According to game designer Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51, NetEase not only abandoned generative AI in game development, but also shut down its own research division that had been working on this technology.
Suda51 spoke about this in an interview with Eurogamer. He is currently working on the action game Romeo is a Dead Man at the studio Grasshopper Manufacture, which is a subsidiary of NetEase. According to him, NetEase management directly instructed its internal studios not to use AI in game projects — "in any way at all."
At the same time, the developers were not given any official explanation for this decision. Suda emphasizes that he can only speculate. One possible reason is the negative attitude of part of the audience toward the use of AI in games. Another is the legal risks related to copyright.