The Price Of RAM Is Forcing Larian To Do Optimization It “Didn’t Necessarily Want To Do” On Divinity
The price of RAM has been rising exponentially. As AI companies hoard stock for whatever schemes they have planned, regular consumers and manufacturers are facing significant price increases. There’s an expectation that these increases could cause the Xbox Series X to rise in price again, with a stick of RAM now costing more than an entire PS5.
These stock issues are also evidently impacting game development. In a new interview with us here at TheGamer, Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke said we’ve never had prices like this, and it’s forcing the studio to do optimizations it didn’t want to be doing at this stage of development.
The RAM Shortage Is Impacting Larian’s Development On The New Divinity Game
When discussing the pressures the company faces when releasing a game in early access, such as audience expectations, Vincke told us, “Interestingly, another [issue Larian is facing] is really the price of RAM and the price of SSDs and f**k, man. It’s like, literally, we’ve never had it like this.”
He continued, “It kind of ruins all of your projections that you had about it because normally, you know the curves, and you can protect the hardware. It’s gonna be an interesting one. It means that most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point in time. So it’s challenging, but it’s video games.”
We already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point in time.
Ironically, Larian has come under fire over the last 24 hours for admitting that it is using generative AI, which is causing the RAM shortage, in the development of its next title. In interviews like our own, Vincke disclosed that the company was using Gen AI to help with references, causing some backlash. The CEO responded to the noise, saying, “We’re not ‘pushing hard’ for or replacing concept artists with AI. We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use Google and art books. At the very early ideation stages, we use it as a rough outline for composition, which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.”
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Larian Studios has announced the game that will follow in the footsteps of Baldur’s Gate 3.
Despite having been revealed less than a week ago, Divinity hasn’t been short of controversy. Alongside the AI backlash, the company faced complaints about the gratuitously gross trailer. It led the studio to release another comment, saying it isn’t “trying to shock” people.
