Baldur's Gate 3

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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)

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'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Suffering and success.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Seeing a lot of people in this and similar threads confused by the headline apparently not having read the article.

There were no mass layoffs at Larian, the video game studio that developed Baldur's Gate 3.

There were mass layoffs at Hasbro, the company that owns Wizards of the Coast, which produces the Dungeons & Dragons RPG system used by Baldur's Gate 3.

Throughout the development of Baldur's Gate 3, the team at Larian would have been working alongside the team at Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast to make sure the Dungeons & Dragons system was integrated properly into the video game.

Following the layoffs, the CEO of Larian had commented that the D&D team who had helped design the system that Baldur's Gate 3 is based on is now almost completely gone.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For context, earlier this week Hasbro (owner of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering) announced that it would be laying off 1,100 employees as a way to "modernize our organization and get even leaner". Not soon after, it was revealed that an avalanche of employees from both D&D and MTG had been laid off.

In an investor meeting in October this year, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks specifically mentions Baldur's Gate 3 as a contributing factor for a 40% increase in digital gaming revenue, alongside Monopoly Go! and Magic: The Gathering.

Well yeah, obviously you gotta fire whoever was the cause of a 40% increase in revenue, otherwise that could even raise to 50%. Where would it end?

Always safer to go with what you know: letting the ravenous mob desperate to throw money at you know just as soon as possible that you're taking steps to remove anything they liked about your product.

Do you think they can get lean enough to break even in their future?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

What the fuck is that logic even? These people contributed to making a great game that made you a ton of money and you have them fired right after. I can't see how that makes sense, if they succeeded once, surely they can make other great products.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Layoffs make the stock price go up. It's a "look at all the money we are saving!" Move. Get a short term profit at the expense of long term gains, because to shareholders short term profits matter more.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The CEO and upper management at WOTC are the real monsters. Greed is bad.

I bet they don't even play D&D.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

There was some sort of QnA with the important WOTC people for some DnD influencers not too long ago, where they confirmed they never played and politely declined a room full of experienced DMs that wanted to run a game for them... Don't remembrr what the event was, but I think it was this sumner