Despite a fantastic year fiscally for Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast branch, at least on the video game side of things with Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 breaking all sorts of records and even claiming the title of Game of the Year at The Game Awards, it seems that the company hasn’t exactly been in a celebratory mood as of late, with massive layoffs being handed down just as soon as the holiday season started, as reported here by Forbes.
Wizards of the Coast, famously the company behind big titles like Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, was the team that Larian Studios connected with when the studio set out to create Baldur’s Gate 3, in an emotional Twitter thread by Larian Studios CEO Sven Vincke, he thanks the Dungeons and Dragons team that helped oversee the development of Baldur’s Gate 3 and regretted that they were let go, that without them the game wouldn’t have been nearly as accurate or as fun as it ended up being.
Work for any company is always going to be a tightrope act on whether or not you’ll be cut or not, especially for a company as massive and soulless as Hasbro, but to say that this development is a shock would be an understatement. Dungeons and Dragons is more popular than ever before, especially with the release of a massive success such as Baldur’s Gate 3, but it seems regrettably the tabletop portion of the company under performed, at least in the eyes of Hasbro.
And as per Reddit, some big names were let go from Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons team, such as Mike Mearls who created the current 5th Edition of the game. It’s sad to see such a good team help put together such a great complete experience such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and only receive a pink slip for Christmas.