'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs
'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs
Suffering and success.
'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs
Hasbro continuing to make shit decisions on behalf of WotC, the only sector of the company keeping it afloat.
You see, if they fire everyone from the division, it'll make even more profit. ez
I think Barbie would like a word
That's Mattel. And one of the reasons why Hasbro looks so bad in comparison.
That's Mattel.
laying off 1,100 employees as a way to "modernize our organization and get even leaner
Yeah because that's what we want of the ones in charge of publishing, administering and providing support for some of the most played games in the world now and historically: leanness! The fewer people to take care of important things, the better! 🤦
I know that he's talking to investors rather than players, but come on! Also, there's nothing "modern" about stupidly trying to increase profits via mass layoffs without expecting blowback and for quality to suffer. That's some 1700s bullshit right there.
Also, when your company is ailing (read: Not making more profit than last year, no matter what ocean of money your managers are swimming in), fire the good parts. That'll fix it!
Hasbro is unprofitable, but there was a memo a while back that said Wizards of the Coast was their most profitable division. Possibly their only profitable division. That covers Magic: The Gathering and D&D.
This is also why we're seeing both those properties getting the fuck monetized out of them. Big influxes of MTG sets based on other licensed properties, and attempts to undo the open licensing around One D&D.
But then it makes even less sense to lay people off from those divisions.
Edit: minor clarity and typo corrections.
Imagine if we quit our jobs if we didn't get an annual raise. Maybe we could afford housing.
I've survived layoffs at companies where we were told that following the cuts, we were going to get leaner and more agile and more efficient.
I'm sure you'll be just shocked to learn that what actually happened is I ended up doing twice as much work to pick up the laid off people's slack, and at the end of the year got a smaller bonus than the previous year, along with a raise that didn't cover inflation. Overall company profits, of course, hit a record high.
The same Hasbro that tried to make a land grab for all D&D derivative content by changing their Open Game License to grant them irrevocable, perpetual rights to it. This is not a nice company as they demonstrate time and again.
So maybe it's time the RPG community stopped thinking Hasbro are ever going to change, mourn for what D&D has become, but move onto something else.
Shout-out to Pathfinder, paizo, and their new license!
The OGL License happened after Larian teamed up with Hasbro to make Baldur's Gate 3. Thankfully Larian is still independent so it can continue on to make better RPGs without Hasbro.
This is mostly a USA problem. :) There are so many great pnp systems out there. But there will be a learning curve.
What? We don't have a plethora of other games here in the US? I'll have to remind the owners of all those shops that those hundreds of other games they're selling currently only exist outside of the US. How embarrassing for us...
And if one aren't in the mood to learn something completely new, theres always Pathfinder.
For the likely large overlap this audience might have with dnd, it didn't make 100mil a year so it gets to eat shit. It doesn't help that the video game license isn't counted in that total. Other Hasbro brands do make 100mil a year.
I thought magic was one. It is surprising to see layoffs there.
Anyway, of course a corporation does evil shit. The only moral is the line going up.
MtG made over a billion dollars. From what I can see WotC, products/services/licenses, make up over 3 billion of Hasbro's 5.something billion revenue.
Guess Larian just got a load of designers and writers. Such a shame as 5th ed was a real highlight, but now a lot of people seem to be heading back to pathfinder like the 4th ed days. Luckily, the Divinity universe can stand on its own and there's a wealth of other tabletop rulesets waiting for their amazing adaptions
I don't think it's too controversial to suggest that 5e mechanics are not the strength of BG3. It would be arguably praised more if it kept the world design of BG3 and replaced the combat to have the spell scope of DO2 with the basic actions of 5e (aka shove, which arguably BG3 tweaked anyway to make it fun in combat)
I'll miss the design approach of the game but BG3 was just a big advertisement to how good a D:OS3 will be
Revisiting DOS2 after playing BG3, the game feels like Splatoon: Painted surfaces everywhere, all the time.
I agree. DOS2 was, mechanically, a superior game. Porting 5e into videogame format isn't as clean.
