I love BG3 to death. But I also don’t want Larian to become the next EA under the yoke of some Hasbro/WoTC for BG4/5/6/7. I hope they continue to make their own games and forge their own path, with little to no reliance on megacorps. Their Divinity series is a treasure in it’s own right, and they said their next small projects are getting them excited.
“this game is a gold mine! It’s being underutilised at the moment, let’s improve the profitability with some in-game purchasable items and a subscription for bonus content”
Steam could absolutely tamp down on this, by changing early access refund policy to be more restrictive.
Early access money should not be guaranteed. If someone wants a refund outside of the two hour or whatever game time they should get most of their money back. The timer should also reset at release, and players get a full refund if the gameplay isn't what was promised.
DOS2 working so well is a big part of why I bought BG3. I mostly play handheld (steamdeck, with a little bit of switch), so controller support is a huge factor for me.
At least they licensed it to someone who did a good job and provided value instead of buying out the product that added value to the game they owned and then running it into the ground like they did with DnD Beyond.
Beyond stopped development when Hasbro bought them and the Encounter Tracker has been unchanged in beta for those years. They killed it by stopping development and flooding it with sponsored shit that gets in the way of using official stuff.
Killing doesn't always mean broken, sometimes it means lack of progress on useful features and drawing existing useful features in shitty monetization that makes it harder to use.
I don’t think they really can. Larian has creative control over the project itself, Hasbro can’t do much beyond input regarding DnD-specific things. Hasbro can try to milk DnD (as they have been doing), but this won’t affect BG3.
This is an interesting question actually. From what I read, larian has been screwed by producers many times in its past, so they should be aware of these kind of problems. It all depends 9n the contract hasbro and larian have. And if hasbro is as stupid as Microsoft, larian probably has a favorable deal.
It sucks, because I want to buy this game, but I refuse to give WotC/Hasbro money, and I don't want to pirate it because I want to support Larian.
It really sucks.
Do Larian deserve your money less because they licensed trademarks from a company that considered and then backed down from a license change? And for this you’ll rob yourself of a fantastic experience? What a strange value system. Wait until you find out how they made sausages, or your phone.
I will continue to buy stuff that Hasbro has licensed to people who care about the games they make even if Hasbro indirectly profits from it to show support for doing it right. Like the DnD movie and BG3, but not Beyond or the tabletop stuff until they reverse course on those.
If nothing else there is an opportunity for Hasbro to catch on at some point and the people they license to get to make quality stuff to enjoy in the meantime. It isn't like Hasbro is Nestlé and ruining countries.
Look man, initially WotC didn't move on with Larian's pitch and only changed their minds later on. I get it, you don't like WotC but you're robbing yourself of a fantastic experience because of this stance you've held. Baldur's Gate 3 oozes with passion and creativity, you only do yourself a disservice by ignoring it.
It's probably my favourite game of all time and loads of people refuse to play it because they know it'll make other games feel bland by comparison. You have nothing to lose but your money.
Daragon Age Origins is awesome. It was fun playing the game where your choices affected the outcome of the game. And you got to play different characters--poor, rich, royalty, slave.
Corporate isn’t going to take away the lessons we might hope. Folks at corporate at going to ask things like, “how much money was left on the table?” They can only fuck things up through paying attention.
The funny thing is I (and probably many others) didn’t even consider pirating it. It had great reviews and was readily available pretty much everywhere without any obvious drawbacks. So I spent full price for it.
My point; DRM doesn’t matter if you produce and sell your game in a consumer friendly way.
I won’t lie. I flew the black flag on BG3. I’ll pick it up when it goes on a Steam sale, but I’m just not going to spend $60 on a video game no matter how good.
Tbf there’s a good chance that story was massively exaggerated and overblown. Like, supposedly they didn’t threaten him at all, and he willingly gave them the cards in exchange for something else. They were after whoever leaked the cards from their supply chain.
I don't know the story, but if it's something that wasn't supposed to be released, it's pretty much definitely stolen property. You're not entitled to keep stolen property because you think it's cool, and sending PIs to recover stolen property instead of the police is the nice route.
