Anno 117: Pax Romana launched on November 13, 2025, and it took players exactly two days to spot something wrong. A loading screen featuring a Roman banquet scene had all the telltale signs of AI-generated art: distorted faces, bodies with impossible proportions, and that distinctive blurry quality where the algorithm just gives up on details. Ubisoft’s response? It was a placeholder that accidentally slipped through the review process. The problem is, nobody believes them.
This controversy hits particularly hard for the Anno community because the series has always been known for its gorgeous, hand-crafted artwork. Players come to these city-building strategy games expecting beautiful historical imagery that captures the essence of different time periods. Finding out that AI slop made it into the final product feels like a betrayal of what made Anno special in the first place.
The Image That Started Everything
A Reddit user posted the offending image on the Games subreddit, and the response was immediate. The loading screen shows what’s supposed to be an elegant Roman banquet with crowds of people enjoying food and entertainment. But look closer at the background characters and everything falls apart. Faces appear to be melting, with eyes at different heights. Bodies don’t connect properly to limbs. The whole scene has that uncanny valley quality that screams AI generation to anyone who’s spent time looking at this stuff.
One Anno fan captured the community’s disappointment perfectly: “Of all the video games. What drew me to Anno 1800 was its gorgeous artwork.” That sentiment echoed throughout discussions, with longtime players expressing frustration that the series known for artistic excellence would resort to AI-generated content, intentionally or otherwise.
Here’s the thing that makes Ubisoft’s explanation suspicious: Anno 117’s Steam page includes an AI-generated content disclosure, as required by Steam for any games that use AI during development. The disclosure states that “AI tools were used to help create some in-game assets,” but emphasizes that “in all such cases, the final product reflects our team’s craft and creative vision.” So they knew they were using AI tools and supposedly had processes in place to ensure quality control. How did this image make it through?
Ubisoft’s Official Response
After the controversy exploded online, Ubisoft issued a statement to Kotaku explaining the situation. According to the company, the banquet scene was a placeholder asset that unintentionally slipped through their review process. They promised to replace it with a proper human-created image in the upcoming 1.3 patch and even provided a preview of what the replacement would look like.
The statement also provided context about their development process: “With Anno 117: Pax Romana being our most ambitious Anno yet, we’ve assembled the largest team of artists ever for the franchise and to help meet the project’s unique scope, they use AI tools for iterations, prototyping, and exploration. Every element players will experience in the final game reflects the team’s craft, artistry, and creative vision.”
That all sounds reasonable in theory. Using AI as a tool to speed up prototyping and exploration makes sense in modern game development. But the problem is that this wasn’t a prototype or exploration asset. It was in the shipped game that people paid money for, displayed on loading screens during actual gameplay. The line between “AI-assisted” and “AI-generated” looks a lot blurrier than Ubisoft wants to admit.
Why the Excuse Doesn’t Hold Up
The placeholder explanation raises more questions than it answers. First, how does a placeholder image make it all the way through development, testing, quality assurance, and final review without anyone noticing it shouldn’t be there? Game companies have multiple checkpoints specifically to catch these kinds of issues. Are we supposed to believe that every single person who saw this image before launch just assumed it was fine?
Second, the timing is suspicious. Ubisoft only issued their statement and promised to fix the image after players publicly called them out. If this was genuinely an accidental placeholder that they knew about, why wasn’t it caught before launch? Why did Reddit users have to point it out for the company to take action?
Third, and perhaps most damning, the banquet scene isn’t the only questionable image in Anno 117. Players have flagged multiple other pieces of art that show similar AI tells. Kotaku pointed out another image featuring Roman senators who are literally missing their heads. That’s not a stylistic choice – that’s an AI failure. If multiple AI-generated images made it into the final game, it starts looking less like an accident and more like a pattern.
The Replacement Tells Its Own Story
Ubisoft provided a preview of the replacement artwork that will arrive in patch 1.3, and it’s revealing in its own way. The new image appears to be a heavily retouched version of the AI-generated original rather than a completely new piece created from scratch by human artists. The composition and general layout remain largely the same, but the obvious mistakes have been cleaned up.
This raises another uncomfortable question: if the placeholder excuse were true, wouldn’t the replacement be the finished human-created artwork that was always intended to be there? Why does the fix look like someone spent time correcting AI mistakes rather than swapping in the proper asset that supposedly already existed?
The cynic in me reads this situation as: Ubisoft used AI to generate artwork, got caught because the output was obviously flawed, and is now retouching the AI images to make them less obviously AI-generated. The “placeholder” excuse provides plausible deniability while they clean up the mess.
The Bigger Picture on AI in Gaming
The Anno 117 controversy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a larger conversation about AI-generated content in video games that’s becoming increasingly contentious. Last year, Valve introduced new guidelines requiring developers to disclose AI use in their Steam submissions, specifically so players could make informed purchasing decisions about games that might contain AI-generated content.
The gaming community’s resistance to AI art isn’t just about protecting artist jobs, though that’s certainly part of it. It’s also about quality and authenticity. Hand-crafted artwork carries an intentionality and human touch that AI-generated content fundamentally lacks. When you look at beautiful concept art or environmental paintings in games, you’re seeing the result of an artist’s skill, vision, and countless hours of refinement. AI output feels hollow by comparison, even when it’s technically competent.
