KCD2 Translator Fired, Replaced by AI at Warhorse

Max Hejtmánek spent nearly four years translating Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 from Czech to English, working across dialogue, quest logs, item names, and marketing material. On March 27th, he was called into a meeting with no forewarning and told his position was being made "obsolete" so Warhorse Studios could use AI for all translations going forward. He found out in that room. No runway, no transition period, no apparent consideration that the conversation might land like a gut punch.

His post on the Kingdom Come subreddit was verified by the subreddit's moderation team, and his LinkedIn has since been updated to reflect that his time at Warhorse ended in March 2026. "I feel incredibly betrayed by the management of the company I've come to care about greatly these past almost four years," he wrote, "and am heartbroken I won't get to see my friends and colleagues at the office every day." He also noted that he did have active work on the go at the time of the firing, which suggests this wasn't a case of a contract winding down naturally.

What makes this sting more than a standard redundancy story is the context around it. Hejtmánek says AI translation had come up in internal discussions before, and he was always vocal in opposing it. He assumed that meant it was a live debate, not a countdown. "It had, of course, crossed my mind many times," he wrote, "but I naively thought my work at WHS was valued enough that I might not be at immediate risk." That gap between what an employee believes and what management has quietly decided is exactly the kind of thing that erodes trust in an entire industry, not just one studio.

The Studio's Leadership Has Been Bullish on AI

This doesn't come out of nowhere. Warhorse co-founder Daniel Vávra has been publicly enthusiastic about AI for a while. He's made comments on X in favour of the technology, and in separate posts has floated the idea that games could be "translated and dubbed into all languages immediately upon release" using AI. Credit where it's due, he wasn't hiding the ball on his position. But there's a distance between a founder posting hot takes about AI's potential and a long-serving employee being walked into a room and told their career at the company is over effective next month.

Warhorse hasn't publicly commented on Hejtmánek's claims. Both the studio and publisher Plaion have been contacted for comment by multiple outlets. The silence is notable given how specific and verifiable the account is.

Hejtmánek, to his credit, explicitly asked fans not to review-bomb KCD2 on Steam or harass anyone at Warhorse. "All I want is for people to be more informed about what's going on in the games industry behind closed doors," he wrote. That's a measured ask from someone who would have every right to be angrier. He also mentioned that one other in-house localiser remains at the studio, for now.

The timing is worth sitting with. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launched in February 2025 to genuine critical acclaim, picking up nominations for Game of the Year, Best Narrative, and Best RPG at The Game Awards 2025. The English text that players praised, the quest writing that felt grounded and specific to its setting, that work had a human behind it. Replacing that pipeline with AI to "save finances" after the game has already shipped and the goodwill is banked is a very particular kind of calculation. Make no mistake, this is a studio deciding that the craft which helped make the product successful is now a cost centre to be eliminated.

This is also the second AI controversy to hit the games industry in the space of a week. Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss recently admitted that AI-generated 2D visual assets were used during development, a disclosure that only came after players noticed. The pattern is becoming hard to ignore: studios adopt AI quietly, and the public finds out either through a controversy or, as in this case, through the person who lost their job because of it.

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