Michael Douse, head of publishing at Baldur’s Gate 3 Developer Larian Studios has candidly reflected on the current state of the video game industry, describing the ongoing wave of mass layoffs as “an avoidable mistake.”
It comes in a recent interview with the Gaming Newsletter Game filewhere Douse said that “it is wrong to believe that large companies are necessarily run by incredibly intelligent people who have the resources to always do the right thing.”
He argued that many game development companies “absolutely do not” need to lay off staff. “None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They just ran the risk of taking away the shareholders.”
This comes in response to a year marked by widespread layoffs in the video game industry, including a reduction in the number of quality assurance (QA) contractors at Nintendo of America and the total closure of PlayStation London Studio, to name two recent high-profile examples. .
Douse attributed some of the success to Baldur’s Gate 3 on the fact that Larian, as a private company, is not bound by shareholder demands and explained that he believes this will not change anytime soon. “An IPO might make us more money, but that would go against the quality of what we’re trying to do. So it wouldn’t make our games any better. It would only rush us.”
He later suggested that the development would look like a sprawling game Baldur’s Gate 3 could be incompatible with the usual expectations of AAA video game development, which often begin with careful consideration of timelines and budgets. ‘If you ask us what Baldur’s Gate 3 would look like, how much it would cost and what it would feel like three years ago, I wouldn’t know. We just took it day by day.”
However, it is clear that this approach has paid off Baldur’s Gate 3 was one of the most well-received and commercially successful games of last year. In our detailed Baldur’s Gate 3 review, we described it as “a prime contender for one of the best video game RPGs ever made” and highlighted its complex characters and excellent writing.