There’s a sixth finger, and Jagex admits that’s “pretty hard to explain away.” The RuneScape developer has taken down the new Dragon Slayer II trailer after fans spotted telltale signs of generative AI — including a knight with six fingers on one hand and, in another shot, a pair of sneakers that look suspiciously like fantasy Air Jordans.
The sketchbook-style cinematic debuted during RuneFest over the weekend, revealing Dragon Slayer II, a new questline coming to RuneScape 3. Dragon Slayer and its sequel are among the most beloved high-level quests in the long-running MMO, so the reveal should have been a highlight of the show. Instead, the trailer has now been pulled from all official sources — though streamer reactions preserving the offending frames are still easy to find.
“We Investigate Urgently”
“We’re aware of the concerns raised about the Dragon Slayer 2 trailer and have taken it down, while we investigate urgently,” Jagex social media manager Alex Sween wrote on Reddit. “This trailer was produced by a trusted external partner who had explicitly confirmed that GenAI would not be used. But, among other things, there’s a sixth finger and, well, that’s pretty hard to explain away. For that we apologise.”
Sween reiterated the studio’s policy: “We don’t use GenAI to create our games, artwork or creative assets, and will not knowingly allow it to be used on our behalf.” Immediately following RuneFest, he added, Jagex is “overhauling our review processes” and will commission creators from the community “to make sure that the story of Dragon Slayer II is told to the standard befitting of such an update.”
The Second AI Incident in a Week
What stings for players is the timing. Just days earlier, Jagex and apparel brand 100 Thieves apologized after generative AI use was spotted in a collaborative Old School RuneScape T-shirt design. “We’re as angry as you are about this,” Sween wrote at the time. “We wouldn’t have approved the use of AI in any designs. We don’t use generative AI to replace the artists and developers who make our games, we don’t use it in our marketing materials, and we won’t use it in our merchandising or allow its use in partnerships.”
Community reaction to the takedown has been split. Some are sympathetic to a team blindsided twice in a row by external partners — one Reddit reply praised the response for making the best of a bad hand. Others are less forgiving: “You literally didn’t even watch the trailer before it was posted,” wrote another commenter. “Even if an external partner made it, how do you explain that?”
The rest of RuneFest went down considerably better: Jagex used the show to reveal a fourth mainline RuneScape MMO built in Unreal Engine, alongside a RuneScape: Reignited HD remaster. The Dragon Slayer II questline is still coming to RuneScape 3 — it just needs a new trailer, made by actual humans, first.
Sources
- Kotaku — RuneScape Developer Jagex Takes Down Trailer To ‘Investigate Urgently’ After Generative AI Accusations
- Eurogamer — RuneScape creator Jagex in hot water over generative AI use in recent trailer
- PC Gamer — RuneScape dev apologises after RuneFest debut of an AI-generated six-fingered character