'Kingdom Come' Director Says AI Critics Are Just 'Smashing Steam Engines,' And I Am Tired
Just when I thought the Larian Studios AI drama was cooling down, Daniel Vávra decided to walk into the room, pull the pin on a grenade, and swallow it.
If you missed the prequel to this mess, Larian Studios (the golden children behind Baldur’s Gate 3) recently caught flak for admitting they use generative AI for early concepting and internal visualization. It was a relatively minor controversy compared to the usual industry fires, but it was enough to summon Daniel Vávra, the outspoken director of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. In a massive post on X, he didn't just defend Larian, he essentially told the entire gaming community to grow up and stop crying about the inevitable death of human labor.
the Steam Engine Defense
Vávra’s main argument is one we have heard a thousand times from tech evangelists: "This AI hysteria is the same as when people were smashing steam engines in the 19th century."
It is a convenient comparison. It paints anyone concerned about copyright theft, massive layoffs, or the degradation of art as a backward savage terrified of a loom. According to Vávra, Larian got a "shitstorm" for admitting to doing what "absolutely everyone else is doing." And he is probably right about that part. The industry is quietly adopting this tech everywhere. But telling people they are hysterical for worrying about their future is a bold strategy for a creative director.
He claims he isn't a fan of AI art personally, but insists "it is time to face reality." That reality, apparently, is that resistance is futile. It is the corporate equivalent of "stop hitting yourself."
"Programmers Have A Problem"
Here is where Vávra really lost me. He didn't just stop at defending concept art. He went full futurist and predicted the obsolescence of his own colleagues.
"Programmers have a problem," he wrote. "The work of most of them will probably not be needed very soon. We will have software architects, and AI will do the programming."
This is the kind of statement that makes my blood run cold. It is easy to say this when you are the guy with the "ideas" sitting at the top of the pyramid. It is a lot harder to swallow when you are the junior coder crunching to fix a physics bug. The idea that we can just replace skilled engineers with a prompt box is the wet dream of every executive who looks at a payroll spreadsheet and sees only bleeding red ink.
The 500 Hours of Heckling
To be fair to the guy, he makes one point that actually resonates with the hell of game development. He lamented the fact that it takes seven years and 300 people to make a game now. He specifically mentioned that Tom McKay (the actor for Henry) had to spend "500 hours in the studio recording completely generic heckling and generic bars."
I get it. Nobody wants to spend three weeks recording 400 variations of "Hey! You there!" or "I'm hungry!" If AI can automate the grunt work so actors can focus on the emotional performance, that sounds great on paper.
But we all know how this industry works. They won't use the time saved to make the game better or give the actors a break. They will use it to fire the actors and pocket the difference. Vávra argues that AI could allow small teams to make "epic games" in a year like the old days. I want to believe that. I really do. But looking at the current state of layoffs, it looks less like a renaissance and more like a cull.
The Demise of Humanity (But Think of the Savings)
Vávra ends his rant with a line that feels like a punchline to a joke nobody is laughing at: "The whole AI revolution may mean the demise of humanity... but it may also mean that ANYONE, at a fraction of the current cost, will be able to implement virtually any grand idea."
So, the world might end, but at least I can make my open-world RPG for cheap.
I respect Vávra for being honest. Most directors hide behind PR statements, whereas he just tells you to your face that he thinks your job is obsolete. But framing legitimate concern as "hysteria" feels incredibly dismissive. We aren't smashing steam engines because we hate technology. We are smashing them because the people driving the train seem perfectly happy to run us over.