Game News In addition to having created Baldur’s Gate 3, the developers of GOTY 2023 supported this excellent video game without asking anything in return

Game news In addition to having created Baldur’s Gate 3, the developers of GOTY 2023 supported this excellent video game without asking anything in return

Larian Studios: From Divine Divinity to Baldur’s Gate 3

Today, Larian Studios is a development company whose name is known throughout the world. Creator of the Divinity universe, the Belgian studio exploded its glass ceiling by associating its name with a legendary license: Baldur’s Gate. Born at BioWare in 1998, the franchise places its action in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. These are therefore role-playing games, even if the Dark Alliance series is more action-oriented. Regardless, Larian Studios was entrusted with the task of bringing Baldur’s Gate III to life. A wise choice, because the title has established itself as the game of the year 2023and even managed to reach a much wider audience than expected.

Checking all the boxes despite a lack of accessibility (much of which has been corrected in recent patches), Baldur’s Gate 3 has made Larian a studio with a truly global reach. Its journey is now similar to that of a CD Projekt, which started with few resources before becoming an independent juggernaut. Besides, the Polish studio owes its takeoff to Baldur’s Gate, but that’s another story for another day. Achieving Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Divinity 2, Dragon Commander, both Divinity: Original Sin and Baldur’s Gate 3 obviously required a lot of work, which did not prevent the teams from to look at what is being done elsewhere, nor to remember their own journey.

See Baldur’s Gate 3 on GOG

When Larian Studios discreetly supports other studios

Recently, the level designer of Blasphemous, Enrique Colinet, revealed on X (ex-Twitter) that Larian Studios was simply one of the biggest backers of the game on Kickstarter. Before moving on, a little useful reminder: Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform, on which creators come seek direct support public. In exchange for more or less high sums, we can help these creators to complete their project, while recovering rewards. Often, the amount requested is associated with tiers, which allow creators to add things. In the case of a video game, it may be a collector’s version, bonus levels, new characters or even special modes.

In the case of Blasphemous, it was in May 2017 that The Game Kitcher launched its fundraising campaign. A successful adventure, which greatly helped the studio release its title in September 2019. A demanding action and platform game set in a dark world where the religious lexical field is everywhere, it was very well received. The game developers hoped to recover $50,000, $333,246 was collected with 9869 people. Several commitment levels were available, and one of them cost $1,000. This level entitled The Punisher gave access to the game, all previous physical and digital rewards, as well as the possibility of participating in the creation of a boss. Three backers contributed these 1000 dollars and one of them is none other than… Larian Studios.

Not many people know this, but Larian Studios was one of the biggest backers during our Kickstarter campaign dedicated to Blasphemous. They paid a four-figure sum, never asked for their rewards, and simply continued creating one of the best games made in recent years. Legends!

A nice gesture, which shows that Larian has not forgotten his passage through the Kickstarter box. The studio actually used the levers of the crowdfunding campaign to give birth to Divinity Original Sin in 2013. An initiative that was also successful, since Swen Vincke and his teams had recovered $944,282 after asking for 400,000. At the time, this allowed Larian to move forward, and no longer have to count on the support of a publisher.