Years before Baldur's Gate 3 blew everyone away, Larian's CEO nearly quit the industry over publisher pressure on the Divinity series
Aug. 3, 2024Swen Vincke thankfully didn’t quit, he only left publishers behind
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Anavalanche of awardsand even more money put Larian Studios on steady ground post-Baldur’s Gate 3, but the company’s lead and founder almost quit the industry after publishers interfered with the developer’s previous output.
In an interview withPC Gamer, Larian CEO and Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke reminisced about the studio’s previous RPG projects that paved the way for its eventual record-breaking success last year, recalling arguably the team’s lowest point with 2009’s Divinity 2: Ego Draconis.
Divinity 2: Ego Draconis was the third game in the series, coming right after Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity - the studio got much better at naming things thereafter - and Vincke remembers that it could’ve been a “breakthrough game” if the stars had aligned differently because “it was ambitious [and] had a lot of stuff going on, but none of it was really well done.”
“Everything was really the product of being too ambitious with too small a team and not having enough resources, and then the publisher insisted on releasing it when it wasn’t ready,” Vincke explained, though the game had quite a few publishers attached to different regions, so it’s hard to tell which he’s referring to. Either way, the stressful experience made Vincke think “about quitting at that point.”
As well all know, Vincke’s time in the industry didn’t stop there. His time with publishers did, though. “You can’t just go from failure to failure to failure,” he said. “You’ve got to do something right. This is famously when I dropped publishers.” Larian instead turned to self-publishing and crowd-funding for its future games.
Despite looking back on things with a bad taste in his mouth, Ego Draconis was actually pretty well received in relation to other studios' biggest flops, and an improved “Dragon Knight Saga” re-release only bumped up review scores even further - probably a precursor to how the team supported Baldur’s Gate 3 so extensively post-release.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 DLC was playable when Larian scrapped it, and director Swen Vincke also has some salt for the wound: “It’s something you all would have liked.”
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Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that’s vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he’ll soon forget.
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