The main thing for the weekend (March 23-24)

According to rumors, the Overwatch 2 team was stripped of cash bonuses, Baldur's Gate 3 twice surpassed Divinity: Original Sin 2 in sales, CD PROJEKT admitted that they reject 95% of ideas for side quests — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

Baldur’s Gate 3

• The head of Larian Studios, Sven Vincke, in an interview with GameSpot, said that sales of Baldur's Gate 3 are almost twice as large as those of Divinity: Original Sin 2. It is not known exactly how many copies Original Sin 2 has sold to date, but in July 2023, Vincke said that the game sold three times better the first part, and its sales as of 2019 amounted to 2.5 million copies. Based on this, it can be assumed that sales of Baldur's Gate 3 reach 15 million copies. Curiously, during a speech at the GDC 2024 conference, Vinke stated that the studio did not count on the great success of Baldur's Gate 3. The developers expected that the game would simply pay off the production costs. Larian Studios relied primarily on the fact that the partnership with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast would enhance the studio's reputation, so the strong sales of Baldur's Gate 3 were a pleasant surprise for her.
• Vinke also commented on social media rumors that Larian Studios refused to work on the sequel to Baldur's Gate 3 due to disagreements with Wizards of the Coast. He wrote in X that this was not the case. "Wizards of the Coast is not to blame for the fact that we decided to go in a different direction. On the contrary, she did her best and acted as an excellent licensor for us, allowing us to do what we want. We made this decision because it's better for Larian Studios," Vinke said.
• Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier I found out that in March 2024, the developers of Overwatch 2 were left without cash bonuses for half a year - Blizzard did not pay them because of the poor performance of the game. According to Schreier, this is an unusual event, and it is associated with a change in company policy. Previously, Blizzard linked employee payouts to the company's overall performance, but since last year it has been taking into account the results of specific franchises. It is worth noting that bonuses are an important part of the income of Blizzard employees, since salaries in the company are lower than those of its competitors. According to Schreier, now the new president of Blizzard, Johanna Faris, is studying the bonus policy, but has not yet made any decisions.
• The quest director of Cyberpunk 2077, Pavel Sasko, in an interview with PC Gamer, told how the process of working with ideas for side quests is arranged in CD PROJEKT. According to him, he usually gives developers a list of topics and genres that he needs, after which they begin to actively generate ideas. However, the vast majority of proposals do not reach implementation. "They bring in five, ten, twenty ideas a day. In fact, a great pitch consists of four sentences. No one, no creative person can have only brilliant ideas. We all have bad ideas, tons of them, so we just pick the top 5%," Sasko said.
• The head of the Warcraft franchise, John Hight, admitted at the GDC 2024 conference that the Shadowlands add—on for World of Warcraft was a failure. Immediately after its release in November 2020, the number of World of Warcraft subscribers increased, but then a strong outflow of the audience began. Moreover, the outflow was much stronger than Blizzard could have imagined. The company hoped that the subsequent launch of classic servers would fix the situation, but it has only partially improved. The Dragonflight add-on, released in November 2022, helped bring back a significant part of the audience, although at its release the number of subscribers in World of Warcraft was still lower than at the release of Shadowlands. Now Blizzard hopes that they have found the right approach to the development of World of Warcraft and restored the trust of the players.

How the number of subscribers to World of Warcraft changed in 2016-2024

• The studio Eleventh Hour Games announced that more than 2.1 million people played in the Last Epoch. The game took this mark a month after the full release, which took place on February 21, 2024.