If I had just released a big, incomprehensible RPG like "Baldur's Gate 3" that was really great and really well done, I probably would have considered cashing in. This, along with the minor issues of ontology and taxonomy, is why I am literally not a Larian studio.

In a chat with Bloomberg, Larian CEO Sven Vincke answered a question about a list of potential 2021 acquisitions that circulated within Microsoft this past June. That list included Sega and Bungie, and it appeared that Microsoft was looking to buy Larian, but apparently not, as Vincke told Bloomberg that he is "always happy" to be on the radar of parties such as Microsoft, but that he has no intention of selling the company just yet Vincke told Bloomberg that he is "always pleased" to be on the radar of parties like Microsoft, but has no intention of selling the company just yet

. [Larian's CEO told Bloomberg that he is concerned that a monolithic corporate owner like Microsoft might limit the studio's creativity in the pursuit of profit. To be fair, Microsoft has been relatively hands-off (sometimes to its detriment) with the myriad studios it has acquired over the past few years, by all accounts. However, one can certainly imagine a world in which "BG3" is less ambitious or less rich in genital tailoring options because of corporate oversight.

Vinke believes that Larian's advantage is that the ultimate authority lies with himself, not with a distant corporate overlord, and that he is "very invested in the gameplay" of the studio's projects. Instead of pursuing a project management style that puts efficiency and profit above all else, the CEO said, "we can do things for the game we are making."

According to Vinke, Larian does not yet know what comes after "BG3." That would be reasonable, considering the six years and the enormous amount of energy spent by the development team on that project. Still, Vincke seems to want to work on multiple projects rather than one huge project, and has recently said that he will return to "Original Sin" someday.

But that's a question for another day, and we are right now in BG3 time, and PCG's Fraser Brown, in his review of Baldur's Gate 3, is a bit in love with the game he has seen so far, saying "It may not be immediately obvious, but Baldur 's Gate 3 is utterly fantastic," he wrote. No wonder Microsoft is interested.