Spreadsheety and space piratey MMO Eve Online will help train Google DeepMind’s AI models, after the tech giant took a minority stake in its creator. This partnership’s come as developer CCP Games have gone independent after former owners Pearl Abyss sold the studio back to the original management, with the transition also having seen CCP rename themselves Fenris Creations.
As announced by Fenris in a blog post, this is essentially the studio going back to operating how it did prior to being bought by the Crimson Desert developers back in 2018. “The change reflects a shift in ownership and governance only,” the former CCP Games wrote. “Fenris Creations will continue to operate as a standalone studio, responsible for its strategy, operations, and creative direction. Fenris Creations’ leadership team, studios, products, and ongoing development plans remain unchanged, with the same people who have guided the EVE universe for many years continuing to lead the company.”
Ah cool, sounds goo-
“Alongside this transition, Fenris Creations is entering into a research partnership with Google DeepMind, focused on advancing understanding of intelligence in complex, dynamic systems,” the studio continued. “The collaboration will explore areas including long-horizon planning, memory, and continual learning, using EVE Online as a uniquely rich environment for study. Google DeepMind will work with an offline version of EVE Online running on a local server to test and evaluate models in a controlled setting. Together, the partnership will also explore new gameplay experiences enabled by these technologies.”
Ah, not so cool.
This partnership’s seen Google take a minority stake in the studio. DeepMind are Google’s AI research lab and the developer of various AI tools such as large language model Gemini and generative world model Genie 3. Recently, their workers have reportedly voted to unionise, citing concerns about a deal Google have done with the US military over AI. “I have joined the union due to concerns about AI being used to empower authoritarianism, whether through military or surveillance applications, both foreign and domestic,” one anyonymous DeepMind worker told The Guardian. Google have also reportedly provided the Israeli military with access to AI tools during the genocide in Gaza.
DeepMind are headed up by Demis Hassabis, a former child prodigy who helped Peter Molyneux design 1994’s Theme Park and founded the now defunct developers of Republic: The Revolution, Elixir Studios.
“I started my career designing and programming complex AI simulation games like Theme Park,” Hassabis said in Fenris’ post. “They’ve also been at the heart of many of Google DeepMind’s breakthroughs – like Atari DQN, AlphaGo, AlphaStar and SIMA – because they’re the perfect training ground for developing and testing AI algorithms. I’ve known Hilmar for many years and long admired his work, and I’m thrilled to partner with him and the fantastic team at Fenris Creations to explore new gaming experiences and advance AI research safely inside a player-driven universe as amazingly complex as EVE Online.”
Fenris add that this setup should see them able to support Eve for years to come, “continuously evolving a living universe and actively exploring what it can become” while they help a bloke who was worryingly good at chess as a kid test out Deepmind’s latest creations.
