The last nine months have been an exciting time for the developers at Larian Studios. In the wake of the role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3‘s runaway success, the company announced the opening of a new studio in Warsaw, Poland on Monday.
Further cementing their plans to deliver experiences outside the world of Dungeons & Dragons, Larian’s post reads, “With two very ambitious RPGs now starting development, what better way to see our visions realized than by growing the team and opening a 7th studio in the heart of Poland’s lively gaming scene!” Their new studio joins the six others within the Larian umbrella, located in Barcelona, Dublin, Gent, Guildford, Kuala Lumpur, and Quebec.
The blend of “Poland” and “RPG” here makes perfect sense. Larian’s About Us page for the new studio calls attention to the country’s status as “one of the greatest RPG development hubs in the world,” which is a fair statement. Warsaw is home to former Baldur’s Gate collaborator and The Witcher developer CD Projekt RED, Europe’s most valuable videogame company.
Poland’s success within the gaming industry owes a lot to the fall of The Polish People’s Republic and the immediate leap that came from the end of a Western technology embargo, a holdover from the communist regime. The soon-to-follow Polish translation of Warhammer Fantasy ignited a passion for RPGs that would intertwine itself into this Polish period of gaming enlightenment, paving the way for titles like The Witcher 3.
The rich history that Warsaw can provide to a prominent RPG developer such as Larian Studios is an exciting prospect, especially as we begin to see self-reflexive works such as The Thaumaturge emerge from Poland. Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian Studios, sums this up nicely in the press release for the Warsaw studio’s opening, calling it “a match made in heaven.”