Swen Vincke created one of the best games of all time with Baldur’s Gate 3 and doesn’t believe in “greedy” game development.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is essentially an indie game, but that’s hardly noticeable. After all, it offers a scope and quality that would otherwise only be conceivable with a financing publisher behind it.
But it seems the studio is behind it continue to forego large publishers. Because founder and chief developer Swen Vincke has some strong opinions on this matter. This was shown again at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco, where Vincke sent harsh words towards publishers driven by numbers.
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Middle finger to the AAA industry: Baldur’s Gate 3 was no coincidence
It makes me fucking angry
How Eurogamer reports, Vincke had a lot to say when accepting an award for the best narrative and didn’t leave any favors with major publishers. Particularly due to the wave of layoffs that has been ongoing since 2023, to which thousands of developers in the games industry have already fallen victim.
Greed has been ruining this for far too long, ever since I started. I’ve been fighting publishers my whole life and I keep seeing the same, same, same mistakes, over and over again.
It’s always about quarterly profits. All that matters are the numbers, and then they fire everyone and then the next year they say: Crap, I don’t have any developers anymore and then they hire people again and then acquisitions are made and then you put them in the same one Cycle, it’s just broken.
In his speech, Vincke also noted that this cycle would not be necessary and that there would be alternatives to it. After all, Larian is setting a very good example here and is achieving considerable financial success with Baldur’s Gate 3, as it has now sold around 15 million copies.
It doesn’t have to work like that. You can create reserves. Just slow down a little. Don’t be so greedy. Be resilient, take care of your people, don’t lose the internal knowledge that’s inside the people you lose every time so you have to go through the same cycle over and over again. It makes me fucking angry.
The rest of the event was also characterized again and again by the understandable frustration within the industry, which is currently prevalent due to the many layoffs. In his speech, Vincke also had a few words to say about the future of Baldur’s Gate 3 and announced that there will be no successor or expansions. Larian wants to do something different.
It is also not the first time that Vincke has taken a stand against large publishers and talked about the wave of layoffs. He wanted to say a lot more at the game awards, but was then asked off the stage. Vincke then wrote what he had to say on Twitter. At the GDC, however, he was able to take significantly more time for his thanks.
