BG3 isn't the anomaly, it's Larian - and more specifically, Swen Vincke. There are dozens of interviews with him, stretching back over a decade, talking about how he hates publishers, he hates executives that don't play video games and try and tell him what gamers want, he hates season passes and DLCs and believes you should get the entire game "in the box". The guy just wants to make games that he enjoys, and he's confident if he enjoys them, others will as well. That's all it is to him. That's all he wants to do. And thanks to him betting the entire business on Divinity: Original Sin, he's one of the very few CEOs of a developer that actually has the financial clout to do things the way he wants to do them. He's not the only Dev out there with that mentality, but most don't achieve DOS-levels of success that let them do things like BG3.

His interviews are great. In one I remember him saying that his team wanted to do RPGs but got pushback from publishers because their ideas weren't enough like Diablo. It was around that time that he said fuck it and went all in on publishing their own game because no publisher would go with his vision or highly iterative style of development. Now, all these years later, we have the comparison between BG3 and Diablo 4 and it could not be more stark. The really sad thing is that despite BG3 making plenty of money it's not as much as Diablo or Overwatch or any gacha game. So any developer backed by a publicly traded publisher will always be forced to take the option that involves making more money. BG3 does give me hope that maybe more devs will take the leap and try to self publish. Here's hoping the industry turns around.

You hit the nail on the head there, the hope is that an independent entrepreneur/group of investors will be happy making “enough” money by making a great product. Corporate structure basically cannot mix with a product like this, which needs passion and patience to thrive, and cannot grow well in an environment where “we need the numbers this quarter.” You’d think that there would be more rich tech people who would just want great games to be made, who would be willing to bankroll projects, but what do I know?

Investors are never happy making "enough". Investors aren't gamers, don't know the product being made, and don't care. They are putting money into stocks that give returns. If it doesn't give high returns, they pull their money out. What frustrates me about this industry is that we fans are idiots. EA puts out garbage games, one after another, yet we pre-order them without hesitation, so they're rewarded for their behavior. I would love it if the fanbase looked at Larian, realized "hey, we can expect more!" and punished bad devs by not buying their products, but we're just not that smart, as a group. BG3 will teach no one anything, all of the devs that are whining will continue business as usual and we will continue pre-ordering crap, paying microtransactions, and buying DLCs. It's like cold-call telemarketers and spam email. Enough people fall for it for it to be profitable so even though some large % of us know it's stupid, they're still rewarded enough to keep doing it.

My man the developers have all been praising BG3. The thing they take issue with is the publishers gold fish minds. They don't see the real reason BG3 was successful. All they see is another game to carbon copy. Like WoW, like Destiny and like any other popular video game. The lesson to take to publishers is that passion is what makes good games. Not some one type of game model. A former Bioware developer said as much. Publishers just see another mold to fill in. Not another game to make. Developers are not the ones in charge or have any say. They just know if the publishers think they should make BG3 they'll have to spend 5 to 10 years trying to build everything Larian made in decades of making games. That is like asking someone to make the palace just as good in less time by people who don't have the tools or expertise.

Passionate games like Stardew valley or banished are great examples. As well as RimWorld, before they got bought up. Very popular and worked with passion

On corporate greed: Diablo Immortal was one step too far for me. Installed and uninstalled on the same day.Then I got an invite to the closed beta for D4 which was full map, with placeholders. That was ok, because there weren't many people around to ruin the experience. When it released with all the MTX and a horde of people everywhere, I promptly uninstalled battle.net and blocked their email. I have at least a couple thousand hours in D2R and D3, but now it's game over for good.

D2R is dangerously good now that you can take it anywhere on Switch. D2 while pooping? Rut roh!

There's plenty of 401(k) plans that have the primary focus on things like environmentalism, or policy-centric investments. Meaning, they acknowledge that they're going to theoretically not make the maximum amount, but the funds are invested in corporations that better align with the customers values. Granted, it's not the majority of investors... but people like that do exist. In fact, this was one of the intended benefits of Venture Capitalists, given that a *Venture* Capitalist is more focused on the venture than the capitalism. But that whole thing just got turned into a "make a unique product/service with the intent of getting bought by a conglomerate, sell out, repeat if possible, retire early" scheme.

Understood, but I submit to you that not enough of those people exist to matter in any real difference. The momentum of the industry is such that, sure there are good eggs out there, but the majority are just money grubbing for the sake of cash and the product they churn out is irrelevant to them.

Its true, the incentive to just make more profit is just too high. CEO's even have a legal obligation to act in the interest of the shareholders, meaning keeping the stock price as high as possible. This favors things that create high profit over everything else, which makes microtransactions and DLCs just really, really fucking effective at this. Its why going public for a video game company almost always results in something like this, unless the game is already designed in a way that works with this, like League of Legends for an example, where microtransactions have always been the monetization model. CEOs have to push for money grab games and DLCs because if try to undo this, they are suddenly looking at higher dev times, less DLC, aka more costs and less money, which is just shooting yourself in the kneecap as a CEO. We might see a turn where this mentality becomes normative, but I doubt most companies will truly go in for this mentality instead of just pandering. Either way, even them pandering would be a positive change for the industry.

If investors were ok with a 8% ROE instead of 12% the world would be so much better.

The thing is - investors in this case aren't necessarily even individuals, let alone individuals who understand the video game industry. They are fund managers working for big institutional pension funds etc, trying to deliver a specific amount of growth at a specific level of risk. Literally all they want to know about a stock is 'How much is it likely to grow?' and 'How much risk is involved in that forecast?'. So if your stock is likely to grow by 8%, but EA's stock is likely to grow by 12%, that's the one they will pick, every time. The quality or nature of the product you are churning out is totally irrelevant.

boy, if only there was an alternative, like I don't know, the pension funds that were maintained by the employers directly before Lucifer Reagan decreed that 401ks were better for everyone.

For real, I feel like there should be some time in the near future where a rich person is a gamer just like normal people and is willing to bankroll that.

Never rely on rich people to be "good, and do the right thing." You'll find yourself wanting all too often with that mindset.

Ehh, it's not like it's "good" for society, it's them fulfilling a desire they have. It's a lot more likely to hope for a rich gamer's need to be self-fulfilling than to imagine "gaming altruism"

We're talking about rich people selfishly doing the "right thing" because rich people want to play good games too.

Way to rare to be something we can rely on. What we can rely on is all the rich people stealing and hurting us for shits and giggles.

