Swen Vincke, founder and CEO of Larian Studios, says that the crunch on Baldur's Gate 3 was "certainly less" than the developer had experienced on its previous games, such as Divinity: Original Sin 2. Crunch, or "crunch culture", is the colloquially known overtime many developers are required to work as production deadlines loom.
As reported by GamesRadar+, Vincke was asked during a Q&A session following his talk at last week's Digital Dragons conference whether the difficulties that arose during the game's long development required the studio to crunch. In response, Vincke said: "Certainly less on BG3 than we did in the past. It would be a lie to say that we didn't. We had things happen that we didn't foresee."
Vincke points to Larian's worldwide studio structure as one way the developer eased the strain. This structure was set up to ensure 24-coverage, designed to prevent anyone from doing extra work to fix a late-night problem. The Belgian developer recently opened a seventh office in Poland.
Vincke says that employees required to crunch were paid overtime and that beyond 8pm, offices would be almost empty, and it was only "very, very, very, rarely" that weekend work was required, the studio head said. Elaborating, he explains: "We didn't overly crunch, but we did have to do a bit of crunch. And I think, to be honest, you will always have a little bit when you're trying to finish something, especially when there's so much complexity that needs to be brought together."