Larian CEO Swen Vincke spoke at this year’s Game Awards 2024 about what makes a really good game. Shortly after, Baldur’s Gate 3 gets tons of negative reviews on Steam.
What is the current situation? Baldur’s Gate 3 is currently experiencing a significant downward trend on Steam. A thread on Reddit shows countless negative reviews that appear to come from players in China. The abbreviation “TGA” can be read again and again.
Users suspect that it is about Larian boss Swen Vincke’s speech at the Game Awards.
Many gamers agree that the big players in the gaming industry could learn something from Baldur’s Gate 3:
Middle finger to the AAA industry: Baldur’s Gate 3 was no coincidence
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Larian boss says it’s easy to make a game of the year
What did Swen Vincke say? As last year’s winner, it was the responsibility of the head of Baldur’s Gate 3 to give the eulogy for this year’s game of the year. Vincke used his time to lash out powerfully against the gaming industry.
The Larian boss joked that an oracle had told him not only this year’s winner, but also the lucky winners of the coming years. From the oracle he also received the “stupidly simple” formula for creating a game of the year.
Unfortunately, says Vincke, the formula keeps getting lost.
A game of the year would therefore be made by developers who create games that they want to play themselves.
They created it because it didn’t exist before. They weren’t doing it to increase market share, they weren’t doing it to serve as a brand, they didn’t have to meet arbitrary sales goals or fear being fired if they didn’t meet those goals.
In addition, those in charge forbade them from stuffing stuff into the game that only serves to make sales and does not serve the game design. They didn’t treat their developers like numbers on a spreadsheet, they didn’t treat players as users to be exploited, and they didn’t make decisions they knew were short-sighted. […]
Unfortunately, this is exactly what is currently going wrong in the games industry. In the last 2.5 years alone, tens of thousands have lost their jobs in gaming. The problem is so prevalent that a man was honored at the Game Awards for addressing exactly this issue.
Many gamers were enthusiastic about Vincke’s speech – but apparently it didn’t suit everyone.
You can see the speech in the original English here:
Is it all just a misunderstanding?
So where does the excitement come from? The sudden anger seems to be the result of a misunderstanding. In some machine-generated random translations of the reviews it is said that there is no need to support Baldur’s Gate 3 because the creators don’t care about sales anyway.
So it seems like some of the players who bought and financially supported Baldur’s Gate 3 now feel unappreciated. One Reddit user suggests that the misunderstanding could be due to the live translation of the speech:
Community sticks to Baldur’s Gate 3
Others suggest that Chinese players may be frustrated that “their” candidate didn’t win. As a reminder: In addition to the eventual winner Astro Bot, nominees included Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.
Because while the success of Black Myth: Wukong was celebrated by the wrong people in the West, the action RPG was not only extremely popular in China, but also of great cultural importance. Companies are said to have even given copies to their employees and given them permission to play.
So it could be that fans understood Vincke’s speech to mean that Wukong was not produced by passionate developers who were interested in the love of gaming rather than profits.
Whatever is behind it, it shouldn’t be too long before the Steam ratings for Baldur’s Gate 3 look back to normal, because a new law in the USA is supposed to put an end to review bombing.
In any case, there are many users who counteract this with positive reviews. Even more than a year after its release, the makers of Baldur’s Gate 3 can still be happy about the loyalty of their community.
In addition to the biting criticism of the games industry, Vincke also took one or two swipes at the Game Awards themselves. Because his speech was ended prematurely there last year. Baldur’s Gate 3: “I’m about to cry” boss publishes the speech that was neglected at the Game Awards, touching fans