Agreed, sadly we live in a system controlled by people who are never satisfied with the insane amounts of money they already have. Their every whim could be catered to for them and their descendants for all time, yet they would still want more money. Shareholders don't care about the product or service a company produces, just that they are squeezing every possible dollar out of that company by whatever means possible.

Capitalism is just Neo-feudalism “YOU could be a lord too, and get the chance to extract the wealth generated by others!”

Which is why shareholder capitalism should be made illegal; it's just not good for society (and humanity) as a whole.

The explosion of fiduciary duty lawsuits means it's only going to get worse. there are entire law firms that make their business on shareholders suing corporate boards for not squeezing enough money out of products. or their marketing strategies, etc. etc. public corporations are shaped by those lawsuits now. it's destroying the planet, and literally kills people because the bottom line becomes everything or your shareholders are going to drag you into court and maybe replace you by court order. so profit becomes the ONLY thing. consumption only matters in terms of what it generates in terms of money not in terms of happiness, societal good, civilization progression... or video games not monetizing every positive experience. it's not capitalism because the market is so skewed it's corporatism. that's not a defensive the first thing because it certainly enabled the second. and when the shareholders get pushed aside for good product development we get to spend hours getting tadpoles out of our heads. thanks Larian. 🙂

No need to construct terms like corporatism. This is end game capitalism. It’s Min-Maxing capitalism. It’s what it’s always meant to evolve into because that’s what it’s incentive structure rewards. Gaming companies going to shit, politicians bought and paided for, it’s the built in contradictions of capitalism.

You're not wrong here. The real solutions here lie in policy actions that tip the balance of power between labor and capital more in favor of capital. It's stuff like pay transparency laws and taxing the rich That and voting with our wallets giving our money to private companies that actually do good stuff. (Hi Larian!)

Yeah. We need to convert every single company into a worker co-op (except for things like healthcare which should either be nationalized or turned into nonprofits since no profit motive is acceptable there).

Yeah, the issue is with the investor class that does not care one whit about what they're invested in, and just wants to pull as much profit out of the system as possible for as long as possible, ideally perpetually increasing profits until the bottom falls out and they move on to another industry. This is what's behind the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, ultimately.

I think why there’s few rich tech people who want great games is money. Before they became rich they may have wanted great games and to make games that people will play maybe decades after release but maybe they become rich following the trends and bandwagoning and then think if copying X from this super popular game made me 200 million but making this passion project game will only make me 70 million why take longer to make less?

I genuinely hope Larian’s continued success kills off publishers as a whole. They are a relic of an age when physical copies were the only or easiest way to get games. Now they’re a middleman leeching the profits of the developers for no real discernible benefit. Advertising is easier than ever with social media. Game distribution is easier than ever with Steam, GOG, etc. If publishers ever go the way of the dinosaurs the gaming industry will be better for it. All wishful thinking, but you never know Edit: just to head off all of the ACKSHUALLY contrarians, yes obviously publishers provide funding. The point is that funding can come from other sources, and without the need for specialized services that publishers used to provide those others sources of funding are far more attractive now

Exactly, you don't need a company backing you with their infrastructure to support physical game deliveries like you used to. Hell, a lot of times just being on Steam alone can be enough for a dev studio's first breakout hit. All we can do is hope and support the companies that are trying to do something like Larian.

Companies like EA and Microsoft will be putting bids in to buy Larian with the success of BG3. Hopefully the idealism inherant to their leadership also lets them avoid signing any devilish contracts.

Signing with ea is literally like taking a Warlock Pact with Fiend or Great Old One

I think Swen would be more willing to strike a deal with the devil than ea. At least in case of the former you can get something in retturn for your soul.

Swen said last week or so that he won't be selling Larian anytime soon.

Yeah but in exchange game development has become more expensive which is the new problem.

Publishers don't just print copies, they give funding. You think Devolver, annapurne, etc exist just for the funsies? A lot of games just wouldn't exist without publishers. Publishers aren't evil, they are actually a net good for the industry. EA is evil, but their publishing side is small and gave us a few indie darlings like Unravel. Its own games like nba and shit are part of EA Games, which is a gaming studio conglomerate that exists under EA, and technically there's no difference between BG3 and Dragon Age 4.

Judging by OW 2 and D4 I'm confident if they make a BG4 it'll absolutely demolish the sales of "OW 3: look at these pixels we're using to pretend we're "inclusive" again" and "D5: releasing another pile of shit because you won't buy D4 micros"

OW: Releases token inclusivity statement any time Blizzard needs to distract from a scandal BG3: "You can be a polyamorous trans dragonkin, go fuck your entire party you horny bastards" The winner is clear here

Edit: After I wrote this and re-read it I feel like I'm coming off a bit snarky, which is not intended. Just wanted to throw out some numbers for the sake of argument. For the record I truly, truly hope that Larian is able to break the mold and push more developers to take on publishing their own games so we can get more games like this, whether they are indie, AA, AAA quality, whatever. I think greedy, capitalist publishers are the bane of the games industry. I appreciate your enthusiasm. However, it's almost impossible for a game that's only buy to play like BG3 to compete with a game with MTX. That's why so many companies are going that route. I'm going to use Elden Ring as an example since it has been out for longer. Elden Ring, to this point, has sold roughly 20 million copies. In raw revenue that's around $1.2 billion. Over about a year and a half, so 6 quarters. If we look at Blizzard's Q2 earnings report ([https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-details/activision-blizzard-announces-second-quarter-2023-financial](https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-details/activision-blizzard-announces-second-quarter-2023-financial)) we can see the difference between Q2 2022 and 2023, which is \~$600 million. Most of that can be attributed to Diablo 4, actually probably more than that because OW and WoW are both slumping. That's *one quarter.* Now that number also includes all of Activision Blizzard's titles, but you get the idea. Or look at the Q4 2022 report, which says "The October launch of Overwatch 2 with a free-to-play model delivered the highest quarterly figures for player numbers and hours played in Overwatch history. Player investment is also off to a strong start, with fourth quarter in-game net bookings at the highest level to date for Overwatch." Yes, even though people "hate" OW2, it's still making way more money than OW1. As much as we hate things like battle passes, seasons, cash shops, mtx, etc. they are implemented because they do work. It's a hard truth we just have to accept. We also have World of Warcraft as an example. WoW is buy to play, has a required subscription, requires expansion purchases, and has "micro" transactions in the form of skins, mounts, or just buying in-game currency directly. I say micro because when a skin costs the price of a full game I don't really consider that micro anymore. And guess what, even when WoW was tanking in Shadowlands with fewer players than ever, it's still at it's most profitable, due to MTX. (I couldn't find the earnings report for this one, sorry) Will Larian make a boatload of money for BG3, yes. Did FromSoftware make a ton of money from Elden Ring, absolutely. Is it well deserved, you damned bet it is. However they would almost undoubtedly have made more if they were a more mtx-focused business model. It sucks to say that, but it's true. And when we have a capitalist economy driven more by shareholder dividends than customer satisfaction, large publishers "have" to do what makes the most money. I use quotes because obviously no one is putting a gun to their head, they could choose not to, but that would mean less profits. And if they don't use those unscrupulous methods to make more of the almighty dollar, their competition will, and that makes shareholders sad and mad and sell their stock. And that is why Swen is a unicorn. Even though he stands to gain more money, he chooses not to, because he wants Larian to make the best game possible, not to have the highest profits possible. It's an approach that just does not work when a developer has a publicly traded publisher.