Imo Solasta is a better implementation of 5e mechanics (aside from the lack of grappling improvised weapons), but BG3 story is undeniably better
I made the change almost a year ago now after all the OGL nonsense they tried to pull and I honestly believe Pathfinder is a much more fun game. My entire table enjoys it more than 5e and they are a real variety of different player types.
I've almost bought DIvinity Original Sin a couple of times, is it any good?
I prefer D:OS 1s story and played-through world to D:OS 2's, but D:OS 2 has a lot more polish. Both are excellent games and worth your time.
If you like bg3 and that style of game, definitely worth it
Dos2 is really really good, if you like Larian games
It's slow like a TTRPG. If you liked Baldur's Gate then you will like Divinity.
If one is too slow for you then you won't like the other.
I personally can't stand either but I'm not a TTRPG fan.
I have a hankering to go back to it regularly and I'm playing on the Switch so it is less smooth, but yes I am a forever fan of Larian Studioes after experiencing just a tithe of DOS:2. Hard to explain why it is so good, but the mechanics are creative, fun, and challenging. The story is epic and actually epic in scope and the characters are all so fleshed out and the voice acting is professionally done and immaculate. It is very open ended and very long but very very good.
I'm so ready to get the kind of polish and mastery that BG3 has applied to a new game in the Divinity universe. I haven't finished DOS3, not by a Longshot and don't have time to play it, but it blew me away and I think about playing it again often. I will one day. It is daunting when you haven't played a game like that in a while, to continue on. Especially on the harder difficulties lol RIP. Larian is the GOAT game studio up there with From Software and the Zelda team imo.
This just reads to me that Divinity Original Sin 3 is on the far horizon. YES
But no Larian studios Neverwinter 3????????? 😢
Somebody needs to make a company shit list so I can avoid them. I got EA, Hasbro, Nestle so far.
spoiler alert though, it's literally everybody. because everyone else is doing it, it's not possible to survive as a business in a competitive space without doing, for lack of a better word, the devil's work. It will take a major social disruption to change this, but it won't happen in an organized fashion because we as a species are pathetic. The disruption will be the end of the world - North America cracking down the middle due to all the fracking, the Greenland glacier sliding into the ocean all at a go, something like that. FAFO endgame shit, due any minute now anyway.
Okay while I agree it's everyone.
It is absolutely possible for a single corporation to not be the shittiest possible person in existence. They just can't be public.
The stock market is the worst thing to ever happen to this country.
One solution is to support government regulation of these industries. Deregulation is the cause of much of this crap.
Honestly its kind of extremely crumby that hasbro owns the wizards
The DnD games from the 90s on steam went up in price because of the success of BG3 they are now on sale forbtheir old price lol
Oof, glad I got all the Infinity Engine games in a Humble Bundle before BG3 released
list of the companies that arent garbage might be shorter
A little too short
Good luck avoiding most of them. They own everything.
Nestle doesn't just make Chocolate...
All of them.
But what about the poor CEOs? Did they get their Christmas bonus? Think of the children!!
Thank you! The CEOs' children need Maseratis, boarding school, college, jet fuel to pedo islands, and so many other necessities! We can't let them suffer!
“I felt your breath upon my neck; investors’ wants as cold as death.”
I can only ask how much cocaine remained on the table when they finally decided to do this. Not much, I’d wager.
CEO is aptly named, at least.
I kept trying to figure out the joke about the name Swen Vincke and was failing. Cocks. It was right there in front of me everyone. It was Cocks.
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, for those of us who can't help but read comments before reading articles
Haven’t played BG3 but wtf sense does it make to layoff these team(s)?
Plenty of people paid for the game and enjoyed it and it won GOTY.
You misunderstand. Larian is the company that made the BG3 video game, and they haven't laid people off.
However it's a licensed game. Baldur's Gate and D&D are IPs that are owned by a company called Wizards of Coast. And Wizards is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is forcing layoffs at Wizards, specifically on the D&D team because it doesn't print money as efficiently as say, Magic the Gathering does.
The people at Wizards, i.e the people who actually make D&D are no doubt passionate wonderful people. But Hasbro (and probably some of the Wizards management) are awful corporate parasites determined to suck every last penny from their properties.
They don't give a shit how loved a product is, if it's not making $100M per year then it's basically worthless to them and they won't fund it. So layoffs happen.
