Larian Studios has created a huge hit with Baldur’s Gate 3. At this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards, Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke speaks about the current layoffs in the games industry in his acceptance speech. Above all, he condemns the studios themselves.
What is criticized in his speech? Swen Vincke, the director behind Baldur’s Gate 3, accepted the award for “Best Narrative” at this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards. However, he also used his acceptance speech to speak out against other studios and their mass layoffs.
Over the past 18 months, there have been mass layoffs in many places in the gaming industry. In January 2024 and February 2024 alone, many employees had to stop working:
Vincke condemned this behavior in his speech, saying: “Greed has been making this whole thing shitty for so long, since I started.” He went on to say: “I’ve been fighting publishers my whole life and I keep them the same, the same, the same Mistakes over and over again.”
He sees the problem above all in the greed of the studios and that for them profit comes first and in the end the numbers are what seem most important. A problem, as he says, that only leads to the next problem. “You all quit and then next year you say ‘shit, we’re out of developers’ and then you hire people again, and then you make acquisitions, and then you put them in the same cycle, and it’s just broken…”
The success of Baldur’s Gate 3 was no coincidence, says colleague Michael Graf:
Middle finger to the AAA industry: Baldur’s Gate 3 was no coincidence
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Are there other possibilities? In addition to his criticism, Vincke also suggests that one could simply approach the whole thing a little differently.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says. “You can create reserves. Just slow down a bit. Reduce your greed a little. Be resilient, take care of the people, don’t lose the unified knowledge that has been built in the people you lose every time. Just so you have to go through the same cycle over and over again. It really makes me angry.”
Presumably for some this speech felt like a harsh blow, especially after they voted.
“People in this room have lost their jobs.”
Were there any other reactions? In fact, the speech was followed by some words of approval from others present. Alanah Pearce, who works for Playstation’s God of War studio Sony Santa Monica and moderated the evening, also said the same.
He particularly pointed out the victims behind the many layoffs. “People in this room have lost their jobs,” he says. “People who actually attend the GDC every year had to cancel because being here is an extravagant luxury when you don’t know when the next paycheck is coming.”
Above all, he emphasizes that many people with years of experience were lost. People who worked on the games that were nominated that night. In this context, he also points out once again that there are fates behind these layoffs. “We’ve seen our friends get laid off and how it affects their families, their children.”
On Reddit, players report why they keep starting Baldur’s Gate 3 from the beginning: Players explain why they keep abandoning Baldur’s Gate 3 and starting from the beginning