The Azur Lane English staff recently ran a Halloween contest where artist piukute062 won the contest with his art featuring big-boobed depictions of the busty girls from the game in Halloween attire. The art appeared during the game’s loading screen as part of the Azur Lane Halloween Contest Art event.

However, after winning the contest via fan-selection, the English staff removed Piukute062’s art from the game, leaving many gamers confused. After repeatedly asking about the incident on Discord, the staff finally revealed that the reason piukute062’s art was removed was because it was “inconvenient” for viewing in public places.

The reason for the removal of the loading screen artwork was explained by community manager Aki, who stated the following on the Azur Lane Discord channel.

If you are unable to view the message in the image, it reads…

“Dear commanders,

“In answer to your recent feedback, we removed a Halloween artwork, which had brought inconvenience to commanders when the game was played in public, from the current loading screens during yesterday’s hotfix. We intended to make a contact with the artist to clarify such situation before the artwork was removed, but he/she was unable to be reached on our Discord server. Hereby, we want to express our sincerest apology to the artist, and to all his/her fans. We will keep trying to contact the artist and solve the issue in a proper way.

“We reiterate our respect to all kinds of fan arts, and we will be more careful with such issues in the future. Thank for your understanding and support for HQ. [sic]”

The artist, Piukute062, was well aware of his art’s dismissal and voiced a response via Twitter, unbeknownst as to why the art was removed since he wasn’t part of the Azur Lane Discord server, but was only aware that it was taken out of the game.

some of my fans told me that Azur Lane has removed my loading screen so…
I hope you are satisfied with the result
I hope you will love my other works and ones in the future
🙂 pic.twitter.com/J8lYmi1Dio

— Piukute062 (@Piukute_Maple) November 1, 2019

Initially a lot of gamers were confused because there was no clear answer as to why the artwork was removed, and the Azur Lane staff made no attempts to publicly inform gamers or the artist as to why the artwork was removed, especially since the fans were the ones who voted for Piukute062’s art to be a loading screen during the Halloween event.

In a way, this completely undermines the whole point of the fan art contest when the staff go against the fans after putting the power in their hands to vote.

The community over on Reddit aren’t terribly tore up over the ordeal, but they have been making posts either suggesting how the art could be re-implemented, or joking about other lewd art that appeared as loading screens in the Chinese and Japanese versions of the game.

In any case, you can still view the original loading screen artwork below, which won the Azur Lane Halloween contest, because you certainly won’t be able to see it in the game anymore.