Showing property that belongs to someone else online and can't be acquired legitimately is absolutely grounds for an actual police search warrant.
sending PIs to recover stolen property instead of the police is the nice route.
Exactly. However being in possession of stolen property is not itself a crime, you just don’t have any right to keep it. If you paid for it, then your claim is against whoever you paid.
They could have got the police to reclaim the stolen property, however perhaps that might not have been as effective for them in investigating the leak. In any case, the stories about the Pinkertons threatening him might not be true, and he’d have every right to refuse them entry or even to speak to them. The fact that he did suggests he willingly complied.
Knowingly possessing stolen goods is a crime, however that law is about addressing the trade of stolen goods, ie fencing. Merely possessing the goods is unlikely to attract a criminal charge, let alone a conviction with jail time, as it will usually be impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the buyer knew the goods were stolen. A reasonable person might think it is likely that they were stolen but would not know for sure.
Like I say, they were after the person who leaked it from the supply chain. If the police had been involved, they too would have been interested in the leaker, not the one-time buyer.
Edit: It can also vary by jurisdiction. Looking into it, there’s an interesting bit in the wiki for this in the UK section, where they distinguish between suspicion, belief and knowledge:
A person handles stolen goods if (otherwise than in the course of stealing), knowing or believing them to be stolen goods he dishonestly receives the goods
Belief … is something short of knowledge. It may be said to be the state of mind of a person who says to himself, “I cannot say I know for certain that these goods are stolen, but there can be no other reasonable conclusion in the light of all the circumstances, in the light of all that I have heard and seen.”
However I don’t think the US makes this distinction, as the US version of the law does not include “belief”.
It's generally hard to prosecute because there are plausible other explanations for intent. You don't have any way of knowing a generic laptop is stolen vs used.
Having a unique item from a company you make money covering, that wasn't ever sold legitimately and you didn't acquire from any legitimate source, is absolutely something that could get to trial at minimum, if the company is pushing the DA to do so. You'd end up having to have a lawyer convince a jury that "I didn't know" is believable.
The fact that they chose to give the streamer a pass for cooperating doesn't mean that they couldn't have perfectly reasonably or successfully pursued charges. Choosing not to do so is more evidence of them choosing the nice way.
You probably didn’t see my edit, which is pretty relevant :o)
US law requires knowledge of the goods being stolen, not mere belief. You don’t have to convince the jury you didn’t know, the prosecution has to convince the jury you did. That’s a very high bar to meet, and while it could go to trial it almost certainly wouldn’t, not unless they had solid evidence of his knowledge (eg, if he said they were stolen on his stream).
The fact that they chose to go through the Pinkertons more likely points to the fact that they knew they wouldn’t have charges thrown about if they involved the police. The buyer would have been less likely to cooperate.
The US tends to use the reasonable person standard. If a reasonable person, with the information you have, would know that it's stolen, you knowingly possessed stolen goods.
Something that doesn't exist through legitimate channels, especially for a subject you portray yourself as knowledgeable of, is enough. You have to cast reasonable doubt with a plausible alternative explanation.
You’re presenting generalised speculation as if what you’re saying is certain. It would be nice if you could provide something that would back up your claim, like a similar case with a one-time buyer that proceeded to trial.
A reasonable person would not necessarily know the goods were stolen, even if they had knowledge of the industry. All the buyer would likely need to say is something like “the seller convinced me that this was an early release for select reviewers”, and the only way to counter that would be for the prosecution to provide actual evidence proving their knowledge of the theft. “Legitimate channels” is not confined to retail.
It is completely overblown, and most people seem to be picturing the people from Red Dead Redemption and not a dead brand name that a Swedish security company bought to do collections under. Yes if you have sensitive possessions of a company they will send someone to get it, not trust you to mail it back to them.
The context that this was to prevent an NDA and happened within a month of someone else breaching an NDA with a leak that had a handful of noisy people declaring D&D dead is also pretty important, but never mentioned. It would never have even been a story without that context.
