Games @lemmy.world simple @lemm.ee 6 mo. ago

Larian Studios has two major games in development and opens new studio in Warsaw

Source: https://x.com/larianstudios/status/1792495491256664211

34 comments

I'm so glad they haven't sold out to a large American corporation yet.

It's gotta be hard to turn down all that money, but large American corporations would want to buy it just to squash the competition
- Or Tencent
  
  They did though. Tencent had like a 30% stake in either BG3 or the company.
  
  EDIT: As seen here.
  
  Tencent wants market share, not money.
  
  The money comes later, like how Uber used to be a good service.
Why do so many games companies have offices in Poland? Is there some kind of government incentive for gamedev there? No offense to Poland, but for such an economically small country, I feel like I hear a disproportionate amount of games come from there.
- CD Project (owners of GOG and creators of The Witcher) are some the most well-known devs from Poland, but this article goes into the main reasons why they are among a dozen or so more game devs where such games as Dying Light and Frostpunk have been made: https://www.n-ix.com/polish-software-developers/
- Poland is the land of good, cheap programmers. We are usually ranked 3rd or 4th on the "best programmers" indexes, behind countries like China, Russia. Foreign companies will pay you like $80k or less for a senior position and get a really skilled worker out of it.
  
  Yet it's still not worth for polish programmers to move literally anywhere - cost of living ratio to the earning is so great that devs don't even move from Poland
  
  That's really interesting. Do you have any insight on why Poland seemingly punches above its weight on software development? Is programming a heavy focus in public schools?
- Labor is relatively cheap despite how much IT is raking in at the moment. Most developers in Poland are registered as sole proprietors which contributes to one of highest rates of self-employment in Europe (source). Tax system favors those over regular work contracts leading to regressive burden (source) and to the point we could be classified as tax haven. Also means those developers are not covered under normal labor protection.
- Poland right now actually have too many developers in the country - so I would expect more Companies open offices as earnings stabilized
When all other studios are doing layoffs, this is great news.
- Means they also have a ton of great talent to hire
- all other studios are doing layoffs
  
  That's not true.
It would be very funny to go back to a 2000s era California college campus and explain to a bunch of up-and-coming game developers that the future of the industry would be located in Poland.
Big Fan of Divinity OS 2 and BG3 was very solid. I'm looking forward to seeing them evolve their core formulas and design principles.
- Did you ever play the first Divinity?
  
  I'm actually mid play through now. Lots of things I wish they carried over, but overall, I've found the sequal to be several steps forward.
Nice Hussar logo. + cdpr is shaking right now.
- The only reason why other game studios are opening offices in Poland is because CDPR had created and cultivated the human talent of many game Devs in the country, plus Polish workers should be a lot cheaper compared to West Europe and the US.
- Why would they shake? If anything they are happy because we will get more high quality games and they support polish economy
  
  It is competition for experienced devs, and from everything I've heard about working at Larian and CDPR I would MUCH rather work for Larian.
Good for them
I wonder if Lars Bone easter egg equivalents are hidden in their modern games and nobody has figured it out.

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