Round8 Studio, the developer behind Lies of P, is actively hiring an AI Artist with a generative AI focus – a role that requires three or more years of hands-on experience with tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and ComfyUI, plus the ability to fine-tune models for in-game assets and integrate them into Unreal Engine 5 pipelines. The position carries an annual salary of roughly ₩50–80 million (~$36,000–$58,000 USD) and has been listed on the studio’s careers page since October 2024.
Round8 is the Seoul-based studio that broke through in 2023 with Lies of P – a Soulslike reimagining of Pinocchio that shifted over 1 million copies in its first month and earned the studio a $35 million investment from parent company Neowiz. Since then, it has announced Lies of P 2, shipped the “Overture” DLC, and quietly been building out new projects – including what’s reportedly a co-op Soulslike codenamed “Project A.” This AI Artist hire fits into a broader pattern of the studio investing heavily in its R&D infrastructure, including a $20 million Series A from Krafton in July 2024 with a slice earmarked specifically for AI and GPU infrastructure. Round8 is not the only studio leaning this direction – but right now, as studio closures elsewhere in the industry keep the employment conversation raw, a hire like this lands differently.
Honestly, this is the part that stings a little. Lies of P was celebrated precisely because it felt handcrafted – its environments, its enemy designs, its grotesque Geppetto-nightmare aesthetic all had a specificity that felt like real artistic labor. Dropping a generative AI specialist into that pipeline raises legitimate questions about what Round8’s future games will actually look like under the hood, and analysts at Newzoo are already predicting AI will cut art production costs by 40% in mid-tier studios by 2026 – which is not exactly a creative rallying cry. The IGDA has flagged that moves like this risk displacing 20–30% of concept art roles by 2027, and with layoffs hitting studios across the board, those numbers aren’t abstract. Round8 may frame this as pipeline acceleration – and it may well produce a great-looking game – but it’s hard to separate the efficiency argument from the cost-cutting one when they arrive in the same job listing.
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