Swen Vincke, the CEO of Larian, spoke at this year’s Game Awards 2024 about what makes a truly good game. Shortly thereafter, Baldur’s Gate 3 receives a bunch of negative reviews on Steam.
What is the current situation? Baldur’s Gate 3 has just seen a significant drop on Steam. A thread on Reddit shows countless negative reviews, which apparently come from players in China. The abbreviation “TGA” is mentioned repeatedly in these reviews.
Users suspect that it relates to Larian CEO Swen Vincke’s speech at the Game Awards.
Many gamers agree that the big players in the gaming industry could learn something from Baldur’s Gate 3:
Larian CEO says it’s quite simple to make a game of the year
What did Swen Vincke say? As last year’s winner, it was up to the head of Baldur’s Gate 3 to give the laudation for this year’s game of the year. Vincke used his time to significantly criticize the gaming industry.
The Larian CEO joked that an oracle not only revealed this year’s winner to him but also the lucky winners of the coming years. From the oracle, he also received the almost “stupidly simple” formula to create a game of the year.
Unfortunately, Vincke said, the formula keeps getting lost.
A game of the year, according to him, would be made by developers who create games they themselves want to play.
They created it because it didn’t exist before. They didn’t create it to gain market share; they didn’t create it to serve as a brand; they didn’t have to meet arbitrary sales targets or fear being fired if they didn’t meet those targets.
Furthermore, those in charge prohibited them from stuffing the game with things that are only meant to generate revenue and do not serve game design. They didn’t treat their developers like numbers in a spreadsheet; they didn’t treat players like users to exploit, and they didn’t make decisions they knew were short-sighted. […]
Unfortunately, that is often going wrong in the gaming industry right now. In the last 2.5 years alone, tens of thousands have lost their jobs in gaming. The issue is so prevalent that at the Game Awards, a man was honored who is addressing this issue.
Many gamers expressed their enthusiasm for Vincke’s speech – but apparently it did not sit well with everyone.
You can see the speech in the original English here:
All just a misunderstanding?
What is the source of the excitement? The sudden anger seems to be the result of a misunderstanding. In some machine-generated sample translations of the reviews, it is mentioned that one does not need to support Baldur’s Gate 3, as the creators don’t care about sales anyway.
It seems that some of the players who bought Baldur’s Gate 3 and financially supported it now feel unappreciated. A Reddit user suggests that the misunderstanding could be due to the live translation of the speech:
Community Stands by Baldur’s Gate 3
Others suspect that Chinese players might be frustrated that “their” candidate did not win. For the record: Besides the eventual winner, Astro Bot, nominees included Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.
While the success of Black Myth: Wukong was celebrated by the wrong people in the West, the action RPG was not only extremely popular in China but also of great cultural significance. Companies even allegedly gifted their employees copies and gave them time off to play.
It could be that fans understood Vincke’s speech to mean that Wukong was not produced by passionate developers who care about the love for gaming, rather than profits.
Whatever the reason, it won’t be long before Baldur’s Gate 3’s Steam reviews look as usual again, as a new law in the USA aims to put an end to review-bombing.
In any case, many users are countering with positive reviews. Even more than a year after release, the creators of Baldur’s Gate 3 can still enjoy the loyalty of their community.
In addition to the biting criticism of the gaming industry, Vincke also threw in a few jabs at the Game Awards themselves. His speech last year had been cut short. Baldur’s Gate 3: “I might cry soon” CEO publishes the speech that was cut short at the Game Awards, touching fans
