The Irish Independent (users may encounter a paywall) has reported that Larian has posted a €249 million pre-tax profit for 2023—that’s almost $260 million freedom dollary-doos for those of us without adequate digital privacy protections. The runaway success of Baldur’s Gate 3 saw Larian increase its overall revenue almost twentyfold from 2022.
The figures were posted by Larian’s Dublin-based holding company. Though still primarily headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, the Independent reports that Larian runs its revenue through its Dublin office, which also houses much of the studio’s writing team. Favorable Irish tax laws have seen a number of corporations base their European or worldwide headquarters in Ireland.
Larian brought in €427 million ($446 million) in overall revenue last year, with the Independent citing 15 million copies sold of Baldur’s Gate 3—though Larian itself hasn’t released precise sales numbers. In December of last year, SteamSpy estimated there were 20 million owners of the game on Steam alone, while Larian publishing director Michael Douse referred to Baldur’s Gate 3 having “way over” 10 million players in February of this year. For its part, Dungeons & Dragons owner Hasbro took home a tidy $90 million in revenue for Baldur’s Gate 3.
This is all in contrast with a pretty quiet year for Larian in 2022: The company reported €22.7 million ($24 million) in total revenue, with Larian actually operating at a €214,000 ($223,000) loss. It’s a pretty stark reminder of how volatile the business of making games can be, with developers having to spend a great deal of money over a long period of time before (hopefully) making it all up and then some with a successful launch.
In Gameumentary’s 2018 documentary on Divinity: Original Sin, Swen Vincke and Larian employees spoke at length about their wilderness years of being an independent RPG studio in the 2000s. Larian went through several lean periods, suffering layoffs and contracting on educational games before finding stability with the Kickstarter and sales success of Original Sin 1.
But those days are long gone—Larian’s building quite the war chest for its development of two yet-to-be-announced RPG projects. It also remains an independent studio, the largest of its kind with perhaps Valve as the only other comparable example in the industry. Though Tencent is a major investor and minority shareholder in the company, founder and Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke is still owner and CEO.
In a piece shortly after BG3’s release, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier credited Larian’s continued flourishing in the face of the industry layoff crisis to the company’s independence and Vincke’s leadership—absent the competing incentives imposed by a publicly traded company’s many shareholders, Larian and Vincke’s main financial constraint becomes just making payroll, not making a line go up.
And 2024 looks to have been a similarly bountiful year for Larian: Whatever the sales numbers are, Baldur’s Gate 3 has seen more daily users on average than last year. After a lifetime of getting used to my beloved hardcore CRPGs not selling well and their developers going under, my crusty, Grinchlike heart has grown three sizes at seeing Larian take home W after W.
