In a conversation with Game File, Larian’s head of publishing, Micheal Douse, shared that the studio probably won’t go public, even though the decision doesn’t necessarily fall on his shoulders. When asked about his thoughts on the current state of the game industry (everything is on fire, in case you missed it), Douse likened large, publicly held companies to an “oil [tanker]” that’s increasingly hard to steer. The strength of Larian, he says, is that they are “nimble and opportunistic,” allowing them to respond to challenges on the fly and pivot whenever necessary.
According to Douse, being nimble granted the studio the ability to make the game they wanted to make, which might not have been a reality if they were a public and much larger company. Now that they’ve found success with Baldur’s Gate 3, he says, they could go public and make a lot of money, “but it would be antithetical to the quality part of what we’re trying to do. So it wouldn’t make our games better. It would just make us rushed.”
