Games Industry Mass Layoffs an ‘Avoidable F*ck Up’, Says Larian Studios Publishing Director

The developers behind last year’s breakout RPG Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios, have since used the platform allowed by their success to rail against the many ills currently plaguing the video game industry (where possible). CEO and founder Swen Vincke recently called out publishers’ greed as being to blame, saying that “they’ve been fu**ing this whole thing up for so long”. Now, director of publishing, Michael Douse, has given us some similarly spicy quotes to work with.

Speaking to Game File’s Stephen Totilo (thanks, IGN), Douse puts things equally bluntly, explaining that “these giant operational failures that we call layoffs…they are an avoidable f*ck up. That’s really all they are.” He says that these big companies fail to prepare financially for the future and that layoffs come in waves when the market starts to turn because they start to think: “Well, finally. Now we can, too. We’ve wanted to do it for ages. Everyone else is. So why don’t we?’ That’s really kind of sick. [Layoffs are] a very, very complex and nuanced decision. But the idea that it’s an inevitability that has to happen, it’s just not true.”

The problem is that shareholders of publicly traded companies like EA or even Sony expect a return on investment, and these companies are not “nimble” enough. The secret to Larian Studio’s success? Don’t sell out, remain private, and squirrel away pennies for the lean times. Douse said that Larian going public might mean more money to work with but would be “antithetical to the quality part of what we’re trying to do”.To hear him explain it, the entire thing sounds so straightforward we have to wonder why other companies can’t make it work:

“We just took it day by day. As an operation, we created reserves. We scoped up based on what we thought we would need and created reserves and fallbacks, just in case we would have to. Luckily, we don’t have to. We’re just nimble. Being nimble is key. Big companies are not nimble.”