Terraria community recoils at AI-generated merch, developer immediately takes hard stance

Terraria is an indie sandbox darling that earned its place in the gaming community in the 13 years since its launch, largely thanks to the care its developer has given it, along with the game's endearing art style and replayability. Recently, however, the Terraria community got into a bit of a state over some suspicious merch that didn't appear to exhibit the care typical of Terraria.

In September, Terraria launched a shirt with artwork depicting the Flying Dutchman, an in-game mini-boss, rendered as a 2.5D sprite. While it appears to have flown under the radar for a bit, the shirt's design was called into question late last week, when keen-eyed redditors in the Terraria subreddit figured out that the shirt appeared to be designed using AI image generation. Shortly after the post calling out the design went up on Reddit, an official Terraria developer account posted a response to the controversy, in which it not only addressed the community's concerns around the Flying Dutchman but also took a stance on the use of AI art in Terraria and its merchandise.

In the response post, Re-Logic's u/Loki_ISP says that the developer looked into the design of the shirt, confirming it was indeed at least partially AI-generated. Although the designer apparently used AI as a reference and redrew elements of the AI design - likely in an attempt to correct any inconsistencies and make the design feel more authentic.

While we didn't know it was AI assisted at the time, we have since confirmed that - while elements of the design are human generated - AI has been used for this shirt both as a basis and for assisted elements. Essentially the artist in question generated something in AI and then redrew a lot (but not all, clearly) of the elements.

Loki_ISP goes on to explain that the shirt in question has been removed from the Terraria store, and all pre-orders for the shirt will be refunded without the expectation that delivered shirts be returned. They go on to state that AI art will be explicitly avoided in the future, and that Re-Logic has already worked with its merchandise partner to ensure that the use of AI art is explicitly forbidden in all merch products. The only exception to this no-AI rule is regarding background and stock images, in which the use of AI is often not disclosed appropriately.

AI art is ONLY to be used as needed in things like "promo art" backgrounds - like the dock scene used in promo images for this shirt. This too is strongly discouraged and should be avoided - and only intended to cover the event of any stock photos used unknowingly containing AI elements. Any such accidental incidents should be addressed to remove AI once discovered. AI may not be used for the design or production of products in any way.

The full response can be found below the article text in an embedded Reddit post, but it's fair to say that the announcement, apology, and plan for the future of the game's merchandise has been very positively received by the community.