep things in context. But it still remains fascinating to learn how something like this happens, especially when there’s so much promotional push to accompany it. As YouTuber RUUs Room pointed out in a video, the images shown in advance of the new content were astoundingly different from what actually appeared in the game, and it seems impossible Aspyr were unaware of this before the update was released. So why release it? It’s too juicy of a question to leave alone. We’ve asked Aspyr again, but should note that our previous email was ignored.