In a surprising announcement, the developers of the popular Baldur’s Gate 3 have stated that they will not be creating any significant DLC or expansions for it, nor will they be working on a follow-up game.
When last year’s Baldur’s Gate 3 proved an unexpected success, suddenly developer Larian Studios went from an obscure developer, that only hardcore role-playing fans had heard of, to one of the most lauded studios in the world.
What they’ll do with that new level of fame has not been clear, but most fans at least expected a DLC expansion of some sort. But instead, Larian boss Swen Vincke has announced they’re not doing any major DLC for the game, are not working on the inevitable sequel, and are abandoning the Dungeons & Dragons licence in its entirety.
It all suggests a major falling out with licence holder Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, although Vincke didn’t go into any detail about his reasons during the surprise announcement at the ongoing GDC (Games Developer Conference) event in San Francisco.
Larian is still planning to offer official mod support for Baldur’s Gate 3 this year, so they’re not immediately abandoning the game, but this does seem to be a relatively recent change in plans.
Last summer, product manager Tom Butler said that ‘discussions’ were taking place about more content for Baldur’s Gate 3, telling IGN that ‘We want to do more. We don’t know what yet.’
Whether there’s been a falling out or not, the reasons for not continuing with Baldur’s Gate are likely to be a mix of artistic desire and cold finance.
EA recently said that they were going to stop making licensed games, based on other people’s intellectual properties, since a certain amount of the profit has to go to the licence holder. NieR:Automata developer PlatinumGames made a similar decision a few years ago.
Now that they’ve made a name for themselves, Larian would probably rather own the IP they’re working on too, so they get all the money and have full artistic freedom.
Vincke has already spoken about his desire to return to the Divinity: Original Sin universe at some point, but he’s also teased that he wants to work on a sci-fi game.
He is the company founder and with the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 under his belt he’s free to do pretty much whatever he wants – which apparently does not include any more Dungeons & Dragons.
Even if Larian Studios isn’t involved, there almost certainly will be a Baldur’s Gate 4. The first two games were early titles by BioWare but since they’re now owned by EA it seems Hasbro will need to find someone else to make the next one.
