GamesRPGBaldur’s Gate 3Larian publishing director on mass layoffs: ‘None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesRPGBaldur’s Gate 3Larian publishing director on mass layoffs: ‘None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Larian)
Speaking withGame File(users will encounter a paywall) at the Game Developers Choice Awards, Larian director of publishing Michael Douse gave his take on the current state of the industry, including some sharp criticism on the wave after wave of mass layoffs we’ve been seeing.
“They are an avoidable fuck-up,” Douse said. “That’s all they really are. That’s why you see one after the other. Because companies are going: ‘Well, finally. Now we can, too. We’ve wanted to do it for ages. Everyone else is. So why don’t we?’ That’s really kind of sick.”
He also pointed out that there’s an issue of competing incentives for publicly traded game companies, with concerns over stock price coming at the expense of both players and developers: “None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt,” Douse said. “They’re just at risk of pissing off the shareholders. And that’s fine. That’s how they work. The function of a public company is to create growth for its shareholders… It’s not to make a happy climate for the employees.”
Douse pointed to Swen Vincke’s leadership, as well as Larian’s ability to make risky moves unbeholden to shareholders, as major reasons for the company’s success in recent years. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreierargued a similar pointin an op-ed back around Baldur’s Gate 3’s release.
Though Douse acknowledged that the final decision would always be up to Vincke, he said that going public would likely never be the move for Larian: “Creating the games that we wanted to make, 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.”
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