Micheal Douse, head of publishing at Baldur’s Gate 3 developer 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 newsletter Game 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 a reduction in quality assurance (QA) contractors at Nintendo of America and the total shuttering of PlayStation London Studio to name two recent high-profile examples.
Douse attributed some of the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 to 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 like Baldur’s Gate 3 might 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 what Baldur’s Gate 3 would 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, as 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 fine contender for one of the best video game RPGs ever made” and highlighted its complex characters and excellent writing.