They said they were going to detain him and seize all of his cards, and make him prove he owns any of them.
That's a huge disruption to his life and business.
It wouldn't take a genius to be polite enough to be invited inside to talk about stuff, and slowly ramp up the severity enough to keep a guy listening and minimise confrontation.
That is a great attitude towards everything DnD stands for, don’t lose it. Theres been a great deal of controversy this year, because the executives at wotc/hasbro believe that owning a popular brand like DnD means they’re entitled to shitloads of money, so they’re attempting to turn it into a cash cow, completely alienating the long standing community
Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was originally incorporated by Gary Gygax in 1973. It went bankrupt and got bought out by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) in 1997. That purchase gave us D&D 3.0 and the original OGL, which was intended to encourage third-party publications of a game set WotC wasn’t overly confident in. This, after a decade of aggressive litigation by TSR’s VP Lorraine Williams who’d engineered Gygax’s ouster from the firm.
Hasbro acquired WotC two years later, in 1999, but was generally apathetic towards its administration outside of it being another revenue source. So WotC ran more-or-less independently until 2020 when the CEO noted on an earnings call that WotC was something like 40% of the company’s overall revenue. This triggered a sizable realignment of focus onto the various WotC brands (Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon card games being two other big players).
Now we’re seeing a much more traditional corporate refocusing on the WotC product line (movies and cross-promotions), a return to aggressive litigation against competitors, and a sharp increase in the price of WotC products to justify the increased expenses.
Hasbro and WOTC are rotten to the core and, unfortunately, own D&D among other headline franchises you’d probably be familiar with.
Larian makes their own games and made BG3 after Hasbro was impressed with how well Divinity: Original Sin 2 turned out (which, imo has the best combat system of their games so far). That said, Larian really rounded out the dialog, conversations, and non-battle options in BG3. I hope they take that to their next title, preferably organically developed without Hasbro/WoTC.
I’m pretty sure hasbro/wotc had nothing to say in the development beyond ip related stuff. With dos1 larian moved away from editors to self-product all their games since.
I’m curious to see if other CRPGs also had big revenue increases from BG3’s success. After beating it I’ve bought Divinity Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium, Pathfinder WotR, and Pillars of Eternity II so far. I had never paid attention to the genre before and now I am deep into it.
I bought that on the GOG Anniversary Sale pretty much because I finished BG3 and was in the mood for something new but similar. Hadn’t paid any attention to the Dragon Age franchise before.
I’m amazed at not only how well it holds up, but how much inspiration BG3 seems to have taken from it.
Now you mention it, yes probably. I already owned BG3 in EA, and bought 2 similar games : Pathfinder & Solasta.
When i was a kid i player BG1 a lot. Later DOS.
And the other game above, i already finished them long ago. I think it would be an interesting data to see what kind of player play BG3 and compare our games. :)
Larian are really the only ones that play nice with a controller.
I understand that a lot of people play at literal desktops and prefer mouse/keyboard, but a lot more (regardless of PC split, it's also almost all console owners) would rather play with a controller. Having an official control scheme for one is meaningful to broad adoption.
BG3 plays awesome on both kn and mouse and a controller!
It reminds me of a few other games that are able to do both, and makes me sad how many game devs over focus on one or the other (probably due to crunch, but still).
They are also the ones doing multiplayer as far as I can tell. After my singleplayer playthrough I have two other ones going with different groups and it is just as much if not more fun.
The beam dog remasters on switch have pretty good controller support. It’s a piss off that those controls don’t exist in the PC versions, discovering that after attempting to play on steam deck
I thought Pathfinder kingmaker and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous supported controllers? I haven’t played them yet but intend to if I ever manage to put down bg3 (400 hours and 5.5 plays in, lmao)
They both do, I’ve played both on console. Honestly had more issues playing BG3 than either Pathfinder control-wise (mostly aiming between different heights). They’re grander in scale than BG3, and less open world (there’s an overworld map you use to get between different places), but they’re just as good. In Wrath of the Righteous I became a lich queen who ruled a continent, had a city full of undead minions and armies of them too. It’s highly recommended.
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