Baldur's Gate 3 Devs Moving at 70-80% Productivity

COVID-19 continues to ravage both the population and the news cycle, and the games industry is continuing to feel the pinch. After a number of studios swore the virus wouldn’t disrupt their work schedules, Naughty Dog became the first to say “actually it absolutely will”, and immediately afterwards postponed their highly-anticipated game The Last of Us 2 to some indefinite point in the future. Other studios have since joined that refrain as well, the latest being Balder Gate 3's studio and all-around swell fellows Larian, whose boss confirmed in a New York Times interview that things were a little bit messy:

Swen Vincke, the chief executive at Larian, had this to say:

“The very first week, it went really well… everyone had all the information they needed to just smoothly go work from home. We started seeing more stress on the leads in terms of communication… We’d spend all of our days just communicating — trying to solve problems, organize things, give direction… We don’t have a solution for it.”

He then said that while development is proceeding, it’s moving at around 70 to 80 percent their usual speed. So while development is going, it’s not going nearly fast enough to meet early projections for the game’s release.

All things considered, losing 20 to 30 percent of your overall productivity is a small price to pay for the ability to stay productive during this awful period of our collective modern lives. With so many other people and employees either getting pay cuts or being forced to work in insane conditions, the fact that people in the games industry are able to work at all… I mean, it’s a blessing for everyone. A blessing that they get to keep their jobs, and a blessing that we have something to do and look forward too even locked up in our homes.

A little delay is nothing.