That's two separate products and companies you're thinking about...
stop whoring yourselves to these evil fuckups
They are owned by Hasbro? Why?
Larian Studios is not owned by anyone. The Wizards of the coast team that Larian worked with has been laid off
TSR, which was the company that originally made D&D got bought by Wizards of the Coast, which made Magic the Gathering. Then Wizards got bought by Hasbro.
Every product you love has been acquired by a large company that got bought by a larger company and then turned to shit. Until the government stops blocking mergers and acquisitions, this trend will continue.
He's not talking about Larian, he's talking aboutbthe actual D&D team at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. Hasbro got a new CEO last year and the way they've been operating certain business units like WotC has changed dramatically, coupled with massive layoffs across many Hasbro subsidiaries. All he's saying is the DnD team at WotC now is completely different to the one that Larian knew as they developed BG3.
Please do not tell me that anyone is surprised that a triple A game studio laid off most of their employees as a reward for a job well done.
Please. Please tell me everyone has figured out that nearly all large game dev companies are pure fucking evil.
EDIT: Welp, thats what I get for making an ill informed post after 36 hours on the road before passing out in my motel, yep, I probably should have read the article.
It’s the D&D team at Wizards of the Coast, not at Larian.
I guess this is reddit and you don't know how to read past the headlines?
I'll take "I have no fucking idea what I'm talking about" for $500, Alex
Maybe reread the article
You…You might want to consider reading the article.
Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast, who own DnD. Larian, a completely separate company, got the rights to make BG3 from Hasbro. Hasbro laid off nearly everyone Larian Studios worked with at Wizards of the Coast.
Try re-reading the headline again :)
Please tell me everyone has figured out that all large companies are pure fucking evil
Fixed that for you
I upvoted you out of pitty. Hope your motel bed is comfortable.
Hooray pity upvote!
The bed is comfortable, yes.
Hasbro being the worst, yet again
BG3's only sin is having to be tied to the worst owner in tabletop gaming. Thank god Larian is independent.
Larian pls make a new series based on the Pathfinder ruleset. I think the success of BG3 has helped the mainstream to get used to DnD ruleset. Although Pathfinder is more complex, I think they have the chops to make it more accessible to the masses.
I thought the whole idea of Pathfinder was to simplify D&D. It's more complex?
I was impressed by how good Larian made BG3 in spite of using tabletop mechanics, but the Divinity games still had much better game play. I hope they start a new IP and add more of the roleplay options that made BG3 great, but with their own mechanics (hopefully without a charisma stat)
But we already got 2 good CRPG in this setting?
Personally I would love if they made something based on FATE. I would have absolutely no clue how to do it in a CRPG, but I love the system for actual pen&paper.
This would be my absolute dream. I loved BG3 but the weakest part of me was being based on D&D 5e. PF2 is just a better system in pretty much every way imo.
If they could make a PF2 CRPG, that would be incredible.
Isn't there kingmaker and path of righteous alr?
They have Divinity already, why go looking for other IPs?
PF2e is a lot more approachable than 1e. It's a lot harder to truly botch a character in 2e, while preserving variety of options. The 3 action system is also much more intuitive than action types.
Any chance you might be able to give some highlights of what you consider significant differences between 5e and PF1/2 (your choice)? My only experience is 5e tabletop and BG3.
Just play Wrath of the righteous.
I've been browsing older Forgotten Realms sourcebooks and the love that the authors put into those is amazing. It hurts to see D&D and the worlds I grew up loving destroyed by a soulless entity that cares only about profit.
If it's at all of interest to you, there are a bunch of good novels set in the Forgotten Realms, too.
There's a pretty great thread from just a few years ago on the Candlekeep forums where someone read through every single book and gave a brief review of them. I can't remember their opinion in great detail, but the biggest authors (Ed Greenwood and Bob Salvatore) were relatively lowly rated, while Elaine Cunningham and Erin M. Evans consistently rated much more highly.
I've never read Cunningham myself, but I've read all of Evans' FR novels and am a huge fan. Plan to read her non-FR novels once I'm finished with what I'm currently working through, if I can find a copy that's not from the rainforest company.