Baldur’s Gate 3 won Game of the Year at GDC 2024, as well as Best Storytelling, and Swen Vinckethe head of Larian Studios, took the opportunity to recall the problem of blanket layoffs in the gaming industry, blaming it all on the greed of the big publishers, who only look at the quarterly numbers without caring about the developers.
“Since I started, thegreed has always ruined everything,” Vincke said when accepting the award for best narrative: “I've been fighting publishers all my life and I keep seeing the same mistakes repeated over and over and over again. It's always about quarterly profits. The only thing that matters is the numbers, so they fire everyone and the next year they find themselves without developers and start hiring again, making acquisitions and starting the same cycle again, which is just broken…”
An endless cycle
What would Boo say?
Vincke then went on to say, “You don't have to do that. You can save money. Just slow down a little. Keep greed in check. Be resilient, take care of people, don't give up the experience gained by the people you send away, otherwise you'll have to move on. every time for the same cycle. Over and over and over. It really makes me angry.”
His speech was echoed by Xalavier Nelson Jr of Strange Scaffold, the studio behind Hypnospace Outlaw, who said when presenting the award to Vincke: “Unfortunately over the last year the video game industry narrative has been that making great games requires layoffs and the destruction of lives. It is not only a cruel story, but it is completely false.”
It's only natural that GDC 2024 became the stage from which developers could finally have their say on the layoffs, considering that it's basically their trade show, and therefore the natural place to address the topic.