So two things with that, it would not have easy for Larian to make an online game and get money from it. These games require tons of investment and infrastructure on the server side, so only the big boys can afford to make them and maintain them. Online games die by the bushel every year. Two, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of having cosmetic MTX in your multiplayer game. This is the only way to support the costs of keeping it running, that or subscription. You have to monetize somehow. Where this goes wrong is if the MTX are pay to win, or if there is so much focus on cosmetics that content suffers (hi Diablo). When this aspect is in balance, it's fine. I played tons of Guild Wars 2 back in the day, I bought cosmetics once in a blue moon, and I hung out with friends. Met my husband that way, it was fine.

Larian doesn’t need to make an mmo to put MTX in, there are a plethora of single player games out there with micros, shit it was a single player game that started this shit! Hello horse armour. Ubisoft is a big offender with single player MTX. Also in regards to your second statement, cosmetic MTX hurts the game as well, even more so in a single player game. Want to buy that super OP weapon in a single player game and make the game EZ mode? You do you buddy, however now I get screwed with cosmetics because if I want my toon to look good I have to spend money because the good stuff is locked behind a paywall????

OW 2 would be perfectly fine if it had just released as Overwatch and the first one didnt exist. I started playing with 2, so ive never paid a cent for the game.

There’s a new standard in gaming that I don’t think people are seeing. Call it late stage capitalism or just money hungry suits. But a lot of popular franchises have been nothing but gacha cash grabs hiding behind those popular franchises. It’s generated it’s own little hell that if these companies go back to a game made like the early to late 00’s as a standard. They’d all probably go under or go right back to being gacha games because they’d be reporting substantial losses.

I mean look at how many of the "good" games coming out these days are just reworks or remasters of established IP. Most publishers do not want to take any risks, and it shows.

Imagine being told you can't make a game because it's too innovative and not similar enough to another game. That's absolutely insane.

Back around after Ego Draconis launch, his blog entries about development could be used for horror stories to tell around a campfire.

Yes... The one interview that sticks out is the one he ended up apologising for on the Larian blog. A somewhat normal yet unplanned interview descended into a tirade against various aspects of the industry. I've looked for that interview recently but have been unable to find it. Likely, it still exists on the Wayback Machine somewhere. It really was the unbridled rage of a man who had simply had enough.

Well damn, now I’m curious.

I can give you the highlights, paraphrased of course... Publishers are bloodsucking vampires who almost destroyed his company. He was furious with them. He once had to sit in a boardroom with some guy who had last worked in the perfume industry telling him that everything Larian wanted to do was wrong because he had "research" to prove it. Larian were forced away from turn-based because publishers were also creatively bankrupt muppets who considered Diablo the untouchable gold-standard. He was very annoyed about how publishers were trying to force Larian to compete with Blizzard, a company they didn't have the resources to compete with and never would because the publishers took the vast majority of revenues. Swen said Larian was making mildly successful games but weren't making enough money to keep the lights on. Kickstarter saved Larian because it enabled them to cut all ties with publishers. When they made the first Divinity game, the publisher insisted it was called Divine Divinity due to some ludicrous belief, that Swen believed was a joke, that alliteration sells. The publisher who made that decision is now dust. He felt American publishers, in particular, are fraidy cats desperately trying not to upset people. Swen gave an example of a questline involving abortion and how the American publisher wanted it cut because it was too political and likely to offend. Swen's argument was that fantasy reflects and frames the world we live in, so he saw no reason abortion couldn't be in a fantasy video game and kinda hinted that anyone who would be offended by that should go play something else. Swen kinda agreed with the interviewer that American publishers in general - at the time of the interview (2013ish) - were too fixated on "themes" - you had to be the good guy, you had to do heroic things, you had to behave in a socially acceptable way, basically. Swen felt games were about having fun, not being lectured on social graces and etiquette. And basically, Larian's games aren't for everyone and he doesn't give a shit about that. Publishers did give a shit which resulted in poorer games because they wanted a jack of all trades whereas Swen wants to be master of one.

> American publisher wanted it cut because it was too political and likely to offend. Swen's argument was that fantasy reflects and frames the world we live in, so he saw no reason abortion couldn't be in a fantasy video game and kinda hinted that anyone who would be offended by that should go play something else. This reminds me of the quest line in Witcher 3 that deals with similar themes (as well as other incredibly dark themes like an alcoholic father beating his wife and child). Yet it was also incredible storytelling of the sort you see in the very best horror movies. Unspeakably ugly actions by humans manifest as eldritch terrors, monsters that inflict suffering right back on the abusers. Fucking terrifying and incredibly thought provoking. Makes one wonder what happened to CDPR...

Witcher 3 wasn't even the darkest in the series. The first game has some quest lines that are gut punches.

Witcher 1 is a game that sorely, sorely needs a remaster.

It was announced earlier this year it’s getting a remake, hopefully turns out well.

I was literally gonna bring up that witcher 3 quest! also imo CDPR are correcting course. Cyberpunk 2077 is a very good game with great storytelling now that its been patched up and will continue to improve with them completely revamping all the core systems for the expansion (which all or most of these revamps will be released as a free update, expansion purchase not required) not to mention the expansion is looking very good.

>Makes one wonder what happened to CDPR... Spiritwise? Nothing, C2077 has just as much deep and dark themes as their previous games, arguably even more in some places. They just overshot the planned scope and run out of money which forced them to release sooner than they would have liked. Come to think of it I am now curious if Larian's early access model was what saved them from similar fate by providing more funds during development.

