Baldur's Gate 3 director shares his full GOTY speech, paying tribute to QA and departing D&D staff

Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke has shared his Game Awards acceptance speech in full, after he was cut short at the ceremony last week.

The Game Awards 2023 drew a lot of ire last week for putting a strict time limit of 30 seconds on acceptance speeches. That's why Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke was just one of many award recipients to have their speeches cut short, with plenty of developers left frustrated at the awards ceremony as a result.

Now though, Vincke has shared his full planned speech for the Game of the Year award via his Twitter account. In 15 tweets, Vincke begins by congratulating competitors Capcom, Nintendo, Remedy, and Insomniac for their stellar output over the past year, thanks to games like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake 2.

Next is Vincke saying how the fabulous suit of armor he wore to the ceremony is to honor Baldur's Gate 3's player base, without which the game wouldn't have been possible. He also highlights the 2,000-odd staff who're named in the RPG's huge list of credits.

In particular though, Vincke gives shoutouts to "team QA, team localisation, team customer support, team operations, team publishing, team play testers" as "people that don’t always get the credit they deserve." That's a very nice touch from the Baldur's Gate 3 director.

Vincke then pays tribute to Jim Southworth, Larian's cinematic animation lead, who sadly passed away during development of Baldur's Gate 3. There's also a shoutout to localization company PitStop Productions, who Vincke acknowledges had to record an "insane" amount of lines for the game.

The Baldur's Gate 3 director then praises the cast of the huge RPG, as well as publisher Wizards of the Coast, while mentioning how sad he was to hear of layoffs at the latter company. Hasbro announced it would be making 1,100 staff redundant earlier this week, in a move that will take effect over the next six months.

Finally, Vincke ends on a tale about a publisher, who once told him games were driven by "idealism," and he meant that in an "exploitative" way. Vincke admits the publisher was right, adding that "games are a unique art form, as important as books, music or movies. Many developers, myself included, make games because they love seeing others engage with their creations in a way only games can offer."

"They don’t care that much about the money made beyond it being the fuel they need to create new and better games. It’s worth reminding everyone that fuel is but a means, not a goal. Whereto and how we journey are what matter and what we remember," Vincke's acceptance speech ends. Or, at least, that's how it would've ended if he was given more than 30 seconds on the stage.

Vincke was also meant to announce the immediate release of the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate 3 in his acceptance speech, but he plain forgot. To be fair to the Baldur's Gate 3 director, there was plenty more he wanted to say in addition to the release.

Baldur's Gate 3 players on Xbox are reporting lost saves, and apparently need to be told not to directly unplug their consoles to turn them off.