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AI Remains a Flashpoint for the Game Industry
Artificial intelligence continues to divide opinion across the video game industry. While its early emergence was met with strong resistance from creative communities, an increasing number of major developers are now openly advocating for AI to streamline production and scale development.
The latest industry leader to take a firm public stance is Kim Hyung-tae, CEO of Shift Up, the studio behind Stellar Blade and Goddess of Victory: NIKKE. After making headlines earlier this year for issuing generous employee bonuses, Kim has now turned his attention to the broader structural challenges facing Korean game development.
Korea Faces Intense Global Competition
Speaking at South Korea’s national briefing titled “2026 Economic Growth Strategy,” Kim represented the private economic sector and delivered a blunt assessment of the competitive landscape. According to him (via Automaton), Korean developers cannot afford to ignore AI if they hope to keep pace with studios in China and the United States.
Kim identified China as Korea’s most formidable competitor. The disparity, he argued, lies in manpower. While Shift Up operates with roughly 150 developers, Chinese studios can allocate between 1,000 and 2,000 staff members to a single project, dramatically affecting content scale, development speed, and perceived production value.
AI as a Productivity Multiplier, Not a Replacement
Addressing widespread fears around job displacement, Kim rejected the idea that AI adoption would inevitably lead to mass layoffs. Instead, he framed AI as a force multiplier for human developers rather than a replacement.
In his view, developers will remain indispensable, but AI literacy will become a core skill. With effective AI integration, Kim suggested that a single developer could deliver output comparable to that of dozens or even hundreds of workers, allowing Korean studios to compete globally without matching the sheer workforce numbers of their rivals.
What This Means for Shift Up’s Future Projects
Despite his clear endorsement of AI as an industry necessity, Kim stopped short of confirming how deeply AI will be embedded into Shift Up’s upcoming projects. It remains unclear whether titles such as Stellar Blade 2 or the still-unrevealed Project Spirits will adopt AI-driven workflows at a foundational level.
For now, Kim’s comments offer a revealing snapshot of how one of Korea’s most prominent studios views the future of game development. As global competition intensifies, AI appears less like an optional experiment and more like a strategic requirement.
