Warhorse Studios, developers of the popular medieval-RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its 2025 sequel, were thrown into the ringer during a Reddit AMA four days ago over recent reports that they had fired their translator Max Hejtmánek in order to replace him with AI. According to Hejtmánek, he was told that, “…in an effort to ‘make the company more effective’ and ‘save finances’, as of next month, my position at the company would become ‘ obsolete’ in favour of using AI for all translations going forward”.

As one can imagine, the news of Hejtmánek’s firing has upset many fans of the series, and rightfully so. People took to the comments with accusatory and mocking questions, like “Why need creative directors, why not replace them with AI as you did with your translators?”, or “Which one of the five of you could most easily be replaced with ai, and when will you be doing so?” Warhorse devs during the AMA, while ignoring most of the comments discussing AI, did respond to a few inquiries, including one who asked, “I always dreamt of working as a translator for Warhorse Studios, do you think I have a chance?” While this comment was likely made as a joke in reference to Hejtmánek’s firing, the devs did respond, saying, “Definitely. We are currently in the process of hiring new translators. Yes, actual humans. Plural”. 

AI is already a controversial topic within gaming due to fear of lower quality “slop” replacing the work of actual humans, with games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 using AI-generated calling cards that bear all the marks of LLM-produced imagery, much to the anger of fans. There is a real concern towards human labor in the gaming industry being replaced with AI, with some estimates predicting that by this year we’ll have seen 13.4% of jobs in the industry no longer being worked by people. One can only fear that this number might go up, and that it may have dire consequences not just for the quality of games going forward, but most importantly for the lives of developers who are already struggling in a highly-competitive and back-breaking industry-environment with things such as crunch and burnout.