It has been a big week for Larian Studios, which just announced its upcoming RPG Divinity to tons of fervor. Unfortunately, a lot of the week since the announcement has consisted of members of the studio, including its CEO Swen Vincke, fighting online about the team’s current attitude towards AI tools in games development following an interview with Bloomberg.
Now, after a week of backlash, Larian is hoping to clear some of the air around Divinity and its use of AI. In a statement shared on Twitter, Vincke writes, “It’s been a week since we announced Divinity, our next RPG, and a lot has become lost in translation.”
It’s been a week since we announced Divinity, our next RPG, and a lot has become lost in translation.
Larian’s DNA is agency. Everything we work towards is to the benefit of our teams, games, and players. A better work day, and a better game. Our successes come from empowering…— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) December 18, 2025
Vincke continues, “Larian’s DNA is agency. Everything we work towards is to the benefit of our teams, games, players. A better work day, and a better game. Our successes come from empowering people to work in their own way and bring the best out of their skill & craft, so that we can make the best RPGs we can possible make.”
To that end, Vincke states that it would be “irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies,” but also claims that any aspect of the team’s evolving processes that fails to “align with who we are” can and will be changed.
To clarify matters even more, and likely to take a bit of heat of off Vincke himself, Larian will be holding an AMA after the holidays. Representative of other departments at the studio will be present to field questions “about Divinity and our dev process directly.” A date has yet to be announced, but will be shared in the new year.
In case you might’ve missed it, Vincke shared that Larian was openly embracing and using generative AI tools for its development processes on Divinity. Though he stated that no AI work would be in thh game itself (“Everything is human actors; we’re writing everything ourselves,” Vincke told Bloomberg), Larian devs are, per his comments, using AI to insert placeholder text and generate concept art for the heavily anticipated RPG.
In response to the news that generative AI is being used on Divinity, Larian has come under fire from fans and other developers online. In response to the backlash, Vincke initially stated, “Holy f**k guys we’re not ‘pushing hard’ for or replacing concept artists with AI,” and shared that the studio was in fact growing its pool of artists rather than shrinking.
Vincke, and Larian’s, position on AI is hardly a surprise. Earlier this year, similar comments were made in an interview with GameSpot where Vincke claimed that the studio was using machine-learning tools to automate “tasks nobody wants to do.”