Swen Vincke
Founder of Larian Studios (Baldur’s Gate 3)
The Belgian founder and creative head of Larian Studios, whose Baldur’s Gate 3 swept 2023’s Game of the Year awards. Defended his studio’s use of machine-learning tools in early ideation against fierce backlash, calling it irresponsible not to evaluate new technologies.
In his words
Any ML tool used well is additive to a creative team or individual’s workflow, not a replacement for their skill or craft.
This is a tech driven industry, so you try stuff. You can’t afford not to try things because if somebody finds the golden egg and you’re not using it, you’re dead in this industry.
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.
Biography
Swen Vincke (born 1972 in Bruges, Belgium) founded Larian Studios in 1996 and spent two decades building the Divinity RPG series before Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023) made Larian the most celebrated studio in the industry, collecting more than 200 Game of the Year awards. Vincke is known as a fiercely independent, anti-microtransaction voice — which made the December 2025 revelation of AI use at Larian land especially hard with fans.
The ideation defense
A Bloomberg interview with Jason Schreier revealed that Larian teams used generative AI to explore ideas, flesh out presentations, write placeholder text, and rough out early concept compositions for its next game, Divinity. As backlash mounted, Vincke pushed back on X — insisting Larian was not replacing its 23 concept artists and was hiring more — and told IGN that studying machine-learning tools was simply due diligence: “it would be irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies.” He stressed that “We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use Google and art books,” with every rough outline replaced by original concept art.
We are neither releasing a game with any AI components, nor are we looking at trimming down teams to replace them with AI.
In a January 2026 Reddit Q&A, Vincke went further to quiet the controversy: “to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development,” confirming there would be no GenAI art or AI-generated writing in Divinity — though AI might still help teams refine ideas elsewhere, and any model used for in-game assets would be trained on Larian’s own data. The episode made Vincke a case study in threading the needle: openly evaluating AI tooling while shipping fully human-made games.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
- Game Developer: Larian CEO says any AI tool “used well” is additive, not a replacement for skill or craft (2025)
- Windows Central: Larian’s Swen Vincke explains how AI is being used in the studio’s next Divinity game (2025)
- TheGamer: Larian Backtracks On Using Generative AI For Divinity’s Concept Art (2026)
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/swen-vincke