Larian exploring AI doesn't make them 'evil', says Fellow Game Dev

The backlash after Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke admitted that his studio is exploring the use of AI, specifically Generative AI, during the development of the recently announced Divinity continues to dominate the gaming industry. That said, a fellow CEO and developer has offered some defense of what has been an increasingly difficult situation for studios and publishers to navigate.

The Astronauts CEO Adrian Chmielarz, head of the team that has brought games like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to gamers, recently spoke with TechRaptor about the unenviable situation Vincke finds himself in.

Specifically, Chmielarz claimed that Larian “had a bit of bad luck” with his messages as it later clarified.

“[Larian] had some bad luck,” Chmielarz said. “I think Larian is definitely not evil. I see from what they wrote [on Dec 18] that they… do a deep soul-searching of exactly what that will mean for Larian going forward, and then we'll see what happens.”

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For what it's worth, Vincke has argued that the final product of Divinity will be free of AI, but that it will be used for jobs “nobody wants to do,” including things like “cleaning motion capture data” and “automatic retargeting” that will ultimately help streamline processes.

In a follow-up, Chmielarz noted that when the day comes when AI-generated concept art becomes “excellent,” it will be up to “a studio to decide how much AI they want to invite into their development process.”

For Chmielarz, however, that invitation is non-existent.

“With Witchfire, that door is firmly closed,” Chmielarz said of his studio's game-in-progress. “We started the game before AI was even a thing, and we will finish it without a single element created by AI.”

While fans were understandably upset, other studio heads were far less critical of AI use

After the comments set the collective gaming world on fire, other studio executives had their own take on the AI debate, including Warhorse Studios boss Daniel Varva, whose team shipped Game of the Year contender Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

“I'm not a fan of AI generated art, but anyway it's time to face reality. AI is here to stay,” Vavra wrote in part on Twitter. “As scary as it may be, it is. … If AI can help me make an epic game in a year with a smaller team like in the old days, I'm all for it.”

Elsewhere, CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski noted in an earnings call that there were “meaningful” benefits to using AI before noting that the studio is using it in “productivity areas”. It is only a selection of what was said in the hours and days after Vincke's comments.

While we're likely no closer to AI being accepted on a larger scale, it seems that studios will be forced into the position of admitting which side they'll be on.