Larian Boss Swen Vincke has shared his thoughts on the state of the gaming industry, appearing to warn that cutting costs and making games ‘faster and cheaper never works’.
The comments come amidst the huge $55 billion buyout for gaming giant EA, which has sent ripples across the gaming industry as gamers speculate about how it will shape the company, and the games, moving forward.
While the deal has been agreed with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and a group of investors, it still needs regulator and shareholder approval – but that hasn’t stopped many gamers and developers alike to voice concerns about the company’s future. Even former gaming veterans have come out to give their opinions on the matter, with the ex Dragon Age director Mark Darrah explaining that it’s “hard to imagine” BioWare being forced to drop its historic LGBTQ+ characters, as gender transitioning and same-sex relationships are deemed illegal in Saudi Arabia.
Amidst the buyout backdrop, Vincke took to X, formerly Twitter, to voice his views on game development, writing: “Probably a good time to remind people that making games faster and cheaper while charging more has never worked before.”
In the wake of Baldur’s Gate 3’s success, Larian doubled down on human talent by opening a new storytelling division in England to support development of future titles. Instead of churning out titles faster by missing content, Vincke explained Larian is “trying to make the stories of our future games now so that we have a big backlog of stories available for us when we start on the next thing.”
For those following Vincke, his views come as no surprise as he leads a studio that prides itself on taking time and carefully addressing player feedback. As Baldur’s Gate turned two earlier this year, Vincke told IGN that the next ‘crazy thing’ his studio is working on will require fans to be ‘patient’ so they can achieve the vision they are hoping for with the game not expected to appear until 2028 at the very earliest.
“BG3 was what allowed us to do our next crazy thing,” he told the outlet. “How that will pan out is anyone’s guess but I can assure you we’re working hard to ensure you’ll have plenty of fun. Like really — loads of it. In a surprising way. And I can’t wait to show you. But you’ll need to be patient / we’ll need a bit of time to make it all work. It’ll be worth it though.”
Vinke has also voiced his views on AI – and its impact on game development, claiming that he doesn’t think it will shorten development cycles. In the wake of the massive EA acquisition, sources say EA studios will be forced to use AI to cut costs. Speaking to Gamespot, he said: “It is a naive thing to think that it [AI] will shorten development cycles.”
He said: “I think that it’s an age-old truth; if you give a developer two years, they’ll take three. So the same thing will be the case here with what you’re going to give them in terms of abilities to do stuff. If they have the ability to do things faster, they’ll just do more, which is what you want actually.”
