Baldur’s Gate 3 publishing head reflects on recent industry layoffs, “it’s incorrect to believe huge companies are run necessarily by incredibly intelligent people”
“None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt.”
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Micheal Douse, head of publishing atBaldur’s Gate 3developer Larian Studios, has reflected candidly on the current state of the video game industry and described the ongoing wave of mass layoffs as “an avoidable f***-up.”
It comes in a recent interview with gaming newsletterGame File, where Douse said that “it’s incorrect to believe that huge companies are run necessarily by incredibly intelligent people that have the means to do the right thing all the time.”
He argued that many game development companies “definitely don’t have to” fire staff. “None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of p***ing off the shareholders.”
This is in response to a year that has been marked by widespread layoffs across the video game industry, including areduction in quality assurance (QA) contractors at Nintendo of Americaand the totalshuttering of PlayStation London Studioto name two recent high-profile examples.
Douse attributed some of the success ofBaldur’s Gate 3to the fact that Larian, as a privately held company, is not beholden to shareholder demands and explained that he believes this will not change any time soon. “Going public might give us more money, but it would be antithetical to the quality part of what we’re trying to do. So it wouldn’t make our games better. It would just make us rushed.”
He later suggested that the development of a sprawling game likeBaldur’s Gate 3might be incompatible with the usual expectations of AAA video game development, which often begins with careful consideration of timescales and budgets. “If you asked us whatBaldur’s Gate 3would look like, how much it would cost and how it would feel three years ago, I wouldn’t know. We just took it day by day.”
It’s clear that this approach has paid off though, asBaldur’s Gate 3was one of the most well-received and commercially successful games of last year. In our detailedBaldur’s Gate 3reviewwe described it as “a fine contender for one of the best video game RPGs ever made” and highlighted its complex characters and excellent writing.
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Dash is a technology journalist who covers gaming hardware at TechRadar. Before joining the TechRadar team, he was writing gaming articles for some of the UK’s biggest magazines including PLAY, Edge, PC Gamer, and SFX. Now, when he’s not getting his greasy little mitts on the newest hardware or gaming gadget, he can be found listening to J-pop or feverishly devouring the latest Nintendo Switch otome.
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