For a series like Anno, which has built its reputation partly on gorgeous historical artwork, using AI feels like cutting corners on something that should be a priority. It suggests the company values efficiency over artistry, which is exactly the kind of signal that erodes trust with passionate fans.
What Happens Next?
Ubisoft says patch 1.3 will replace the problematic banquet scene with proper artwork. Whether they’ll address the other potentially AI-generated images remains unclear. The company hasn’t commented on anything beyond that single loading screen, which doesn’t inspire confidence that they’re taking the broader issue seriously.
The damage to Anno 117’s reputation is already done. Review discussions on Steam and Reddit are now dominated by AI art conversations rather than gameplay impressions. Players who were excited about the game’s historical setting and city-building mechanics are instead debating whether they can trust Ubisoft to deliver the artistic quality they expect from the series.
More broadly, this incident sets a concerning precedent for how major publishers might handle AI in game development going forward. If the excuse of “it was a placeholder that slipped through” becomes the standard response whenever AI-generated content gets caught, we’re going to see this same cycle repeat with other games and other companies. Deny, minimize, promise to fix it, and hope the controversy blows over.
Frequently Asked Questions
What AI-generated art did Ubisoft use in Anno 117?
Players discovered a loading screen featuring a Roman banquet scene with obvious AI tells, including distorted faces, impossible body proportions, and blurry details. The image showed background characters with melting faces and limbs that didn’t connect properly. Other images in the game have also been flagged as potentially AI-generated, including one showing Roman senators missing their heads.
What was Ubisoft’s explanation for the AI art?
Ubisoft told Kotaku and IGN that the banquet scene was a placeholder asset that unintentionally slipped through their review process. They promised to replace it with proper human-created artwork in patch 1.3. The company emphasized that they use AI tools for iterations, prototyping, and exploration, but claim every element in the final game reflects their team’s craft and artistry.
Did Ubisoft disclose they were using AI in Anno 117?
Yes, Anno 117’s Steam page includes an AI-generated content disclosure as required by Steam policy. It states that “AI tools were used to help create some in-game assets” but emphasizes that “in all such cases, the final product reflects our team’s craft and creative vision.” This disclosure makes the placeholder excuse more questionable since they acknowledged using AI tools.
Will Ubisoft replace all the AI art in Anno 117?
Ubisoft has only committed to replacing the banquet loading screen in patch 1.3. They haven’t addressed other potentially AI-generated images that players have identified. The replacement image appears to be a retouched version of the original AI art rather than a completely new piece, which has raised additional questions about their approach.
Why are Anno fans upset about AI art specifically?
The Anno series has built its reputation partly on gorgeous, hand-crafted historical artwork that captures different time periods with artistic excellence. Fans specifically chose Anno games for their beautiful visuals and attention to detail. Discovering AI-generated content feels like a betrayal of what made the series special, as if Ubisoft is cutting corners on something that should be a priority.
Is the placeholder explanation believable?
Many players are skeptical. If it was truly a placeholder, it should have been caught during multiple stages of development, QA testing, and final review before launch. The fact that Ubisoft only addressed it after players publicly complained raises questions. Additionally, multiple potentially AI-generated images exist in the game, suggesting a pattern rather than a single mistake.
What does Steam require for AI disclosure?
Valve introduced guidelines in 2024 requiring developers to describe how they use AI in development and execution of their games. This disclosure appears on Steam pages to allow players to make informed purchasing decisions about games containing AI-generated content. Developers must specify whether AI tools were used for content generation or other development purposes.
Has Ubisoft used AI in other games?
This is the most prominent controversy regarding Ubisoft and AI-generated art in their games, though many major publishers are experimenting with AI tools in various capacities. The difference is whether those tools are used for prototyping and assistance versus shipping AI-generated content directly in finished products that customers purchase.
Trust and Transparency
The Anno 117 situation highlights a fundamental tension in modern game development. AI tools are becoming more prevalent and can genuinely speed up certain aspects of the creative process. But there’s a massive difference between using AI to help human artists work more efficiently and letting AI-generated content end up in your final product without proper oversight and refinement.
Ubisoft’s response tries to have it both ways. They want credit for using cutting-edge AI tools to help their artists, but they also want to disavow responsibility when the output is clearly substandard. You can’t claim that every element reflects your team’s craft and artistry when players can immediately identify multiple images that look like unrefined AI output.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that Ubisoft has the resources to do this right. They claim to have the largest team of artists ever working on an Anno game. If that’s true, why do they need AI-generated placeholders making it into the shipped product? Why isn’t there better quality control to catch these issues before paying customers encounter them?
The gaming industry is going to have to figure out its relationship with AI sooner rather than later. Players aren’t categorically opposed to AI as a tool – they’re opposed to AI being used as a replacement for human creativity and artistry. The Anno 117 controversy is a perfect example of what happens when that line gets crossed, intentionally or accidentally. Trust is easy to lose and hard to rebuild, and Ubisoft just made their job a lot harder.