Dev Responds to Fully AI-Generated ‘ARK: Aquatica’ Trailer: “We did not know that they were doing it.”

Not that long ago, the 10-year anniversary special DLC ARK: Aquatica was announced as an addition to ARK: Survival Evolved. The DLC is scheduled for a June 2025 release, but it has already become a major controversy due to a mess unrelated to the game itself.

The Aquatica DLC was somewhat surprising, but while players will probably get a better experience once it comes out, the trailer for the game created a major controversy that caused an outrage among the fans and the devs have officially responded to it.

Before we continue, here is the controversial trailer:

To be frank, even if you’re not a fan of the game, even if you haven’t played it, you can see that something is off. The images are clearly odd, and as it turns out, the whole trailer was made using generative AI images. This caused the fans to revolt and Snail Games, who is releasing the game, has been faced with harsh criticism.

In light of that, lead designer Matt Kohl recently commented on the issue, claiming that they – as the developers – had no clue what was going on, blaming it all on the marketing team. “The marketing department used still images of some of our assets to create an AI-animated trailer. That was not part of the development team; we did not know that they were doing it,” Kohl said.

This is an obvious attempt to calm the fans down and to reassure them that the DLC will be as expected once it comes out, but we can only guess whether he is actually telling the whole truth or not. We can only hope that the DLC really does deliver and that the use of AI will remain restricted in the future.

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