Larian boss says Wizards of the Coast not to blame for them moving on from Baldur’s Gate

25.03.2024 - 15:25 / thesixthaxis.com / Swen Vincke

Following a few days of speculation after Larian boss Swen Vincke announced that the studio’s next game will not be Baldur’s Gate 4, he has clarified that the reason for this new direction was all about Larian wanting to take a new direction, and not because of changes at D&D owner Wizards of the Coast.

Taking to Twitter, Vincke said, “Reading the reddit threads, I would like to clear up something. [Wizards of the Coast] is not to blame for us taking a different direction. On the contrary, they really did their best and have been a great licensor for us, letting us do our thing. This is because it’s what’s best for Larian.”

“We are not a company that’s made to create DLCs, expansions,” Vincke had said at GDC last week. “We tried that actually, a few times. We failed every time – it’s not our thing. Life is too short. Our ambitions are very large.

“Baldur’s Gate will always have a warm spot in our heart. 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.”

Further comments elaborated that, while Larian had been looking at potentially making BG3 DLC and potentially making BG4, he had made the decision and informed the team at the start of this year that they would instead make an original game instead and change directions.

I was guilty of reading too deeply between the lines myself, given the significant changes at Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro in the last few years. After all, there was a bungled attempt to change the open licensing for the use of D&D by other companies, and then sweeping layoffs at Hasbro that deeply affected WotC at the end of 2023.

Vincke himself had noted with his The Game Awards acceptance speech – his full intended speech on Twitter – that “It’s a sad thing to realize that of the people who were in the original meeting room, there’s almost nobody left.”

With Hasbro and WotC announcing new internal development of more D&D games, and Vincke’s outspoken nature at big publisher overly capitalist attitudes, it’s easy to see why so many jumped to these conclusions.

Guess we should’ve looked before leaped.