In cutting off Baldur's Gate 3's GOTY speech, the Game Awards cut the show's only real mention of mass layoffs
Larian's CEO and founder Swen Vincke has shared the rough full text of his Game Awards 2023 acceptance speech for Baldur's Gate 3's Game of the Year trophy, after having his thoughts cut short by the event's crowded scheduling, which allotted more time to Kojima chitchat, trailers and celebrity cameos than the actual award-winners.
On the night, Vincke got halfway through honouring the memory of friends and family members lost during Baldur's Gate 3's development, including lead cinematic animator Jim Southworth and Vincke's own father, before being told to "wrap it up" over teleprompter, so as to make room for the next avalanche of game reveals. Had he been allowed to continue, he would have also have paid tribute to the Wizards of the Coast employees Larian collaborated with earlier in development of Baldur's Gate 3, who were laid off by Hasbro this year. The toy manufacturer chopped around 800 jobs in January 2023, and plan to lay off 1,100 more people over the next six months.
"I'm really sorry to hear so many of you were let go," Vincke wrote in a 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 its only reference to job losses following a year of mass videogame industry layoffs, with corporations such as Microsoft, Epic, Sony, Embracer Group, Unity, CD Projekt and SEGA dismissing thousands of staff in a bid to make "efficiencies" following a boom period partly fostered by Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures. The obstinate silence around this and other broader issues from the event's organisers isn't surprising - the
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