Larian Calls "Replacing QA with AI" Exactly What It Is: Fucking Stupid
The studio that actually listens to its QA team weighs in on the Square Enix disaster.
I just wrote about the Square Enix layoff bloodbath. It's a grim story about them firing a ton of people while simultaneously announcing plans to replace 70% of their QA work with generative AI by 2027.
And just as the collective groan of the entire industry was echoing, Larian Studios has entered the chat.
Yes, Larian has become a "commentary company" lately, and they've been very vocal. But you know what? When you ship a generational masterpiece like Baldur's Gate 3, you have absolutely earned the right to tell everyone else they're doing it wrong.
Michael Douse, Larian's head of publishing, saw the news and didn't mince words. He called the idea of replacing QA people at a large scale "stupid". And he's absolutely, 100% correct.
AI Can't Tell You If Your Game Sucks
Douse's point is one these spreadsheet-brained executives seem to fundamentally miss: QA is not just a bug-finding machine.
He called QA testers "some of the most video games engaged people in any company". He's right. They're your first, most honest, and most resilient audience.
They're the ones who give you the "real feedback". They "know what is good and what is bad before the audience does". An AI can find a T-pose. It can't tell you your new quest is boring as shit. It can't feel "pacing." It can't tell you if a joke "lands."
Automation is a tool to help QA, not replace them.
You're Firing Your Own Future
Douse also pointed out that QA is "a step on the ladder" for a career in game dev.
Where do these execs think their future lead designers, producers, and community managers come from? They often start in QA. They learn the game inside and out, they learn the tools, they prove their talent, and they get hired from within.
By replacing that entire department with an algorithm, you're not just getting a worse product now, you're killing your talent pipeline for the next decade. It's aggressively short-sighted.
It Doesn't Even Fucking Work
Here's the most delicious, ironic part: it's not even a good idea in practice.
While Square Enix is chasing this AI pipe dream, it's being reported that EA is already finding out the hard way that it's a disaster. Their own AI bot is supposedly "causing more problems than it addresses" and making more work for the actual humans who have to fix its mistakes.
So the plan is to fire your most passionate, knowledgeable, and resilient employees... to replace them with a buggy, expensive program that creates new bugs and can't tell you if your game is fun. It's a masterstroke.
The Number Must Go Up
Look, Larian gets it. They just proved that a game made by passionate people who are listened to can shatter every sales record.
Square Enix is just proving the other side of the coin. This isn't about making a better game. It's about gutting a department to please investors.
As one person on Reddit put it, they're missing the point: "number must go up next quarter or shareholders unhappy". That's all this is. It's just sad, predictable, and as Douse said, stupid.