Larian Studios’s publishing director Michael Douse has weighed in on the avalanche of games industry layoffs, calling them an “avoidable fuck-up” that should have “humbled” the industry.
Speaking to Game File (which is paywalled) and spotted by PC Gamer, the publishing director for the Baldur’s Gate 3 studio criticised the amount of layoffs seen in recent years (and particularly recent months). “They [layoffs] 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.”
“None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt,” Douse added. “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.”
The Larian publishing director’s take on publicly traded game developers was that the incentives to exponentially grow and provide value to shareholders could also come at the expense of players through game quality. Douse said Larian’s major success recently as seen with the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 to mountains of accolades and rampant sales was in part due to Swen Vincke’s leadership, and the studio’s ability to take risks without concern for shareholders.
While Douse said that the choice would ultimately be up to Vincke, he believes Larian will likely never go public. “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,” he said. “So it wouldn’t make our games better. It would just make us rushed.”
The spicy interview also saw Douse take aim at the industry continuing on as if developers aren’t struggling to maintain jobs, noting events like the GDC awards and BAFTAs as an example of this. “We should be humbled by this period. It doesn’t feel like we’re humbled by this period as an industry,” he said.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 developer has seen astronomical success off the back of the game’s release last year, and it does seem that not being beholden to shareholders afforded Larian the ability to make more risky moves which ultimately have well and truly paid off. Douse’s comments come at a time when the games industry continues to grapple with near-daily layoffs and studio closures. Things are looking particularly grim, despite the ever-growing popularity of games and major profits for some companies. How the industry will weather the storm long-term and retain talented employees for future titles remains a mystery, but at the very least, Larian seems set on avoiding a similar fate to that of other competitors.
Image: Larian Studios
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