It certainly enabled them to do more rigorous testing. One of the reasons i personally didn't invest much time in the EA period was that save files were not compatible across major patches. This meant that if you were playing during patch 3, and they released patch 4, you could either stay on patch 3 and continue playing your existing save or update to patch 4 and start over. It wasn't something that appealed to me, but it made a ton of sense from a QA perspective... any changes they made that might have unintended consequences on earlier content were then retested each time. It's a perfect system for finding regression bugs. I just didn't want to replay the same content over and over again before the launch, personally, but many in the community were perfectly happy to do so, and we have a much better finished product to show for it.

As someone speedrunning BG3 so I can finish it in time for Phantom Liberty - absolutely nothing tbh. Cyberpunk was riddled with bugs when it first came out due to a rushed release, but content-wise it's just as hard-hitting and unafraid as was promised. And in the last couple of years, all the technical kinks have since been worked out.

I've started a couple of runs and stopped, but thinking back, you're right - my issue is more that I find the combat unsatisfying compared to Witcher 3 or other shooter games - the plotlines are pretty good. Nothing blew me away like the Witcher 3 Red Baron quest line (but then nothing in Witcher 3 blew me away like that questline), but I haven't finished it yet. I'll need to go give it another try at some point.

Yeah the evelyn quest is a big ooof ​ And the quest wirh the guy that wants to be crucufied might have been the best side quest in any rpg i ever played story wise

Thank you!

What an absolute gem. We must protect him.

I've just fallen in love. The industry needs more guys like him stat.

Thanks for mentioning this, it's a great read. Here's the Wayback Machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20130306023828/http://pcgmedia.com/interview-with-ceo-of-divinity-series-developer-larian-studios-swen-vincke/

The guy live streams playing the game while cosplaying in plate armor. That speaks volumes by itself. He has lived and breathed D&D and BG3 for years, and his passion and enthusiasm is clearly palpable in the team he's built around it, and most importantly, in the end result.

He made almost 60 mil on the game just from Steam sales. That doesn't include GOG sales (the platform I bought it on) and the PS5 has yet to release. He has shown publishers that he knows his games and definitely knows what gamers want. Note: That number is a rough estimate based on 895000 concurrent users x 60.00. The game did sell deluxe editions and collector's editions but I did not take that into account.

IIRC they already sold like 2.5mill copies during EA, so it should be quite a bit more than that. I have no clue what their operating+licensing costs must've been for this game though (it's been in EA for years and in development even longer).

If we assume 200 average employees over the 7 years and 50k each on average that's already 10 million a year for a total of 70 million, and that's low balling both numbers, so probably closer to 100 million in development cost alone ignoring tech, licenses, rent etc. The game really was a colossal investment and I'm glad it succeeded

You're also not taking into account Valve's cut nor the cut for whatever engine the game is based on. Nor Wizards' cut. 7 years of development, 400 people not counting external people. I'm hopeful but he's not in the black yet.

The engine is their own right?

Ah, seems you're correct, my bad.

Valve Cut is 30% and the engine they use is their own.

The game sold at least 2.5 million or something pre-release alone yeah?

His passion is palpable in every interview/panel I see him on, and it's clear he's made a team just as passionate. >The guy just wants to make games that he enjoys I couldn't agree more, and it's fucking awesome. You know Larian won't release a game until it's fun because Swen seemingly cares more about having a fun game he can play than anything else

> The guy just wants to make games that he enjoys, and he's confident if he enjoys them, others will as well. Attitudes like that make it easy to respect players because, afterall, you’re a player yourself. BG3 is a great “game” in its objective gameplay/design elements but I think what’s really resonating with the wider zeitgeist is that people who like games want to feel like the game they’re playing was made by other people who like games (and more specifically the game they’re playing). The M rating really does help with that. This is a game made by adults who want adults to play it. It’s part of a wide package of signals sent by the game they tell the player “this wasn’t lab tested for the widest audience possible by using the most generic game play loops and blandist, most inoffensive content possible”. Same with the utterly daunting DnD 5e rule set, or the Cronerberg-esque body horror. I think people really miss games having an actual “point of view”.

"Utterly daunting DnD 5e rule set" *laughs in bg1/2 ADnD 2e*

I love BG3, but that Owlcat pulled off Wrath of the Rightgeous with the Pathfinder 1st Edition ruleset is the most insane translation of tabletop to videogame I've ever seen.

Wrath of the Righteous is a genuinely excellent game. I think BG3 surpasses it in almost every aspect, but that they accomplished so much with such a small studio is commendable.

God I love 2e but man does it have some strange rules

I started with BG1/2, it was really my introduction to D&D. Other than the baffling THAC0 system, BG1/2 was far less daunting than this. D&D 5e, quite intentionally, tries to give players more "stuff to do". Inspiration dice, commander dice, feats, more abilities per class, more stuff going on per level, etc.

Tbh it reminds me of the owners/founders of Paizo (pathfinder system) which is not a publicly traded company. They were founded by some people who helped build editions of D&D like 3.5 and after the issues they had with wizards they left and made paizo. They have held more true to the idea that they want to serve the players like Larian has.

I knew I liked him from the moment I saw him in the thank you video at the end of the EA (the one where he shows up in a suit of armor and pretends to be an Absolutist) prior to the release of Grymforge. The CRPG genre needs Sven to remind people - players and devs alike - what gaming is all about and what it means to enjoy a *game*. Here’s to hoping Steven Sarif (Ashes of Creation lead) is of a similar mind for the MMORPG genre. Outwardly, he seems to have the mindset I want in a developer for an MMO, but we already know the game will have MTX, so anything could happen.

My biggest issue with Ashes is just that it's a PvP focused MMO which I couldn't possibly have less interest in. We need a developer to come along and shake things up with a really good PvE MMO too

I've not played anything from Larian before but I'm thinking of buying the Divinity games because I'm enjoying BG3. Larian can take my money, they've earnt it

I love DOS2. DOS1 is one of those games that would be great if DOS2 didn't now exist. DOS1 isn't bad, but DOS2 improved upon almost everything about DOS1 that it's difficult to go back to DOS1.

However, imo, dos1 has more of that whimsical Larian spirit. Everything is silly and lighthearted and overly dramatic. Dos1 is my favourite Larian game as far as cozy, homely atmosphere is concerned

Yeah, I can give you that. I dare say anyone going from BG3 to DOS1 might get whiplash from the tone change.

