Baldur's Gate 3 director says Early Access is 'a positive thing' for big RPGs

Baldur's Gate 3 director and Larian Studios lead Swen Vincke agreed with Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler that Early Access can be "a positive thing" for large, complex RPGs in a recent online exchange.

Mahler, responding to fan concerns about using Early Access, pointed to Baldur's Gate 3's three years in Early Access and argued that many ambitious games "would probably never get made" without the model because their complexity requires a dedicated player community to provide development data.

He added that Larian's decision to use Early Access again for its next game is not about money but about scale: games at that level of complexity need enough players during development to find issues and judge how players react to delicate balance, and he advised sticking with developers who have a proven track record.

Vincke replied to Mahler's thread, writing "100% - Games that successfully come out of Early Access prove that when players and devs unite around something they genuinely care about, beautiful things happen. It's a positive thing. Even if there are negative examples, don't let those overshadow the good ones."

What remains to be seen is how consistently Early Access will work for other teams and projects; Larian has indicated it will use the model again for its upcoming RPG, and both developers framed the approach as valuable "when it works."

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