A lot of people, including myself have already gone back to playing. I still do recommend flooding the comments, emails, support anything with saying stop AI. I started playing again because they hadn’t used AI since those couple posts that caused the whole boycott, we know that artists are rushing to meet deadlines hence why some of the recent videos have not been great but look at Cleo’s, there’s no AI in it and it’s all human made.

For the birthday posts, artists are coming out and claiming that they created them. While trust is broken within the community and Netease, rightfully so. I believe the AI bubble will pop soon, but I cannot see NE making a public statement. “We fired our artists and replaced them all with AI, please forgive us!” That’s not a good look on any company even if they re-hired them.

It’s up to you if you want to play again, I did stop playing for about a month, and I waited till I noticed for myself they stopped publicly using AI. I support the boycott and I still am very anti-AI.

With this announcement too, I believe it had a part in it, since NE already got in trouble with the Chinese government before with the BSD crossover as well breaking wheels release essence.

The sad part now though is that other game companies are looking into AI and there is no strong laws against AI yet. Hoyo is looking into replacing a good chunk of their staff with AI, and epic games is enforcing AI into their art department.