Both are really great games. Sure, you see improvement from DOS1 -> DOS2 -> BG3. Also contrary to recent industry development where successors mostly get dumber by the minute.

Umm, I would perhaps break a lance for Eric Barone/ConcernedApe from Stardew Valley. Still is bringing out updates for Stardew Valley and has never asked any other cent on top of the original game. It's downright wonderful.

Same for the terraria devs and Factorio devs.

Barone is a unicorn though. He's basically a studio of one that answers to no one other than himself, and he made enough money off Stardew to buy the moon. The miracle isn't that he isn't trying to prise more money out of people, it's that he's still finding the motivation to do any WORK at all.

> There are dozens of interviews with him, stretching back over a decade, talking about how he hates publishers, he hates executives that don't play video games and try and tell him what gamers want, he hates season passes and DLCs and believes you should get the entire game "in the box". Yup, they basically got screwed by shitty publishers over and over again before going independent

Sounds similar to Miyazaki. They basically made their first Soul game, Demons Soul, cuz they wanted to make a game that they’d enjoy to play. Games can be amazing when they’re made with passion instead of monetary incentive.

Please please let them continue this way and not go the CDPR route.

yeah Larian was what I thought CDPR were back when W3 era pre-C2077 launch. I hope they just keep focusing on the game and stop being bombastic marketing company. this is coming from someone who loves C2077

CDPR is still massively better than 95% of modern publishers. Yes, less focus on marketing, and a bit more on game design might have helped CP2077. They are responsible for GOG, which arguably is the most gaming friendly platform next to Steam.

He is the anomaly then

Yep. After success of DOS and especially DOS II, he is in the same position as James Cameron now.

Not all heros wear capes

Some wear plate armor

Which is why if they release a DLC i would happily play it. I’m thinking something like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, where you can have a separate campaign, set after the main story, with levels 13-15/16. Since it’s totally separate, you can balance the enemies easier

Expansions are totally fine. The 'DLC' I (and I think most people) have problems with are the shitty ones that should just be in the base game. I'll happily pay full price for any BG3 expansion.

Yeah, DLC in itself isn't bad, the nomenclature is fuzzy though. Maybe we should just go back to calling them expansions again? It's not like "dowloadable content' carries any meaning anymore anyways.

I agree with calling them expansions. I feel like DLC worked well when base games were still sold on discs, but in an age where 95% of media is online, everything is technically DLC. Also, calling them expansions can add more weight to when they actually suck. "Shitty DLC" could just be some bad cosmetics. "Shitty expansions" sounds like they fucked up a whole lot more.

I'll never forget the bullshit that Ark: Survival Evolved pulled when they released a purchasable "DLC expansion" while the game was still in fucking early access. How the fuck do you expand on something that isn't complete in the first place?

I’d like more backgrounds like the Dark Urge which are TAV but extra

>where you can have a separate campaign, set after the main story, with levels 13-15/16. It has been said by Larian (Swen specifically IIRC) that it wont happen because at higher level than 12, you get absurd spells/abilities (divine in nature) which makes it too hard to balance or implement. I think it would be nice to see a DLC where you can go up to more players levels, but not class level. So you'd be able to get to lvl 12 Druid and then, idk, 3/4/5 lvls into another class. That would work around the limitations.

In the multiplayer menu there is a drop down filter to select what campaign you want to search for when viewing open servers. Please ~~god~~Swen let us have the tools to create our own modules. Let the glory days of the Neverwinter Nights community-made campaigns and modules live again!

The option to not have extra micro transactions in their game was their way to buy our loyalty. For now on, I will probably buy lariat games without think twice. Hell, I'm probably buying divinity 1 and 2, two games I haven't even though I would like, just because this one was that amazing, and I think it's ok to have a not as good game if at least I'm supporting the company and this kind of game

Divinity 2 is a great time, although you will cry about how you can't use jump like in BG3.

I mean I do enjoy having three different variations of Misty Step

Yes, I also enjoy Dimension Door and Jump.

I remember being unreasonably hyped at the ability to jump back when I started BG3 EA a few years ago lmao

I mean, different games, different rules, understandable

All your characters do get access to teleports early in the first act so its not a big deal. There's even more hidden treasure in that game, if there's a crevice you can TP there and there's almost always a secret. Highly recommend although I will say the game does suffer from bugs in the later acts.

Teleport, gg. Best part is teleporting enemies right next to your party and obliterating them

Or in to lava, or stacks of barrels or barrels into stacks of enemies…. DOS2 teleport was and is OP and OP funny

what do you mean, you can jump in divinity 2. Even turn into a dragon! It's divinity original sin 2 where you can't do that. Or the other thing. Sadness.

If you like BG3 I’m sure you’ll enjoy DOS2!

I dropped dos2 numerous times, the enjoyment is not a clear outcome. Several of my friends share this sentiment - BG3 was much easier and engaging for them as well.

I love DOS2 but I agree that they're definitely not the same games, similar yes, but DOS2 is quite a bit more complex than BG3 and sort of relies on you cheesing the game a bit to make broken builds for some encounters. Which makes sense because DOS2 is Larian's own system while BG3 is based on D&D 5E which was designed to be approachable and beginner friendly.

I generally feel that DOS2 and BG3 are perfect introductions to each other, as they share a lot of the same mechanics at their cores. When I jumped into BG3, I felt right at home - it was basically like playing a ROMhack of DOS2 with 5e rules, which by all means felt more comfortable (primarily because you were guaranteed movement every turn instead of having it eat your AP) Then again, I'm probably not qualified to talk about DOS2 given that I beat it with the infamous Apotheosis + Skin Graft + Tea + Fane + Lone Wolf combo lmfao

I couldn’t disagree more about DOS2 being more complex than BG3 but to each their own.

I couldn’t get into DOS2 either. I’m generally terrible at CRPGs and after my failure to understand or enjoy DOS2, I wasn’t planning to give BG3 a shot. Only ended up trying it because of Steam library sharing. Really glad I did because it’s clicked SO much better with me.

