When the trailer for Catly dropped on The Game Award 2024 show, many people immediately marked the game as “AI slop.” SuperAuthenti finally responded to these allegations by sharing a statement with IGN. The developer stated that their game was not made with AI and that no NFTs or blockchains would be found within their project. The representative who spoke to IGN said they were shocked by the accusations.
They then said that no existing AI software could produce a video trailer like Catly‘s, and Industry experts agreed with their sentiments. The PR representative also stated that the allegation about Catly being a blockchain or NFT game was unfounded since the company had never used such technology. “Our company does not and has never owned any blockchain currency and NFTs,” the SuperAuthenti representative told IGN.
The company claimed they made the trailer for Catly using Unreal Engine 5 and other software to create the realistic and detailed fur in the video. Many people had instantly flagged the video as AI-generated due to its hyper-realism. Others also pointed out that while the trailer could be real, the other aspects of the game were still suspicious. Some remarked that the game description on Steam was generated by AI. “If you read the game description it literally sounds like something you input into an AI art prompt,” one person wrote.
Others were suspicious due to Catly‘s promotional art that SuperAuthenti shared. Many pointed out details that they believed to be AI artifacts, such as the strange shapes of the cats’ noses and paws and the weird text on promotional art. The game’s official website was offline for a while before it came back up, but it was missing some old images.
One person even wrote a lengthy post explaining why Catly has ties with AI, NFTs, and blockchains. They wrote that the testimonial from League of Legends Producer Thomas Vu was suspicious since he was a prominent investor in the “GameFi” space. They also stated that SuperAuthenti co-founder Kevin Yeung previously co-founded TenthPlanet. According to Venture Beat, it was a company that used to work on multiple “metaverse” blockchain games, such as Mech Angel and Alien Mews.
The same person even drew a connection between Catly and an app named Plantly: Mindful Gardening. Note that the app’s description says, “Your plants are not just digital tokens but emotional mementos.” Besides using the same font on their logos, one of the company’s developers listed three months of work experience where they worked on “a metaverse game about cats” and directly mentioned Catly.
