Baldur’s Gate 3 Studio’s Award Streak Is Affecting Development

Highlights

• Larian Studios enacted a strategy of rotating teams to attend each of the many award ceremonies following the massive success of Baldur’s Gate 3.
• The game’s overwhelming popularity was a challenge for the studio, as attending award shows impacted development.
• Larian is currently working on its next game, said to be an entirely new IP.

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has shared that the game’s streak of consecutive industry wins started to affect development, pushing the studio to opt for a certain strategy when attending award ceremonies. Over the past year, Baldur’s Gate 3 has amassed an impressive tally of accolades, with its latest win coming just last week at the 2024 Develop Star Awards.

Larian Studios released Baldur’s Gate 3 in August 2023 and was instantly met with waves of positive reviews, mirroring the game’s highly successful early access period in 2020. The Dungeons & Dragons-inspired RPG received a perfect score from multiple critics, selling millions of Baldur’s Gate 3 copies in the process. In the following months, the game was showered with countless accolades, including multiple Game of the Year awards. While this attention helped the studio’s popularity, it also introduced some tough challenges.

In an interview with Edge (via GamesRadar), Larian Studios CEO and Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke expressed his appreciation for the studio being bestowed with various awards, but explained that the sheer number of award ceremonies to be attended “affects development.” Upon sensing that the scintillating success of the fantasy RPG would mean getting awards at several different events, he said that the studio devised a strategy of “rotating teams” according to which “different people went to different award shows.”

The Toll Of Baldur’s Gate 3’s Award Winning Spree

Discussing how Larian devs often had to quickly prepare to receive another award at a different ceremony as soon as they had finished at another, Vincke said that the magnitude of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s success came close to being “too much.” The game director further revealed that he would prefer a one-and-done event instead, explaining that it “would be cool if everybody could agree to do it all at the same time” as he views the current format as something that is “surprisingly draining on the soul.” Moreover, Vincke stated how the continued popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3 has made Larian devs “more emotional” as they are unable to find closure, which he states is a desirable thing at the end of such a major project.

Game development is a long and complex endeavor, which sometimes sees devs bending over backwards to meet tight deadlines and engaging in ‘crunch’ as release windows approach. It’s understandable how frequent award ceremony appearances could start becoming an impediment to a studio’s day-to-day business. However, the Baldur’s Gate 3 team’s balancing act seems to be working, as the studio’s workers continues to travel to award shows while teasing fans about the state of forthcoming Larian Studios games.