Baldur’s Gate 3 director says his studio isn’t interested in making DLC because ‘it’s boring’
“Happy player, happy business, but you also need to have a happy developer,” Swen Vincke says
Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke has shed more light on why the studio chose not to make DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Vincke, who directed the game, was discussing game mods with GameSpot when he stated that Larian is “not in the DLC business”.
When asked to speak more about this, Vincke explained that while conventional wisdom would suggest that making DLC for a game as successful as Baldur’s Gate 3 would lead to more financial success, the studio just wasn’t interested in making it.
“It’s boring,” he said. “Really, the honest answer is, we try to be in the DLC business, this was talked about with Baldur’s Gate 3, but just, [there’s] no passion.
“I mean, happy player, happy business, but you also need to have a happy developer for a happy player, and what we’re doing now makes developers way more happy.”
Vincke explained that while Larian was previously happy to go with the usual process of making DLC following a successful game, the team eventually realised it didn’t want to.
“This is what we were supposed to do, right?” he explained. “Oh, we got a huge game, huge hit, we’ve got to make DLC this, and DLC that, and DLC there, and DLC there, and the money’s going to pile up all high.
“And we just nodded and said ‘yeah, we’ll make DLCs’, and then the moment that we had some time to think, we realised: ‘What are you doing?’ Progressive insight is not a bad thing, so sometimes you go down the wrong path and then you say ‘oh, fuck it’ and just change course, pardon my French, and just do something else.”
Larian confirmed last year that it had moved on from Baldur’s Gate 3 and was now focusing on two new projects based on its own IPs.
“Baldur’s Gate will always have a warm spot in our heart,” Vincke said back at the time. “We’ll forever be proud of it but we’re not going to continue in it.
“We’re not going to make new expansions, which everybody is expecting. We’re not going to make Baldur’s Gate 4 which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re going to move on. We’re going to move away from D&D and we’re going to start making a new thing.”
