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zem

wasn't bg3 pretty universally praised too?

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That was developed by Larian, not Bioware.

ah, didn't realise that!

Yes but Bioware didn't make it

Larian hasn’t broken our hearts, yet. And they’ve made overtures that they will avoid doing so for at least another game or two. But eventually people will retire and then who knows.

I really think it’s going to depend on how big they get. Early BioWare very clearly had everyone committed to building games they were proud of; EA’s management equally clearly are just moving money around for things they don’t care about or believe will negatively impact them personally.

I think that pattern is widespread around the greater tech industry: antitrust enforcement, etc. would be great for having fewer cases where decisions which affect thousands of people are being made by executives who are really detached not just from consequences but simply awareness of what’s going on in each of the different segments of their business.

Larian is independent. That's the main difference. They might partner with a publisher for individual games but it's always going to be a pure investment deal, funding for a share of the profits with no creative control.

After BG3 they're financially secure, they know what happened to BioWare and have the power to avoid it. The only way I see them getting acquired is a series of flops and near bankruptcy.

They may bankrupt if Divinity will flop. BG3 and Divinity are very expensive games to make, they had to expand studio and hire a lot of people to produce them.

Yup. This is why indies sell out. You've got all these mouths to feed and all it takes is one flop to kill the whole operation. A large corporate parent provides cushion. Until it doesn't.

I’d worry if they try to grow too quickly and take on large amounts of investment. Pressure to deliver huge hits can be toxic.

They’ve made noises about being a two game studio from now on and they specifically turned down being the studio to make BG4. Which tells me that one WotC was a gigantic pain in their ass, and they lost a lot of sleep over worries that if BG3 flopped they were over and too much of the success of that project had not been in their hands.

But I haven’t seen and rumors of what else they are working on now. Which I would have expected. Which makes me wonder if they’re all in on Divinity or still having competing pitches from R&D teams and no clear winner yet.

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