EA is facing intense ridicule for a disastrous AI-generated banner during the Steam Summer Sale.
Thecurrent EA Summer Saleis once again enticing players on Steam with countless discounts. Anyone looking for bargains on the store page is greeted by a massive promotional banner intended to advertise games likeThe Sims 4orBattlefield 6.
But on Reddit and social media, no one is talking about the featured titles right now—because the banner is an obvious and sloppy AI mishap.
An Anatomical Nightmare
A closer look at the AI-generated artwork quickly reveals why the community is currently mocking the image. At the center of the scene is a cheering crowd, and one figure in particular catches the eye: a fan enthusiastically holding aloft a flag from The Sims 4.
Or so it seems, because from a perspective standpoint, the whole thing makes absolutely no sense:
EA Steam Summer Sale background image going crazy
byu/Reoen inSteam
And the longer you stare at the image, the worse it gets: Many of the outstretched arms appear out of nowhere, blend into the background halfway, or end in indefinable stumps. Whether the background is supposed to show arms, faces, or something entirely different—it’s impossible to tell in this mushy mess of colored shapes.
So it’s no surprise that this isn’t going over well with users:
- “Yet another billion-dollar company that isn’t willing to spend a few thousand dollars on art. That’s not surprising, but what kind of dystopia are we living in?” –Pholty
- “Wow, not only could they not afford to pay an artist, but they couldn’t even afford someone to review the crappy AI graphics—they just took the first thing that came out of it. I’m not buying any games from a company that thinks this is acceptable.” –SomeGuyNamedJason
- “That’s not even good AI. That’s the kind of AI we had two years ago.” –Miamithrice69
- » […] Didn’t anyone bother to take even a quick look at how terrible the image turned out before submitting it?” – rel=“noopener” target=”_blank” data-mrf-link=“https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1u9qclj/ea_steam_summer_sale_background_image_going_crazy/osjejfy/” data-icon=“external”>Soske
Why This Mistake Is So Incredibly Cheap of EA
The fact that a billion-dollar publisher would rather rely on artificial intelligence than assign one of its in-house graphic designers to the task has already drawn a lot of justified criticism. But what makes this particular case so incredibly cheap and brazen is the utter lack of care in its execution.
Modern GenAI models have long since moved beyond the stage where arms and hands look by default as if they’ve been put through a meat grinder. With current tools like GPT Image 2 or Google Nano Banan Pro, such glaring blunders can be avoided with minimal effort and just a few clicks!
The fact that this banner ended up on Steam exactly as is leaves room for almost only one conclusion:Someone uploaded the flawed output of their AI image generator without sufficient quality control, let alone post-processing. Possibly because the overall image looks coherent enough from a distance. Most people won’t look that closely anyway.
The fact that EA is using this graphic as the flagship image for the biggest sale of the year nevertheless sends a clear, rather unfortunate signal about how much care and consideration is currently being put into such marketing campaigns.
