A former developer at Warhorse Studios, the company behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance, its DLCs and sequels, has been laid off, seemingly out of the blue, as the company reportedly looks to replace his role with AI. The developer, calling themselves Max H, was verified by Reddit mods as an official Warhorse developer, who worked at the company for around three years.
Reddit was also where the developer shared the story of their firing, which came out of nowhere and was incredibly sudden. On the 27th of March, Max H was invited into a meeting. There, he was told he would be fired, "in an effort to 'make the company more effective' and 'save finances.'" He was also told that his position would be made obsolete in favour of using AI translations.
"This came as a huge shock to me, as though the discussion about using AI for translating had frequently come up in the past, something I was always strongly and vocally against, but never to the extent that it might actually cost me my job in the future. It had, of course, crossed my mind many times, but I naively thought my work at WHS was valued enough that I might not be at immediate risk," Max H wrote in his post.
This post isn't intended to direct hate towards Warhorse, as Max H writes that he wishes the studio and those still working there the best. People shouldn't go review bomb games or anything like that, and instead this is meant more as a PSA to tell gamers how AI is already affecting the games industry as a whole.
"I feel incredibly betrayed by the management of the company I've come to care about greatly these past almost 4 years, and am heartbroken I won't get to see my friends and colleagues at the office every day. I want you to know that the growing use of AI greatly affects people in the games industry and many others, and I thought you should know how much the company that makes the games you love value the work of their employees, not to mention the environment," Max H wrote.
Warhorse itself is yet to comment on the layoffs, but should an official statement come out, we'll endeavour to update this piece with more information.