When Larian Studios announced Divinity at The Game Awards 2025, it likely did not think what would follow would be swarms of backlash targeted at the studio and its chief executive officer, Swen Vincke. Not because it had announced a new Divinity game, but because Vincke had made it clear that Larian had been experimenting with using GenAI tools in its development process.
Those comments came with considerable backlash, to which Vincke responded fairly bluntly before trying a more measured statement, but that did not stop players and other game developers in the industry who are entirely against the use of GenAI tools from hurling more vitriol towards Larian Studios. Game writers and some former Larian developers even took the opportunity to pile on Larian more with the airing of grievances around the studio's poor hiring practices and how it introduced GenAI in the first place.
Other members of the industry, like Warhorse Studios founder and creative director Daniel Vávra stood up to defend Larian, but it seemed that Larian's critics would not be satisfied with anything short of Vincke entirely denouncing the use of GenAI tools and admitting he and the team were wrong to even try using them. To cap off his comments on the topic in 2025, Vincke said "a lot has been lost in translation" on the topic, and promised that he and the team would do a Reddit AMA to let players ask whatever questions they want to provide a clear and final word on the topic.
Well, that Reddit AMA has been happening today, and it should be no surprise that the first question was all about GenAI tools and their role in Divinity's development, and within Larian Studios overall.
Vincke was the one to answer it, and while he did not provide the answer that would satisfy the biggest GenAI critics, he did clear up one element of the studio's generative AI use.
"So first off - there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity," Vincke began. "I know there’s been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion."
"So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development. That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art."
But Vincke didn't stop there. While the studio will "refrain from using genAI" for concept art, other areas are still on the table, as a means of trying to speed up development where possible.
"Having said that, we continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. We think GenAI can help with this and so we’re trying things out across departments. Our hope is that it can aid us to refine ideas faster, leading to a more focused development cycle, less waste, and ultimately, a higher-quality game."
"The important bit to note is that we will not generate “creative assets” that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own."
In a follow-up question, Larian Studios' writing director Adam Smith confirmed that the approach to GenAI tools in concept art applies to writing as well, even when it comes to just using generative text as a placeholder. "The stance applies to writing as well. We don't have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries or other writing in Divinity," Smith wrote.
"To answer your second question, 'how does generated placeholder text benefit development over simple stub text'"- it doesn't. We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text, but the results hit a 3/10 at best and those tools are for research purposes, not for use in Divinity. Even my worst first drafts - and there are a LOT of them - are at least a 4/10 (although Swen might disagree), and the amount of iteration required to get even individual lines to the quality we want is enormous. From the initial stub to the line we record and ship, there are a great many eyes and hands involved in getting a dialogue right."
So it's not the answer that the studio's biggest critics would like, but it's clear that the needle has moved on Larian Studios' use of GenAI. For now, the use of generative AI tools in game development will continue to be a controversial topic, whichever side of the aisle you're on.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
