Larian Considering Kickstarter to Increase Divinity: Original Sin’s Funding

In a long blog post, Larian’s Swen Vincke explains the situation with the funding of Divinity: Original Sin, and why they are considering expanding it with a Kickstarter campaign (but note that it’s not set in stone yet). Here’s a lengthy snip:

Basically, Divinity:Original Sin is already funded. Larian, together with two minority investors, one for each game (Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Dragon Commander), put sufficient amounts of cash in both games to guarantee that they get done. We’re even reasonably assured that the games won’t be a financial disaster because we managed to get sufficient guarantees from our retail distributors to earn back large parts of our money and, we only need to sell a fraction of our previous sales to be in the black.

The reason we received these guarantees is that the concepts are solid, our previous games sold well enough and to talk about Divinity: Original Sin specifically, if you see Divinity:Original Sin in action and love RPGs, any doubts you may have will disappear on the spot. This game is just cool. Because words are but words and some posters on the Codex are rightfully wary of any rhetoric, I’ll happily extend an invitation to one of them to come to our offices so we can show the game. I’m serious btw guys , but you’ll have to agree on who you send as an emissary, the emissary obviously being the person who knows a real CRPG from a a mutated adventure (evil grin )

So, the (Larian is out of money) story won’t fly on this one, though as I said, it’s true that we’re walking a tight line and that we’re burning a lot to ensure that what we release as good as we can get it. However,for over a decade we’ve been working with tight cash flows and publishers (not all, I’ve been getting complaints ) that don’t pay us or pay late, so it’s not like we’re not used to this, and I actually think that we’ve proven in the past that we can do a lot with a constrained budget. I’m certainly not afraid to compare the budget of our productions to that of other RPGs of the same scope and age, anticipating to come out lower than most.

And yes, we are so passionate about what we do that if we can fund a budget increase via Kickstarter, we’ll happily do so. If we indeed go to Kickstarter, it’ll be because the game deserves to get the maximum funding we can find, even if financially that’s not necessarily in our best interest (you’re essentially pre-selling a lot of games at a significant discount if you sell on Kickstarter, partially compensated because Amazon and Kickstarter take a lower cut than other digital distribution platforms).

If you’re interested in knowing why they are considering expanding the budget and how checking the RPGWatch and RPG Codex forums is akin to market research you might want to check the whole post.