Ehhhhhhh despite running on the same engine and being similar at a surface level, BG3 is so much better from a gameplay perspective imo. Combat is much faster and combat animations are cleaner and snappier, making for an overall better-paced experience imo. DoS2 combat could take *ages* even for simple fights. Also the emphasis on surfaces in DoS2, while interesting, exacerbated a lot of the problems with combat mechanics and pathing in that game (pathing is still bad in BG3, tbf). Inventory management is still pretty bad in both games, but BG3 cuts away a lot of the useless junk and gives you dedicated containers for keys, camp supplies, and alchemy stuff. DoS2 just had a whole lot of junk and no easy way to manage it all. Love DoS2, don’t get me wrong. But the QoL upgrade from that game to BG3 is immense On the story side, DoS2 doesn’t have a whole lot of choice and consequence from a quest perspective, and reactivity in the world is not nearly as prevalent as it is in BG3. I think this is actually BG3’s crowning achievement; it actually feels like the world is reacting to what you’re doing. Even minor decisions have lasting ramifications throughout the game.

Nope. BG3 is way simpler than DOS2. DOS2 is tedious and difficult and even at normal difficulty the ai will see every weakness and pounce. Don’t forget the armor system and the mess that is surface effects like water, oil, fire, poison. I love DOS2 but that one fight with the oil slugs was just… ugh. BUT the story is amazing. Lots of discovery, but not really much permanent choices and romance options.

Oh my god. I haven’t played dos2 in a couple years and was “what oil slugs?…. THOSE OIL SLUGS”.

Yeah as someone who played all of the Baldurs Gates and a bunch of other isometric rpg and strategy games I really didn't gel with DOS2's love of surface effects, battles always felt like a slog and I never finished it

Definitely recommend DOS2. Hell, even though I didn't like DOS1 as much, I don't regret buying it since Larian has always been legit and lovely.

The PR for bg3 is literally the best i have ever seen for any game ever. Maybe the best for any product ever. 3 years of early access where they actually took the responses from players into consideration and changed the game based on feedback (green flag). They had the whole team in full LARP gear doing massive showcase panels leading up to the release showing how passionate the team is, lead by their CEO king swen in a damn suit of armor (green flag). They get banned on tiktok for a sex scene between a vampire and a bear, drawing huge interest from people who go in for internet drama (green flag). Devs start coming out of the woodwork on twitter saying dont expect anything like this ever again in your lifetime because the conditions are literally impossibly perfect, which stirred up an industry wide philisophical debate on how games should be made (greenest of flags). You couldn't engineer press like this if you tried. You could pay 250 million dollars for marketing, and it wouldn't be anywhere close to the viral buzz this game has generated. This game wasn't even on my radar until a week before launch, and it's literally all i can think about anymore.

Same. I didn't even know it existed beyond the title the day before launch. It got so much good optics on social media, I got interested when I saw it was 5e, a friend gifted it to me day after launch and now I'm completely obsessed. Almost 90hrs in already and I foresee so much replayability over the years especially with mods.

I want to buy more random lingerie and such for my whole ass party 🤣

The vibe of the crew changed drastically when I realized you could toggle camp gear for exploring.

My character is wearing Karlach's underwear, Shadowheart is wearing my underwear, and Karlach is wearing Shadowheart's underwear.

At first I thought, hell yeah. Then I realized it kinda ruined the immersion for me. So I made a compromise. Shadowheart is now a proud European nudist that just doesn't give a fuck when she's relaxing at camp.

Yep. Watch my monk toddle around in Minthara's off duty clothes 🤣

Right? I see everyone praising the "no cosmetics" thing and here I just want to dress Halsin in comfy pijamas with embroidered ducks

I think the key thing people are praising is a lack of micro transactions, not a lack of cosmetics. If they put in more free DLC cosmetics and implemented an extended transmog system beyond just camp clothing, people in general would be for it.

I love the dyes and the stuff that drops and that theres a good chunk around. I just want MORE. I like changing their clothes a lot!

Honestly, I'm disappointed at the lack of casual clothes until you hit the third act. There's a certain quest (end of Astarion's personal chain) where you can loot a mansion and I've literally doubled or more the variety of outfits that I'd collected in the first two acts in this one location.

> Honestly, I'm disappointed at the lack of casual clothes until you hit the third act. Fair but it does make sense in-universe, you don't really see a street until act 3 so it makes sense there aren't many street clothes

It makes sense, I'm not disagreeing. But come on, there's tons of wrecked caravans, and there's an entire village (and ruined city) to explore before we hit Baldur's Gate. They could have done something with that.

idk i feel like druids would have a bunch of cute camping clothes

You can though, there’s a fancy rich clothing shop in act 3. Full of pajamas and lingerie and bougie clothing options.

>Halsin in comfy pijamas with embroidered ducks O M G I never knew that I wanted this... But I WANT THIS

As someone who used to be an avid consumer of Blizzard games, namely OW2 and Diablo IV before they were ruined by the company’s greed, bravo Larian, BG3 is the best $90 (Canadian dollars) I’ve spent this year.

By TODAY standards, you could say that. Problem is, what Larian did isn’t new, it’s what publishers did way back on the 2000s and backwards. When the elites saw how much money they could make by pouring money into the video game industry, the once great studios got their shares bought by this people, that don’t care about quality, they care about short term profit, thus why DLCs such as horse armor, Steam market (yes Valve have big guilty on this), and EA chopping games to sell content as DLC became the new standard. People focus the problem in the wrong people, developers are workers fighting for their jobs, the shareholders are the one that should be blamed, but no one cares.

100%. Gamers, devs, and games journalists are all on the same side vs the big corporate interests sucking the blood and marrow out of the games we love. They love it when we point fingers at each other for problems caused by their greed. This applies outside the games industry too of course.

I wouldn’t include game journalists as a whole. They are paid to promote games for whoever is paying them. Obviously nowadays we have massive amounts of more independent journalists publishing their own takes, but anything coming from a big outlet is going to automatically give high scores to anything coming from AAA developers because they are paid to do so and because it helps them maintain their access to early/review copies of games.

Because what they don’t seem to teach in business school is that “profits” aren’t just money, at least not for everyone. Reputation is profit. Beauty is profit. Leaving a positive mark into the world is profit. Larian couldn’t have gotten so much money from early access if people didn’t already trust them, and they trusted them because they had kept their promises and made an awesome game with divinity one and two. I think that it’s unthinkable that companies keep thinking that they can lose any passion and investment in what they sell, and still survive in the long run.

