Michael Douse, the Director of Publishing at Larian Studios, commented on the current mass layoffs that are sweeping the video game industry describing them as an “avoidable f*** up.”
A screenshot from Baldur’s Gate III (2023), Larian Studios
In an interview with Game File, Douse criticized the mass layoffs that are affecting a number of major companies as being part of a corporate culture that is beholden to shareholder interests.
In fact, Douse accuses that the layoffs are happening one after the other because the companies see it as an opportunity to maximize profits. He shared, “But to prevent these giant operational failures that we call layoffs…they are an avoidable f*** up. That’s really all they are.”
He added, “That’s why you see one after the other. Because companies are going: ‘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.”
A screenshot from Baldur’s Gate III (2023), Larian Studios
Douse noted that Larian Studios plans to avoid this by not taking the company public claiming if they did it would be “antithetical to the quality part of what we’re trying to do.”
He elaborated, “So it wouldn’t make our games better. It would just make us rushed. If you asked us what Baldur’s Gate III would look like, how much it would cost and how it would feel three years ago, I wouldn’t know. 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.”
A screenshot from Baldur’s Gate III (2023), Larian Studios
Douse also noted that video game development is not rocket science while referencing the success of Palworld.
He said, “hey took a bunch of mechanics they knew people liked, made a game that was unbothered by what a game should be, and they gave it directly to players who decided to buy it. That’s really f***ing simple. It’s not rocket science.”
“The analysts are confused, because they didn’t see it coming. And they want basic data sets and predictability. They’re gonna be confused a lot in the future. Me, too. I like being confused. We work best in chaos,” he added.
A screenshot from Baldur’s Gate III (2023), Larian Studios
Douse’s comments come in the wake of Baldur’s Gate III Director Swen Vincke criticizing the layoffs during an acceptance speech at the Game Developers Conference awards in March.
He said, “I’ve been fighting with publishers my entire life. I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over and over and over, and it’s always the quarterly profits. The only thing that matters is the numbers, and then you fire everybody, and then like next year you’re going to say, ‘S**t I’m out of developers.’ And then you start hiring people again, and then you do acquisitions, and then you put them in the same loop again, and it’s just been broken and broken and broken.
Vincke continued, “You don’t have to. You just can make reserves. Slow down a bit. Slow down on the greed. Be resilient, take care of the people, don’t lose the institutional knowledge that’s been built up in all of those people that you lose every single time, so that you have to go through the same cycle over and over and over. It really pisses me off.”
A screenshot from Baldur’s Gate III (2023), Larian Studios
This system that Douse and Vincke criticize within the video game industry is also being criticized at large. X user Vagrant of Rhodes recently shared a thread to the social media platform noting, “Since our economy has been transformed into a cartelized financial scheme rather than an open market, there isn’t any true competition that can break this cycle of price hikes, lagging wages, shrinkflation, inflation, automation, sameness, and quality decline.”
Quick 🧵: Since our economy has been transformed into a cartelized financial scheme rather than an open market, there isn’t any true competition that can break this cycle of price hikes, lagging wages, shrinkflation, inflation, automation, sameness, and quality decline. 1/ https://t.co/EHmnFS2Q6C
— Vagrant of Rhodes 🗡️🕯️ (@vagrantwires) April 5, 2024
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He later added, “Time and time again, industry to industry, you will see the same phenomenon. Consolidation, price hikes, quality cuts, automation. And this shift is not just limited to the end sellers: it’s also happening to the distributors, shipping/logistics companies, and suppliers. ”
“Because of this shift in economic focus from product competition to financial competition, inflationary pressures are a death sentence, encouraging a profiteering downward spiral. Companies will simultaneously automate, cut labor, cut quality, shrinkflate, AND raise prices,” he explained.
Because of this shift in economic focus from product competition to financial competition, inflationary pressures are a death sentence, encouraging a profiteering downward spiral. Companies will simultaneously automate, cut labor, cut quality, shrinkflate, AND raise prices. 5/ pic.twitter.com/T5aFnBakoY
— Vagrant of Rhodes 🗡️🕯️ (@vagrantwires) April 5, 2024
He used cereal distributors as a hypothetical to explain, “If I’m a cereal distributor who owns 40% of the market, and my competitors are two other conglomerates who each own 30%, and we all make variations of the same product, I can essentially set the baseline price at a level where we all make the most cash.”
“I can decide to reduce our family size boxes by 2-3oz, but also increase the price by $0.50 ‘due to inflation’, and there’s no risk because our ‘competitors’ are doing the exact same thing, because the financial incentives guarantee this behavior as a norm across the market,” he elaborated.
I can decide to reduce our family size boxes by 2-3oz, but also increase the price by $0.50 “due to inflation”, and there’s no risk because our “competitors” are doing the exact same thing, because the financial incentives guarantee this behavior as a norm across the market. 8/
— Vagrant of Rhodes 🗡️🕯️ (@vagrantwires) April 5, 2024
Furthermore, Vagrant of Rhodes shares, “Also as this process sets in like concrete, company leadership refocuses to political and Regime loyalty projects, which are likely to secure them investor goodwill or political capital instead of products.”
Also as this process sets in like concrete, company leadership refocuses to political and Regime loyalty projects, which are likely to secure them investor goodwill or political capital instead of products. See Boeing’s decline as exhibit A:https://t.co/FhHR3yclMJ
— Vagrant of Rhodes 🗡️🕯️ (@vagrantwires) April 5, 2024
What do you make of Douse’s comments on the state of the video game industry?
