Baldur’s Gate 3 CEO says he was “fighting with embassies” to relocate developers so they didn’t get drafted into the Russian army to fight against Ukraine

Baldur’s Gate 3 CEO Swen Vincke says that he was “fighting with embassies and consulates” to relocate developers at Larian’s Russian studio after the invasion of Ukraine.

When Russia invaded in February 2022, development on Baldur’s Gate 3 was well underway, including at the company’s studio in St. Petersburg. After the war started, however, that studio was quickly closed. Speaking to Edge, Vincke says that he was already prepared for that eventuality. “I had already thought about what we were going to do if it actually happened,” he begins.

“The decision was instant: We can’t stay here.” Simply closing down the studio wasn’t enough, however, as Larian worked quickly to get its staff out of Russia. “We needed to move people away because, as these things go, you can almost predict that eventually there’s going to be mobilization, and that meant that all of my team was going to go to war.”

More than 90% of the team working in the St. Petersburg studio was relocated to help avoid a potential draft, which meant that Larian “started fighting with embassies and consulates” to get them out.

Vincke points out that his decision to close the studio and move the staff wasn’t just an attempt to prevent his staff being forced to join the military – he needed them to finish the game. “In a machine as complicated as an RPG, where everything’s connected to everything, if you suddenly start ripping stuff out, the entire thing collapses,” he explains. “Because things that were supposed to be done are not being done.”

The fallout from the studio closure was “really, really hard,” Vincke says. “You could see the ripple effect of that lasting all through the end of development.” That means nearly 18 months of knock-on effect, which resulted in compromises and cuts being made in the final product. That “always happens,” Vincke acknowledges, but he points out that “it’s rare that you lose a studio in the middle of development.”

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