'We don't have shareholders, but we also don't think about them,' Larian Studios uses its stage time at the DICE Awards to speak out against a brutal industry climate
'We don't have shareholders, but we also don't think about them,' Larian Studios uses its stage time at the DICE Awards to speak out against a brutal industry climate
"Building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money, that's it."
Privately-owned companies with no ties to venture capitalists are just plain better than corpos that worry too much about "line go up".
Facts.
Yes, it really does seem like shareholders ruin everything.
But what does it mean for the studio if line goes down? They still need to worry about if their team will be able to be paid.
The big issue with publicly traded companies is that the line they need to go up isn't lifetime revenue, it's quarterly profit. If they consistently make $1 million in profit every quarter, that's a failure. They need to be making more profit year on year. Even if they're consistently producing excellent products that make a lot of people happy, and are treating their employees well, that's not good enough.
BG3 took 6 years to develop and because of all of that time spent on enhancing the quality, it was the most-hyped game ever in 2023, winning all of the awards and making a shitton of money. A corporation that is only focused on quarterly profits would never go for long-term planning like that.
Sure, but they don't need to worry about the line going up constantly. They can take on longer term projects if they have the cash for it, even if that's not necessarily the best way to make money in the short term or even overall. They can take time to build trust with consumers instead of shareholders.