Larian Studios' Swen Vincke Blames Mass Layoffs on Publisher Greed

That really is the most valuable tweet I’ve seen in gaming in a long long time if not ever. Improve the art of the medium and the money will likely find you. Not trying to rip every dollar out of a consumer’s hand on a broken game. I am not a BG fan but the team at hand for making it has my respect ten fold and i hope all of yours as well.

To his point and i know i won’t be popular for saying this, this is an issue i have with Sony at the moment. I love me some Sony first party games but since PS4 they all seem the same and to be chasing the money. Take Spider-Man for instance, great game in many ways but if you know how to do 2-3 missions you can beat the rest of the 1st game and mainly second game as they are copy/paste copy/paste on all of it including the DLC. People on here say WOW insomniac is holding down the PS, how can they make all these games, well it’s cause they are cashing in on highly reconditioned characters in the marvel universe with copy and paste gameplay. The industry needs more innovation at the moment and less chasing the money and marketing games to be more ambitious than the actual gameplay is. I know i will wake up to people attacking me for saying bad about insomniac, but they are a marvel mill to make Sony standout when the games could and should be way better and more expensive than the same mission over and over.

The game industry has been like this for a very long time. Profits over people. But the sheer amount of layoffs over a short period of time — due to greed and mismanagement — has become too massive to ignore.

I hope Vincke has gained enough clout that publishers actually listen to what he’s saying. A fool’s hope, fer sure, but hope nonetheless.

Well they would know I suppose. The (no) BG4 'news' had a silver lining that was infinitely more exciting imo. They are looking at something brand new and even better, likely moving away from the D&D world. I'd love to see them run completely wild and follow their creativity. They've earned it.

It’s a wider problem but yeah, this is the result of a bubble that’s burst due to complete mismanagement at the highest level. Constant growth is a lie. When it comes down to it, you have people who position themselves at the top of the pile who add zero value to the work that’s been carried out by the lower rungs in the pyramid, they put in money and take out more money than they started with. That is a fundamental problem with the world. There’s no justifiable reason for having a society where it’s possible to make money from money without any effort on your own part, from raw materials to end product. And if it all goes belly up, which it inevitably will as you cannot grow forever? They’ve abandoned ship with their money weeks or months earlier and left you with nothing.

Once the greedy get on the bandwagon, you can kiss your favourite media goodbye.
Managers generally treat creative people like crap. But without artists, there would be no product for the silly suits to sell. The same blight already befell comics, music and movies. It's gaming's turn now :/

@HonestHick I actually agree with you on most of your points. Insomniac are so much more than "spiderman" and should be let loose on bringing the resistance franchise back. The ps4 was a fantastic generation for Sony but I can't help feel it would have been even better with the resistance games being published. The tech side of things I'm really happy with despite all the ps5 owners hating on the machine for its aging tech blah,blah,blah but I'm not happy with Sony for all the great games they have shunned. SOCOM,motorstorm,syphon filter,wipe out,resistance to name a few. I understand they have to make money but they also need to get those gamers back that want those games too.

What I would also say is I do miss the days when a AAA game was around 8/10 hours to complete, and the idea of replaying those games was tantalising if they were good enough. Games like BioShock, Uncharted etc. Just played FFVII: Rebirth and it would have been considerably stronger were it a third shorter. And having replayed TLoU 2 recently, that game has no right to be the length it is. This is all huge amounts of money being wasted on development time in my opinion.

And whoever is budgeting a game must accept the state of the economy and the sheer competition for sales. Supply is currently outweighing demand (see Rise of the Ronin and Dragon's Dogma 2 launching on the same day).

No doubt the greed at the top is partly to blame, but as a 'game enjoyer' I feel all too often my time is being wasted because videogames are bloated in order to keep me playing longer. Huge AAA openworld games should be in the minority, yet already this year we've had LaD: Infinite, FFVII: Rebirth, Rise of the Ronin and Dragon's Dogma!

As painful as it is, an industry-wide shift is much needed.

Sony were doing very well during the PS4 gen, record revenue and profits, but it wasn't enough for them.

They got greedy, chased the GAAS pipe dream, focusing more on PC, and now their profits have tumbled, games getting cancelled, layoffs, hardware flopping.

These companies are never happy with what they've got, they've always got to chase more.

@Northern_munkey I miss Resistance so much 😭😭😭

On a completely unrelated topic, Alanah Pearce is a goddess.

Amen.
That's all I can say.

Try telling that to shareholders, they will invest their money else where

@Toot1st correct me if I'm wrong but larian are completely independent right? So if they can produce a quality game like bg3 and still make a very healthy profit then why can't the other devs that are beholden to shareholders etc? They should all adopt larians no bollocks approach yes?

I agree with him.word up son

The wealthy are ruining literally everything with their greed. Every single product is becoming worse and more expensive. These people are parasites.

"Pearce even got a solid jab in at The Game Award's Geoff Keighley's expense, briefly displaying a 'Please Wrap It Up' message on the screen while she spoke."

Huh? I don't understand how "please wrap it up" on the screen while she's speaking is a jab at GK?

The problem with this statement is it's only half a truth some of these devs are just as bad as they claim these publishers are, yes there are good examples. And it's scapegoating because reality is far more complex a lot less black and white reality actually contains nuance, and believe it or not they are individuals who have family to feed too it's not always just about you as you virtue signal because that's what this is. But here we are talking about an incredible privileged industry to work in, they are literally the bourgeoisie.

@Jake3103 I wasn't sure really. There was an article on pushsquare somewhere where larians head honcho was saying they were not beholden to shareholders or investors..something along those lines.

@Northern_munkey yeah i miss Resistance and Motorstorm. Sony relied on call of duty to be the only shooter for PS4 and then of course Fortnite. But Sony themselves have a lot of good shooter franchises. Maybe HD2 is showing them to try some more. But with insomniac being the new Marvel studio, i am not sure who would make a resistance game. Don’t even get me started on how much I’d like a Sly Cooper reboot. 😊

Great studio stay independent please.

I wish we could fix it by telling rich companies/people not to be greedy. But they won't stop. Hopefully there are some big changes coming that shake up the industry as a whole.

@HonestHick never bothered with the sly Cooper games. Good to hear from you buddy 👍

Bad manager focus on increasing profit.
Good manager focus on perfect product.

Not like larian studios had a honest way of funding compared to other studios.

They got full funding from google to release bdg3 on stadia exclusive.
Then after completion they also made a deal with sony to have the game release on playstation half a year before xbox.

Best part about it is they delayed it multiple times to actually complete the game.
Respect to larian for that.
And no dlc.

<insert Morgan Freeman "He's right, you know" GIF here>

One of the big populists in gaming that guy
But saying what the majority wants to hear is the easiest thing so no harm done.

Have people really forgotten what EA tried to pull off with Battlefront 2 so quickly?

Instead of acknowledging this guy's tweet perhaps folks should try remembering the amount of times publishers have tried to get overly greedy...

It’s going to be even worse when AI starts taking jobs….