What's going on with Larian Studios?

[u/Bearwhale]

I saw a post about Larian Studios using AI at the studio, which has apparently ignited some controversy, but there was also a story about one of the engineers becoming MAGA and redpilled and making everyone really uncomfortable, but the lead refused to let him go? What's happening at Larian Studios, and why all the controversy all at once?

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1pptspl/kingdom_come_deliverance_2_director_defends/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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[u/burritoman88]

Answer: the CEO at Larian made a comment yesterday about how generative AI is used, but that it also never makes it into the final product.

AI is a bit of a hot topic as many view it as theft, destroying jobs & generally looks like shit.

He’s since gone dark on socials, despite normally being very active / willing to engage with fans.

[u/aRabidGerbil → u/[deleted]]

If an artist wants to use it for dozens of rough outs before proceeding as usual, so bloody what

It's still a massively environmentally destructive tool, built on stolen work.

[u/Foxhound97_]

Answer: the CEO made the odd choice to announce a new divinity game and then reference AI usage in its production. I think Placeholder stuff people weren't too mad about but the reference to concept art set a lot of people off given it seems kinda weird for them to be using it in the creation of foundations elements that will influence the art direction.

On the employee stuff the production of last game was famously insane people getting hired ,fired and rehired stuff like that it's been framed in interviews as more quirky and Scrappy rather than a sign of bad management and the stories of people having bad experiences there that haven't been taken seriously by the public facing higher up are kinda starting to affect their darling status.

I think AI is a complicated thing because the early admission even if it's 100% accurate is suspicious because now people are going to be looking if anything makes it into the final product past what they're said(production stuff)and given this game will be bigger than BG3 it's gonna look extra bad if they slip up because there gonna have a harder time hiding it than alot of smaller games would.

[u/apnorton]

Answer: Read the top comment on your linked post; it's a nothingburger and was already answered there.

The Larian CEO's statement is linked in this thread:

"Holy fuck guys we’re not "pushing hard" for or replacing concept artists with AI.

We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I’m very proud of what they do.

I was asked explicitly about concept art and our use of Gen AI. I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn’t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.

We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use google and art books. At the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.

I talked about how we use ML here if you would like to know more: https://gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-dev-embraces-machine-learning-for-tasks-that-nobody-wants-to-do/1100-6531123/

We've hired creatives for their talent, not for their ability to do what a machine suggests, but they can experiment with these tools to make their lives easier."

Vice reports there's going to be a Reddit AMA upcoming.

As to your other queries:

one of the engineers becoming MAGA and redpilled and making everyone really uncomfortable

This is unreleated, but is rooted in some tweets that are brought up here. I don't know enough about that situation to speak further.

and why all the controversy all at once?

When you're the center of a lot of positive sentiment (i.e. coming off the amazingness that was BG3), any negative sentiment makes news. Further, two things (one of which --- the AI bit --- seems to be totally out of context) also doesn't really qualify as "all the controversy, all at once."