Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director compares success of the "f***ing CRPG" to Palworld, says "it's not rocket science" why the survival game is doing so well

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The secret to Palworld's success is "really f***ing simple," he says

Larian Studios
(Image credit: Larian Studios)

There's no denying Baldur's Gate 3's massive popularity, and its director of publishing, Michael Douse, has drawn comparison between it and the survival crafting game Palworld for finding success with a game that not all investors might have taken a chance on. 

This comes from a new interview with Game File, in which Douse states that despite Larian Studios' partners being "great," ultimately, "if you're working on anything outside of PC, you have to advocate very heavily for what you're doing." 

Elaborating on this, he says: "This industry is still obsessed with genres. I mean, we made the most expensive CRPG ever made. If you're a guy whose job it is to say, ‘Well, what projects should we do and what are the risks?’ You're going to look at our game and go, well, ‘It's a fucking CRPG. Why would we take a bet on this?’ [...] Niches don't exist anymore, you know? Maybe we should start taking more bets instead of being like, ‘oh, X, Y, and Z are expensive.’" 

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At this point, Douse points to Palworld, which launched in early access in January to immediate success. Douse says that analysts "didn't see it coming," but the ingredients behind its success are "really fucking simple," and he doesn't know why people are surprised it's done so well. 

"It's like, Palworld. Why is everyone surprised that was successful?" he questions. "They took a bunch of mechanics they knew people liked, made a game that was unbothered by what a game should be, and they gave it directly to players who decided to buy it. That's really fucking simple. It’s not rocket science.

"The analysts are confused because they didn't see it coming. And they want basic data sets and predictability," he continues. They're going to be confused a lot in the future. Me, too. I like being confused. We work best in chaos."

Unlike Baldur's Gate 3, Palworld is still in early access, but it's been receiving constant patches and has plans for a big content update in summer with a new island and fresh-faced Pals. An early-access roadmap previously revealed that PvP is on the way at some point in the future, too, so developer Pocketpair is far from done with it. 

For more games like Baldur's Gate 3, be sure to check out our recommendations for the top 25 best RPGs.

Catherine Lewis
Catherine Lewis
Deputy News Editor

I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.