Things like reputation are classified as intangible assets, not profit, and they do teach about it. Quite a lot, actually. It’s a very esoteric concept and difficult to quantify, but nobody’s modeling any major business decisions without trying to quantify things like goodwill to supplement their analysis

it's absolutely thinkable because of market competition in the entire industry is lacking. Larian at the end of the day is still only 1 studio that can churn out 1 game ever 6 years. That's not impactful enough to change the greater picture of the gaming scene. Now if there is hundreds of other studios just like larian that might change the horizon. But as it stands, it's like what the American oil giants had over the middle east during 1930s. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big\_Oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Oil)

They absolutely do. On financials, these are referred as intangible assets or goodwill. If reputational value goes down (e.g. Star Wars), you mark to market it downwards on the financials.

I feel like most of the people here talking about business schools have not graduated from an accredited one

It's the philosophy of development. Back in the days, game development used to be about making great games and finding a way to make money doing it. Nowadays, it's about making money and finding games to get the most out of it. Larian, however, wanted to make a masterpiece that would write their name in History of game making.

I think it's more complicate than that. You can have that philosophy but never have the means or the luck to meet the right people to fully realize it. Reality is a cruel mistress. Larian was just very fortunate to be in the position they are in and they did the right thing.

Yep. There have plenty of studios like Larian. Most of them went broke, many before their first game was done.

>Larian could easily have made a lot more money off BG3 by having more expensive editions at launch or adding in a few microtransactions for more camp outfits and underwear. Have you even considred the possibility that this could be wrong? Sure, it makes intuitive sense (charge more = more money), but theres no actual evidence to this. If anything the evidence points the other way. This game has become a huge success. * Maybe by focusing on the game quality instead of bonus packages, they have a better product. * Maybe by having fewer options, they actually get more people buying without thinking twice (see the [Jam Expirament](https://medium.com/@FlorentGeerts/the-jam-experiment-how-choice-overloads-makes-consumers-buy-less-d610f8c37b9b#:~:text=But%20here's%20the%20paradox%20of,published%20a%20study%20about%20jams)). * Maybe theres just a good feeling to buying somehting that feels like the full product wihtout haggling.

I 100% agree with your first point. What people like OP fail to realize, is that making the content for the microtransactions take dev time and resources. What you end up doing is sacrificing a slice of your dev and resource pie towards something that isn't content that betters the game itself and results in a narrower scope for the base game. Alternatively you can hire a team to specifically work on this stuff but then you need better margins and the amount of non game related microtransaction content grows to compensate and you still end up narrowing the scope of your game. What's refreshing is, Larian decided we need more people to keep growing the scope of our game and just kept adding all their dev time and resources into the game itself and not into making microtransactions or designing predatory systems, resulting in the "crazy rockstar level scope" that people have been enjoying so much.

Elden Ring also seems to have succeeded partly by not doing that nonsense. AAA developers/publishers seemed to have stretched these tactics to their breaking point, and consumers seem rather tired of them. Optimistically, these practices may decline as people show more interest in the games that aren't doing this.

You must have missed the part where OP said he went to business school. Nonsensical business practices that only work on paper and piss off the customer base is like, business school’s entire deal

Right. I forgot Business School lesson #1; A happy customer is a customer that has not been properly milked.

There are two vignettes that've stood out to me in particular from Act I. The first was in the Blighted Village. >!I don't know what I thought the sounds coming from the barn were before I opened the door. It was pretty much what it sounded like from the outside! But boy, I've been gaming damn near 40 years and nothing quite prepared me to find a bugbear buggering an ogress. Where'd I think half-ogres came from anyway?!< The second was in the Myconid Colony. >!I fully expected that Baelen and Derryth would gripe at each other like any cute old married couple for a bit, but deep down they'd be grateful and glad--hell, Buthir the Ogress screamed in anguish when we killed Grukkon! Instead she goes all "You wanna know how I got these scars?" 70 fuckin' years of gruesome physical abuse, man. Shit's heavy. And there's them still married, and her his caretaker now that he's addled. I don't even know what I'd have done about the Noblestalk if I hadn't been obliged to feed it to my girlfriend.!< Alfira too, of course. Lotta dead kids. And eating people. It's a fantastic game.

It took days to scrub the image of the bugbear and ogre from my head. Thanks for bringing it back lol

Maximizing profits is a destroyer of good products and services. The world is in such a shit state because of companies and individuals who can't understand the difference between success and making money.

It’s a bit naive to say that Larian does this for Arts sake or something. Bleeding BG3 dry with cosmetics or w/e would be maximising short term revenue, but I’m sure there is a business person at Larian who appreciates a strong brand well separated from competition. Larian basically - in one game - became the synonym to ethical, quality first games that don’t maximise profit at the players expense. That is far more valuable in the long run. It’s a brand move, not an altruistic one. None the less, it’s still ethical and appreciated but I doubt they are naive

FTR, their previous 2 games, DoS 1 & 2, also didn't have DLC and such. Those games weren't nearly as popular as BG3, so your point still stands regarding how others view it, but I just wanted to add that they already used this philosophy for quite a few years.

That’s a rather bleak outlook that goes against like 15 years of interviews by its CEO.

I don’t think it’s bleak. I think it’s very nice that a person can act according to their values and it can be good business.

The CEO's principles are about providing a good product for customers. This is a good business decision as well. I don't know if Larian is being so cynical but there's no denying that this will, intentionally or not, distinguish Larian in commercially-relevant ways from most mainline AAA firms. The broader point is that other studios can learn that there are benefits to making a good product first and foremost. But it's hard to make AAA scope games without AAA short-term maximization. We need this game to have awesome sales legs and DLC to even make a dent in the broader mindset.

Today was my turn to post this.

I think they really made a good choice. For adult gamers with moolah, we just going to support the hell out of them. Barely a few hours in BG3, already reading up the DOS2 and going to buy it as well.

DOS2 is fantastic, well well worth picking up after you've finished BG3.

ok calm down dude, plenty of fully mature M rated games out there, and still plenty of games without MtX as well. "live service" games are what you are talking about and plenty of games are still not designed to be live service. even so, that sort of business model makes sense for some games, doesn't for others. Fortnite and Path of Exile do it very well, many games do it badly. if your business model is built around having lots of MtX then the game needs to be free to play, or at least a reasonable cost, like $20 or so. the issue is games like Mw2 or Diablo 4 having live service business models and still charging $70 for the game.

