Larian boss Swen Vincke shares what he would have said in full
“I’m really sorry to hear so many of you were let go,” Vincke wrote ina Xitter thread. “It’s a sad thing to realize that of the people who were in the original meeting room, there’s almost nobody left. I hope you all end up well.”
It would have been one of the show’s few references - indeed, I think itsonlyreference to job losses following a year of mass videogame industry layoffs, with corporations such asMicrosoft,Epic,Sony,Embracer Group,Unity,CD ProjektandSEGAdismissingthousands of staffin a bid to make “efficiencies” following a boom period partly fostered by Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures. The obstinate silence around this andother broader issuesfrom the event’s organisers isn’t surprising - the Game Awards are primarilya marketing and advertising reel, after all - but that doesn’t make it defensible. And yes, I acknowledge that we’re part of the picture, here, in focussing our own reporting on the trailers and announcements rather than the individual developers being celebrated, but we have also written up dozens of layoff stories this year. TGA host Geoff Keighley avoided the subjectduring his opening presentation.
While praising the Baldur’s Gate 3 team, Vincke gave special mention to “a group of people that don’t always get the credit they deserve”, namely “Team QA, team localisation, team customer support, team operations, team publishing [and] team play testers”.
It’s worth noting that QA staff and testers are perennially vulnerable to being “let go” when exeecutives decide to “restructure”, because they are often regarded as superfluous despite ample precedent for videogames failing to sell thanks to quality-of-life or technical issues at launch. Several companies have sought to reduce and/or outsource these aspects of development this year. Take Bungie, where QA staff havereportedlyfaced increasing workloads and hostility from management, with one executive apparently referring to them as “non-developers”, even as their numbers were cut by over 10% between early October and early November. Or EA, where 200Apex Legendstesters weresuddenly laid off in Februaryduring an unscheduled mandatory meeting, with some not receiving severance proportionate to their experience.
Vincke ended his Xitter thread with an anecdote about a conversation he once had with an unnamed publisher. “He told me, luckily for them, games are driven by idealism,” the Larian executive recalled. “He meant it in an exploitative way but he was right”.
Vincke added that “many developers, myself included […] don’t care that much about the money made beyond it being the fuel they need to create new and better games. It’s worth reminding everyone that fuel is but a means, not a goal.” I don’t doubt Vincke’s fine intentions, but celebrating developers as not being in it for the money is an odd way to follow up a reference to hundreds of people losing their livelihoods. Best of luck this Xmas if you’re one of the people laid off this year.
