OK, yeah, I get what you mean now.

I don’t agree on a fundamental level, though. Anything and everything could go to shit at any time. You could get killed on a bus stop, your favourite grocery brand might be outed to be using slave labour, Larian could start using AI instead of human work for everything…

With that approach, might as well hide in the woods, disconnect from civilisation and wait for the world to end.

I personally reject that attitude. I think we should support what’s good while it’s good and stop supporting it when it goes bad. And, to me, the way Larian uses AI is not “it went bad already”. Like it or not, the tools exist. They’re everywhere. A single (small-ish) company rejecting its use out of principle is not going to make a dent on that, it won’t even be registered within the margin of error among the billions, if not trillions, of monthly impressions AI companies get from teenagers talking to chat-bots.

And even if it did, it doesn’t matter - AI companies are not making profit anyway. Actually, fewer users is better for them, because they’re actively losing money every time someone uses their product. The whole AI bubble is propped up on the largest circlejerk in history and users are the least important, if not flat out insignificant, aspect of it.

I think there are good ways to use AI. Like Corridor Crew, using it to create things that are just financially completely out of their range. It can allow people to bridge the gap between small and massive productions.

And don’t get me wrong, the fact that it’s originally trained on stolen data is important, but… Kind of irrelevant in this case - and that’s for two reasons:

1. Companies like Corridor Crew mostly use AI that they self-train, which means that no stealing happens. We don’t know what Larian does.
2. Even if Larian uses publicly available models that are trained on stolen data… fuck me, we should be going after the people who stole the data, not the end users!

Would I prefer if they didn’t use AI at all? Sure! But am I going to start shitting on the entire company just because they do? Hell no! Their products are still made with care and love and humanity at their core. Just listen to interviews from Jennifer English or Neil Newbon - they praise both the VO company and Larian for their amazing approach.

And finally - the “war on Larian” would make much more sense if we also learned that they’re firing concept artists - but they’re doing the opposite - they have open positions for concept artists, character artists, environment artists, etc., etc. They’re currently hiring these people!

So, yeah, it’s just a lot of noise over practically nothing, in my opinion.

Yeah, you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about, but just want to be outraged.

No, that’s not what they’re using it for.

Pre-concept art phase is when you grab literally anything to do a very generic “here’s my idea” demonstration. It can be a screenshot from a game you recently played, a cinema poster, a photo of your cat, something you found on DeviantArt or Pinterest, a doodle you made with a pencil, cloth fragment, an interesting rock you found on a stroll, simple render, anything.

But, getting all these takes a lot of time - you have something in your head and now you need to find an image or an item that will more or less represent it. So you spend hours on Google Images trying to refine your search, only so that you can then post it on the ideas board, and for it to be replaced completely by actual concept art.

This is where they’re utilising GenAI. And they’re not even replacing this process entirely, they’re using GenAI on top of everything else - basically, using all the tools available to speed up the process.

Concept artists then still take over (they have 27 of them and open positions to hire more - right now) and create concept art, which is then turned into assets by appropriate artists (they have a bunch of open positions for artists right now as well).

All this anti-AI panic has blown this so far out of proportion that it’s almost comical.

Yeah, I had trouble understanding your point. Could you elaborate?

They’re not using AI for free assets.

Soo… “Larian just said they use AI, but corpos lie” - meaning they don’t use AI and Swen lied to generate online outrage?

Because, considering they have active job openings for art and concept positions, we know they’re not replacing people with AI.

I feel like replacing low-quality, quick-and-dirty doodles (often by non-artist members of the team) with medium-quality AI is fine and doesn’t pose a threat to the job security of concept artists (as exemplified by Larian currently hiring more concept artists).

If you’re just against any use of GenAI, then I get it - it is controversial due to the way it’s trained, and I’d prefer if they weren’t using it, but at least in terms of “AI replacing humans” it’s a non-issue in this case.

It was a slip of the tongue because it was Swen himself posting that on social media, not a PR department.

However, he explained that the entirety of concept art is being made by humans - 27 of them right now, but they’re hiring more.

No, it doesn’t.

Doodles are not concept art. Ideation is not concept art.

OK, let’s make this clear: do you think they’re using AI for making concept art?

And drop that LLM bit, it’s just tiring. It’s as old and tiresome as the “MS is paying you” bit.

I mean, if you just want to invent and imagine things and then get angry at them, go ahead.

I’m just trying to tell you that Larian isn’t replacing anything or anyone with AI, they’re using it to help with the foundational stage of some processes, which is how it’s supposed to be used. Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, then work off of that.

Like… It’s hilarious to complain about their use of AI like that in the context of the fact that they currently employ 27 concept artists and are hiring more.

What he actually said was that they use it in the “ideation” phase of concept art. Basically: throwing shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. After that, the process is taken over by any of their almost 30 concept artists on payroll.

The actual quote from Swen is that they use it in the “ideation” phase of concept art. Basically: throwing shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. After that, the process is taken over by any of their almost 30 concept artists on payroll.

Larian: “We use cars to get to the gym”.

You: “The exercise at the gym stage is really crucial to building muscles. I don’t like cars and think that using it at such an important stage will inevitably mean it ends up influencing the training”.

Edit: Turns out Larian is going to use gen AI for concept art. I guess fuck all those concept artists trying to get entry level jobs. Very disappointed.

It’s misinformation. They have almost 30 concept artists employed. They use GenAI for quick ideation, not for concept art.