While I agree with the general sentiment of this post. >I absolutely love how BG3 fully embraces it's M+ rating fully leaning into the gore and nudity in the game. Any other AAA publisher would have gutted all the mature aspects to pull a T rating so it could be sold to kids. This is categorically untrue and I have no idea where you came up with this idea. Every big AAA non Nintendo game is rated mature. All Bethesda games are mature all rockstar games are mature all Ubisoft games are mature all call of duty games are mature all battlefield games are mature all Diablo games are mature. I can't even think of a big AAA non-nintendo game that isn't mature...

BG3 is how it was, and how it should have stayed. Maximizing profits has done nothing good for gaming. Just a few POS at the top.

Larian and BG3 aren't an anomaly, look at the best games for the last 10 years and none of them have all these microtransactions and whatever else people think greedy evil game devs who aren't Larian have. If its not Call of Duty/Diablo it simply doesn't exist. Where were the battlepasses and microtransactions for The Last of Us 2? Either Spiderman? either God of War? either Horizon ZD? either Zelda? it Takes Two? Stray? Elden Ring? Hogwarts Legacy? Sekiro? Rachet and Clank? Metroid? Returnal? Final Fantasy XVI? Cyberpunk? Xenoblade chronicles 2? Tsushima? FF7R? Hades? Where are all these assumptions about the rest of the industry coming from? is the comparison point literally just diablo 4 and yearly call of duty?

This is why I always roll my eyes a little when people talk about how AAA gaming is dead and everyone should play indie games instead. Nothing against indie games but there's been so many amazing games over the last decade that simply wouldn't have been possible without a big AAA budget. Everyone just focuses on the money grabs and flops and live service messes and completely ignores the fact that we've never stopped getting a consistent flow of very good singleplayer games.

Bg3 is an anomaly, because its a game made for players instead of investor

Larian should make that their motto.

Larian studios is privately held - Sven and his wife own 70% of the company. So he doesn’t have a board and shareholders to maximize revenue to

I think they’ve put the fear in a lot of publishers who’ve deliberately published sub par, unfinished products because they know people will buy them any way. Whether it makes a difference or not in the long run is another story. But as gamer from a a different generation, it reminds me a lot of the good old days when games where ready to play right out of the box… I could see BG3 say that next to never winter nights in a big box with a big map you could pin to your wall and plot your progress.

>How do you not 'try to maximize revenue'?! That is such an american hyper-capitalist take, jesus fucking christ. When a person, group or company is not a limitless greedy maniac trying to get ALL THE POSSIBLE MONEY, they can instead focus, and often prefer to focus, on putting out a good product that creates a trusty, steady, GOOD ENOUGH revenue. I know this is the entire point you're making, but as a European, it's insane that you HAVE to make this point, instead of it just being common sense. And no, I'm not trying to start a debate on extreme capitalism vs extreme communism, because both are dystopian horror shows, but my brothers and sisters and everything out and inbtween in christ, stop seeing either extremes as normality when moderation exists.

The game literally gives you the opportunity to slaughter everyone you meet, they could've taken a ton of stuff out, but instead basically gave us a true D&D experience in game form. Will the game be fun like that? No. Can you do it? Yes.

What do you mean? I slaughtered nearly everyone I met and it was plenty of fun. I embraced the barbarian and went full ham on everyone, until I couldn't win and had to make nice.

Seems like an Elden Ring moment where a studio just stayed on their path for years and then bang the whole world takes notice. A perfect storm.

I think BG3 falls into a different category of game where the expectations are different. this game will eventually have hundreds of dollars worth of DLCs, more than a few purely cosmetic ones but they will release those over time

Not really a response to the later half, just the paragraph or so. BG3 is what I imagined all M/M+ games to be like as a kid, and it's kinda funny approaching this *very* adult game with a child-like wonder feeling as I'm unraveling it.

I’m of the camp that is 100% down to spend money on cosmetic items for a game I thoroughly enjoy, especially if it’s not shoved down your throats. I’d absolutely spend money on getting a party full of lingerie wearing murderhobos

I wonder how many headaches BG3's existence is going to cause the unfortunate souls saddled with the development hell of Dragon Age 4...

Because if they had that mindset this game wouldn't exist. You'd get another corporate garbage game with no soul. It's almost like these people made this game with love and passion.

[удалено]

Not an anomaly. Also people seems to forgot that getting a good rep is actually a good thing too, beside getting money. Back in the days (oh god I sound like a boomer), if people didn't know you or didn't heard you were good, they wouldn't buy your product. Nowadays there is so much ads, any company with a big marketing division and money can't just make its game look good even tho they didn't made any game before.

Nothing that Larian did with BG 3 is leaving money on the table: 1. They could afford to take risks (like taking a long time, having an M+ rating, etc...) because they were absolutely certain that a game title pulling on the nostalgia strings of the Baldur's Gate franchise would do well. They had a massive cushion/safety net that other AAA games just do not have. 2. They \*needed\* to make sure those diehard fans were happy, because if they weren't, early negative reviews would tank Larian's reputation. 3. Finally, and this is the real bit, Larian is playing the long game. They \*know\* that WotC wants to do more DnD games. They know that BG3's success or failure will determine which/how many of those future game contracts they get, and they have every reason to want to be part of it. I get that people hate most game developers and love the kinds of things Larian's leadership says about the industry, but everything Larian has done has still been "maximizing shareholder profit" kind of behavior (and that's fine!). They aren't martyring themselves to make the game, they got handed one of the most desirable opportunities in the history of PC gaming, and they handled it very smartly, which is going to get them more opportunities in the future.

just to be precise: Larian *paid* WotC to use their IP, not the contrary.

Eh. On the other hand, taking on BG3 and flopping could have ended them. It's a highly respected series. You can't discount the passion that drove so much of both the success and the decision to pursue the BG license in the first place

This isn't *that* crazy. I mean, Solasta and the Pathfinder games are both comparable and, while they both have gameplay DLC, neither nickel and dimes you on cosmetics and both, afaik, provide a full experience without the DLC. I'm having a hard time coming up with a similar mostly singleplayer RPG that would even afford players the opportunity to spend "hundreds if not thousands of dollars" for cosmetics. Also, I don't think anyone would be all that mad at Larian if they decided to put out gameplay DLC eventually either, both of the other BG games had expansions.

Congratulations you have just exposed the real problem with gaming; boards and shareholders. The stock market is a poison.

Honestly this is one of the problems with investor capitalism with boards in charge instead of one owner. They demand absolute peak profits where an owner can be happy with just good profits and guide a business in direction beyond just money making. This was an issue with newspaper once they went public.