How Larian Found Itself at the Center of an AI Controversy

Last week, during The Game Awards ceremony, the creators of Baldur's Gate 3 announced Divinity — their next major game. Just a few days later, an interview with Larian founder Swen Vincke was published, in which he shared his vision for the project. Many fans of the Belgian studio were pleased with what they read, but there was also no shortage of critics — both within the gaming community and among developers — who expressed outrage at the fact that Larian, as it turned out, is now using generative AI in its creative process. Here are the details.

Before addressing Vincke’s statements directly, it’s worth briefly outlining why neural networks act like a red rag to a bull for so many people.

First, many developers quite reasonably fear losing their jobs. Of course, AI — at least in its current form — won’t replace everyone overnight, but it can genuinely lead to the disappearance of certain jobs. Juniors, outsourcing specialists, localization teams, and concept artists are becoming less in demand. Competition within the industry is increasing, as there are fewer entry-level positions. And, naturally, managers have gained a powerful tool for pressuring employees, since it’s now easier to find replacements.

Artists are especially unhappy. Most generative models were trained on works taken without licenses, contracts, or compensation. Essentially, this can be seen as copyright infringement, but proving plagiarism in practice is extremely difficult.

And, of course, gamers who worry about the quality of the final product are hardly thrilled about AI either. Players fear that releases will increasingly feature formulaic stories, low-quality dialogue, and a mishmash of visual styles. In the eyes of a significant number of hardcore gamers on social media, generative neural networks pose the same kind of challenge and threat to their favorite hobby as the conveyor belt of live-service projects — and they’re ready to fight both to the bitter end.

On December 16, Bloomberg published an article by Jason Schreier about Divinity. The journalist spoke with Swen Vincke, and the conversation revealed a lot of interesting details about the title. For example, the head of Larian confirmed that Divinity will remain a turn-based RPG. The upcoming game is being built on a completely new role-playing system and a different engine, and it also promises to be noticeably darker than the studio’s previous projects and larger in scope than BG3. At the same time, the team aims to keep development within a three-to-four-year window, rather than spending six years on it as they did last time.

What drew the community’s attention most, however, was a section of the article mentioning that the company is actively experimenting with generative AI, although Vincke himself noted that the technology hasn’t delivered any significant efficiency gains. He emphasized that the final version of Divinity will not include AI-generated content. The team uses neural networks only for ideation, presentations, concept exploration, and writing temporary placeholder texts. Interestingly, the use of generative AI initially met with some resistance within Larian, but by now most people at the company have more or less come to terms with it.

Later, Jason Schreier shared the full transcript of the part of the interview that specifically discussed neural networks. A particularly noteworthy section is Vincke’s extended quote about how AI is used in practice:

Schreier then asked why use neural networks at all if, by Vincke’s own admission, they don’t lead to greater efficiency. Vincke replied as follows:

Despite Swen Vincke’s direct promise that players will see no generative content in Divinity, his interview sparked a wave of negativity. Large gaming communities on Reddit hosted discussions with hundreds of comments dissecting Larian’s “disappointing” decision. For instance, a post by user TrashStack criticizing the company’s approach received over a thousand upvotes:

This sentiment appears frequently in other threads as well. Even if everything in the final game is made by hand, people are unhappy that neural networks influence the creators at the critically important conceptualization stage.

Gamers also pointed out that criticizing some developers for using neural networks while making exceptions for a popular studio like Larian amounts to a double standard.

Even some former employees of the Belgian studio joined the discussion — and they weren’t particularly happy with what they read either. One Devolver producer who previously worked at Larian for four years is convinced that few people inside the studio are enthusiastic about management’s decision to use AI. Responding to Vincke’s claim that the team has more or less accepted the introduction of neural networks into the workflow, she wrote that “he's lying about people being okay with it”.

Selena Tobin, a former Larian concept artist, also voiced her outrage:

Not everyone online, of course, rushed to throw stones at the Belgian studio. Some artists believe that criticism over AI use is superficial. Certain concept artists are not opposed to neural networks as a tool, but rather to generative AI trained on other people’s work and used to replace human labor. In Larian’s case, neural networks are used only to speed up routine pre-production tasks — such as reference gathering — which is essentially no different from manually searching for images online and has long been standard practice. Swen Vincke later confirmed this in his personal post:

Amid the pressure on Larian, gamers once again recalled the “sins” of other studios that have introduced AI into their development pipelines. The creators of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 were brought back under fire over an old incident, when temporary AI-generated textures were found in the game. They were replaced, but some players only learned about the situation now, which poured fuel on what seemed to be a long-extinguished fire — especially since Expedition 33 received a Best Art Direction award at The Game Awards.

Previously, the developers of the successful Arc Raiders were criticized for using AI-generated voices for NPCs, while Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 faced backlash over assets that many believed were AI-generated — a claim Activision officially confirmed. Accusations also surfaced against 11 bit studios after clear traces of AI prompts were discovered in subtitles and background texts in The Alters.

Attitudes toward neural networks are so polarized that Valve decided to play it safe and introduced a requirement for developers to disclose AI-generated content when submitting games for publication on Steam, so that some of this information is displayed on the project’s store page.

Ultimately, we’re witnessing firsthand how painfully the industry is adapting to a new technology. It’s hardly surprising when a significant number of people fear losing their jobs, while others are alarmed by even the slightest chance that games could suffer a drop in quality. Nor does anyone take much pleasure in the rising cost of PC components, directly driven by the expansion of neural network infrastructure.

For Larian fans who vehemently oppose AI, the current scandal serves as a reminder not to idolize game studios. For the Belgian company itself, it’s a lesson in how careful one must be when making statements on controversial topics. Even when you’re standing at the very top of gaming Olympus, falling out of favor can happen surprisingly easily. Still, there’s a strong sense that once Larian finally shows Divinity in all its glory, this whole neural network story will be quickly forgotten.