Oh, stop with this nonsense.

They are employing almost 30 concept artists, their art style is extremely unique. Just look at the Elves in DOS2.

They use the tools available to them. If quick iteration of the “foundations” of ideas is improved by the use of GenAI, why not use it? It’s already integrated into the products they’re paying for (like Photoshop).

It’s like saying “they shouldn’t be using Google Images or artbooks when developing concept art”, it’s just silly.

I could never get into Gears due to writing. Tried 1 and 2, dropped both. I finished 5, almost binging it. It was super fun.

Ignore the weirdos online claiming “the series is dead” because “wamen protag”. The character is fun, well written, and well acted.

Are you saying you consider bad design that enemies can see where the flying trash can came from?

Which is what leads me to believe that they caught an error in the report and needed to re-print it. Halting it now wouldn’t change anything financially.

They haven’t been doing too well recently. The trade halt is because they’re afraid that everybody would read the halting of the report as admission they’re barely afloat and start dumping shares, killing the company.

Love these posts! A small suggestion: could you add the title of the game in the post title too in the future? :)

Step by step guide for GOG (or Epic):

1. Install Heroic Games Launcher
2. Log in to your GOG account.
3. Install game and hit play.

(Heroic will use Proton or Wine for the compatibility layer and you will (most of the time) have zero issues with playing games)

And nothing of value was lost…

Doesn’t it fully support GamePass? Doesn’t GamePass have all the XBox games?

Weird. I get the pop-up, but not the redirect.

(That’s 2A in the other picture)

Ah, finally! Just don’t take too long on development!

No, but, but, think of the shareholders! Nobody ever thinks about the shareholders! :(((

Well, it’s good to the management that sells the company. They get paid.

Our of curiosity - are you getting involved in the dialogue/story or are you there mostly for the mechanics/combat?

Yeah, “linuxism”, that must be it… That or it’s possible that the OS and distributions have evolved while you were not looking.

As in: between today and six months ago, when I moved my personal PC to Linux and encountered various weird shit that just doesn’t happen on Windows?

secure (please don’t try to tell me Windows is more secure, please please please)

Wait, are you one of those weird people who believe that there are no viruses on Linux and no security tools are needed?

Windows servers are under constant attack… Just like Linux devices are at all times.

I am also quite curious about getting a source for that claim that Windows Server is coming back.

I didn’t say “it’s coming back”. WS is still losing market share, but the losses slowed down pretty significantly in recent years. Sorry, I can’t find the source again because Google is shite. Feel free to disregard this point.

Finally, do tell me where I mentioned MacOS. Unless you think that MacOS and Linux are the same? That wouldn’t surprise me considering your apparent knowledge (or lack of) about Linux. FYI MacOS is based on a BSD kernel.

Fuck off with this tone, mate.

I mentioned MacOS as an example that Windows is not as buggy as you seem to believe. I guess that went over your head and I should denigrate you now?

that’s not the experience of the majority of people in this thread

I’m willing to bet the majority of people in this thread already forgot about the “linuxism” they had to deal with when they were starting, and are experienced enough to handle any new ones as they come along.

Don’t you think there would be a tiny bit more Windows dominance on the servers side if the opposite were true?

Linux dominates the server realm for a completely different reason - Linux-based servers supported hot-updates much sooner than Windows Server did, and in systems where uptime was critical, people chose Linux. That also meant that the vast majority of “server admins” had Linux experience which also contributed.

This is slowly changing now - if you look at market stats, you can see that Windows Server is (painfully slowly, granted) regaining some momentum.

EDIT: also, fun fact - I used to work at a company that had around 300 MacBooks and 2500 Windows devices. Back then I was working as a Service Desk agent. The distribution of incidents for Windows and MacOS we were getting was VERY close to 50-50… So, it seems to me that “Windows is known, has been known, and probably will be known for having shit break randomly” mostly among people who don’t use Windows.

Linux in no way means that “random shit breaks for no reason” (…) Some distributions may be easier to break if you don’t know what you are doing but that is not an OS problem.

Things that randomly broke for no reason:

• BT-connected mouse suddenly refused to connect.
• App Menu (“File”, “View”, etc.) randomly disappeared from all apps and wouldn’t re-appear.
• AppImage application suddenly started throwing a “binary found, misconfigured” error.
• Sleep would kill the OS. Only a hard reboot fixed the issue (this was on two brand new distros on my PC).
• Every couple of times Sleep would kill the WiFi on my laptop after the OS was woken up.

Things that broke after I installed a dGPU:

• Heroic Launcher “lost” Proton and couldn’t launch any games.
• Steam would open a black window with no content visible.
• Every three or four reboots after installing the dGPU, the FPS while on the desktop would be around 10, the OS effectively unusable.

Things that broke after a system update:

• Application Launcher turned fully transparent making it almost impossible to read the names.

This was all in a span of around 3 months.

If it was “if anything that’s Windows”, then I would be doing nothing but fixing user issues with my ~300 Windows devices. That’s not the case.

All major distros are fine, but there are some niche that specialise in making it easy for people to play games. I use Garuda Linux for that reason. It has it’s own app that helps handling OS maintenance, you can install things like Heroic Launcher, Steam, and Proton with a couple of clicks, you have a nice app that checks for updates, etc., etc.

It’s still Linux, which means random shit breaks for no reason, but for gaming and not having to worry about keeping the OS alive it’s great.

Last News update from 2022? Is the project dead? I was really hoping for some nice modding support.