There almost wasn’t a Baldur’s Gate 3. The Larian boss was fed up with the publisher and wanted to quit.
By now, everyone should have heard about the success of Baldur’s Gate. If you want to play a really good, modern RPG, you simply can’t ignore Baldur’s Gate 3. But not many people know that we might not have seen the game at all. Because the head of Larian, Swen Vincke, almost left the industry.
The reason: publishers were really getting on his nerves.
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What happened? In an interview with PC Gamer, Larian CEO Swen Vincke spoke about the development of the game and the previous games. Even though some were successful, others were not. Divinity 2: Ego Draconis in particular should have been a major breakthrough, but that didn’t happen. There were several reasons for this.
The whole thing was really the result of us being too ambitious with too small a team that didn’t have enough resources and then the publisher wanted us to release it even though it wasn’t finished yet.
That was the point when Vincke “thought about just quitting.”
What happened afterwards? As we all know, that wasn’t the end of Larian. But the company changed direction.
You can’t just keep making mistakes. You have to get it right. That’s the point where I said goodbye to publishers.
Without the support of a large publisher, things were still looking up for Larian. Since they took over everything themselves, they had a lot more control. And thanks to crowdfunding campaigns, they were able to remain largely independent. This ultimately led to Baldur’s Gate 3 – and with it the biggest success the studio has ever had. Without a publisher.
Which publisher was it? It is difficult to determine which publisher the allegations are about, as Larian’s games were marketed by different publishers in different countries. Therefore, it is difficult to say exactly who Vincke means – or does not mean.
What is clear, however, is that Vincke and Larian drew conclusions from this. From then on, they no longer trusted publishers and simply took over the whole thing themselves. They became more independent and financed games – like Baldur’s Gate 3 – through crowdfunding. The masterpiece that emerged in the end, however, more than justifies Larian and Vincke. It would have been a shame if we hadn’t seen such rare endings as the Raphael ending.