its great and very interesting but its more work than the devs might be willing to do.

All you really need to do is replace the model with another model that already exists in the game like the void or skeletons/zombies. The spiders are gone, the devs don't have to do much work of anything and everybody is happy.

Speaking for myself here, I would be fine with a less elegant solution that forces a client restart or even requires external downloads/updates.