Baldur’s Gate 3’s Game Director, Swen Vinke, has blamed the “greed” of game publishers for the recent widespread industry layoffs.
Anyone even remotely interested in the current state of gaming will be well aware of the thousands of layoffs affecting the industry as of late. This extremely unfortunate turn of events was not lost on Larian Studios Founder Swen Vinke. He openly criticized game publishers during his acceptance speech at the Game Developer’s Conference. Vinke’s much-warranted criticisms come in amongst the worst culling of gaming jobs the industry has ever seen. Many others joined him in defending the lives of those affected by the layoffs. They also lambast the corporate greed surrounding the game industry as a whole.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Director Calls Publishers “Greedy” Over Mass Layoffs
During an acceptance speech for the Best Narrative GDCA (Game Developers Choice Awards) award, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Game Director and Larian Studios head Swen Vinke heavily criticized game publishers in their role regarding the recent devastating mass game industry layoffs. He directly blames publishers for their “greed” and states that their desire for monetary gain and profit leads them to make the “same mistakes over, and over and over.” Clearly, Vinke is angry at publishers valuing money over human lives.
Vinke doubles down on this stance on layoffs by lambasting publishers’ emphasis on attaining “quarterly profits.” He goes on to claim that this is a grave mistake that leads to the “loop” of firing a load of talented developers to save money, realizing they later need developers to make games, and then hiring new ones to then repeat this “broken” process in the next quarter. He offers some sound advice to publishes, suggesting they should “slow down on the greed. Be resilient, take care of the people, don’t lose the institutional knowledge that’s been built up in the people you lose every single time, so you have to go through the same cycle.”
After the awards show, Vinke took to X (formerly Twitter) to further clarify his stance. He again states that publishers should focus on “improving the state of the art, not squeezing out the last drop.” He finishes by urging publishers to “respect the people making the games.” Check out his post below:
Many of Sven Vinke’s peers and contemporaries echoed and applauded his sentiments and general criticism of greedy game publishers. GDCA host Alanah Pierce commented on the impact these layoffs have had on the families and children of developers. We hope that the publishers in question can take heed of these words to prevent such a devastating turn of events in the future. What do you think about Sven Vinke’s comments on the layoffs? Let us know in the comments below, and for more information on these layoffs, check out our coverage on it.