PSN has a problem with ai art, most of the services seem to with nintendo admittedly being hit the worst by it on its eshop and steam, just being steam really, i don't like steam, but anyway this issue is one i noticed on PSN the most because it's just so prevelant in a way that is harder to notice on those other platforms due to just *how* bad it is there and how many games they have, that it sticks out less, where on psn the relative lack of it makes it look just that much worse, if you check the upcoming games segment it's a significant portion of it from various different developers which can run the gambit from blatantly using AI art and paid assets (we'll get back to that) to just shameless ripoffs and template games but its practically every second game on there, but one publisher is more prevelant than the rest, that being midnight works SRL.

i first noticed midnight works a while ago while browsing, i saw your usual bad asset flips and template platnum games sure, and beyond one with some copyright infringement (a weird breaking bad fighting game i think, i havent seen it but my partner told me it had stolen stuff from that) nothing stood out except for one game, whittingham asylum: the investigation, with its clashing styles and storebought assets, but mostly for its use of very apparent AI art as you'll see above, it looks awful and the two art styles dont even match, now to its credit this does seem like one of the more high effort games from the studio, even if some of the screenshots are also full of even more ai art, this seems to at least have the slightest bit of effort in its screenshots, although given the studios penchant for faking screenshots (something their switch games got them in trouble for), whos to say this is even true, fast foreward to this week and i check this same section again after noticing two blatant AI art games from a wholley different dev and i check to see if the game is even still there, it is, but it's also got a lot more now, almost 25 games from this same studio all using ai art, shameless asset flipping and sometimes even just stolen ideas wholesale like their VR among us clone "spaceship imposter VR: multiplayer deduction simulator among game", most of which also have extremly long SEO bait titles and sometimes even unreadably bad ai logos as you can see below! there's dozens of these, some have been released as was the case with games like "crypto miner simulator" and "Deep Space: Action Fire Sci-Fi Game 2023 Shooter Strike Simulator Alien Death Ultimate Games" which uses AI art issac clarke and has a barely legable, most likely chat gpt'd description, the closest they seem to have to an original game is their "Kanjozoku Racer" series, a series of two badly made tokyo xtreme racer wannabes with out of place anime girl models and one track a piece, the games seem like miserable, hollow experiances, the closest we may ever get to "bad games" actually existing, i still don't fully believe a genuine game made for reasons other than a scam can be bad, but these are just scams, so if i labeled them as bad, i wouldn't think twice about it. some of these games even use full on stolen IP, such as their skateboarding game using a ugandan knuckles model which, has to be some kind of infringement (though IP law is kind of a scam itself), it still displays an even farther lack of creativity

the sheer amount of them led me initially to thinking it was one person gaming the system, using exploits (which reportedly they did) to get their hackjob scam games some store prominance and a few sales, because so little effort and money has went into these that they must be making a decent profit, which seems to be true as the CEO for the studio as he can be seen in pictures on the company website posing with expensive cars in the studio, which is a real studio with employees seemingly (or more realistically a front with several other scam studios under its belt such as INSTAMARKETINGANDGAME, VG games, DEZVOLT games and GOGAME console publisher) which was found out by youtuber switch stars, whos video i will link below. some of these games use the same AI art/asset flip practices and even share full on unaltered games, though seemingly it's only midnight works publishing on PSN, with them taking games from dezvolt and VG as their own on there such as hooligan simulator, it's a deep rabbithole so i'd reccomend watching switchstars videos to see more, especially since i haven't delved massively into the eshop side of things, just the PSN listings

sadly it's unlikely anything can or will be done about this, sony and nintendo both don't care, valve especially don't care and very few people really care to bring it up unless its particularly high profile like "the last hope" and even then its bought as a joke, they make money and its forgotton very fast, as we've seen with sony it will just get worse, like how it got with the "jumping" easy platnum games plaguing the store before, though some of those did get culled so maybe one day, there could be hope, but it's hard to say when its this bad already and nothing is seemingly being done. as things like ai game programing and art get more accessable to these companies, it will continue to get worse and worse and even AA and AAA projects will be full of similar things as games start to be made by machine with no artistry, the only real way to avoid even seeing them is to stay off of the store because any search result will be full of them, which obviously isn't ideal, but in a digital store with no curation, you can't really avoid them.

+ switchstars video on the studio and its scam ring