Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Larian Studios opens Malaysian office & hiring

https://www.google.com/amp/s/sea.ign.com/baldurs-gate-iii/155102/news/larian-studios-opens-in-malaysia-seeking-talent-for-baldurs-gate-3%3famp=1

I guess 300 folks, internal and external working on BG3 wasn't enough!!!

I think they should open an India office as well.

if youre not convinced that its tripple A yet.

that beeing said
>outsourcing to asia

I never suggested it wasn't AAA.

They out sourced part of it to Russia, part of it to Canada, part of it to Ireland, not just their own Belgium Studio in Ghent.

Russia and even my country of Canada are likely cheaper labour wise then EU nations (Russia especially, but in Canada's case exchange rates).

So why not open it to Malyasia as well. I'm not an expert in Malyasian economics, but I suspect they can hire a lot more folks there for cheaper, perfectly good staff.

eh, a lot of tripple A developers these days outsource to asia and i personally think that the quality suffers.
Just to talk about somehting i have some idea about: im on atstation a lot, and you see a lot of very samey concept art coming from southeast asia.

my guess is: "game devs for hire" so to speak are beeing mass produced in those countries, probably with some kind of university course

They explain why they went with Malaysia in his latest interview, it's so they can have people working on BG3 24 hours a day. St. Peterborough passes it to Ghent then Ghent passes it to Dublin, and Dublin passes it to Quebec city, and Quebec city would pass it to St. Peterborough, but now Quebec city will pass it onto Kuala Lumpur instead. Without Kuala Lumpur they were making BG 3 (and DOS 2) 17 hours a day, Kuala Lumpur will bring it up 24 hours aday.

yeah ive read it and i admit the timezone argument is solid.
its actually good to see that they dont just crunch, because crunch almost never works from what ive seen from tripple A develoeprs

The Witcher 3 had hardcoe crunch

One unfortunate fact to mention regarding the Malaysia operation - if there are any gay employees of Larian, make sure to warn them to be very careful if they go over there. They could have you publicly flogged. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/malays...bian-sexual-relations-terengganu-sharia/

Not somewhere I would care to work, until they reform that sort of barbaric nonsense.

I would think it's a reasonable assumption that such matters would be managed sensitively. A former manager of mine from many years ago was not so sensitive (in fact he was a bloody idiot) and it was interesting and quite amusing to see him wilt under the HR manager's "oh really?" line of questioning. Not at my contrivance, I hasten to add: he kicked off entirely at his own behest.

Anyway, cultures vary and while I personally may have strong feelings about particular matters nothing should be taken for granted. As someone who's lived all her life in The West, there are plenty of places I would be uncomfortable about going right here without casting a critical eye at someone else's culture.

I accept cultural differences up to a point, but I think that sort of relativism can be taken too far. I did not, for instance, in the days of Apartheid, see it as a matter to be handled sensitively based on cultural differences. Some things, I would say, just have to be called out and opposed.

My view is that this is something worth pointing out in various contexts, and particularly when business and investment are involved. That's the sort of discomfort and pressure that ultimately brings about change. I think that handling things sensitively can sometimes become a euphemism for "go along to get along", if you see what I mean.

I absolutely get your meaning as an LGBT type myself. My point wasn't so much that things are acceptable there as they're getting worse in places where they shouldn't, e.g. the US, and very bad indeed in places such as South America, so I'm personally a little wary of singling out one country or culture. But there is a valid point that the west as a whole is often too accepting of the unacceptable if we allow it to be excused by "cultural diversity", though I think it's a matter for our, ahem, "esteemed" politicians to address rather than small game companies. I guess it boils down to whether or not one agrees with "rather than" or would rather see "and also".

I think, though, that if we wait for governments to do something, we'll be waiting a long time. I used the South African situation as an example because I was working there right after that system fell, and I talked to a lot of folks about it. All that most national governments offered was polite disapproval, if that. What really made the difference was consumers, artists, businesses, etc putting huge pressure on them in a sustained way. We're not going to change the world by being forum warriors, of course, but I think a constant trickle of discomfort, from many quarters, does serve a purpose.

My personal position is that if you publicly flog people for homosexuality, that country is off my list of holiday destinations, and also off the list of places I would invest.

I certainly take your point about the backsliding in our own societies. If we're not very careful, worrying about which other states practice human rights abuses will become a moot point...

Governments do seem to be "justice plus" in that they prove that it is possible to be even more than glacially slow. But yeah, in general terms I certainly won't ever support anywhere that is conspicuously anti-LGBT and will obviously not visit a country where my very existence is pretty much illegal: visiting with my gf could mean the wrong sort of "trip of a lifetime".

The awkwardness is how we deal with the intermediaries. Taking a hard-line stance can often have unintended consequences, not least the potential undermining of an influx of better values.

Yes, I think total non-engagement by everyone is almost certainly not an effective strategy. But while I think all-stick-and-no-carrot is not the way, neither is the reverse. If the default is to politely not mention it, because in the boardroom it's bad form to mention people's human rights abuses, then it's probably a good thing to have some people making a nuisance of themselves about it.

One of the reasons I know about this situation is that a family friend is a woman of Malaysian descent, married to a Scottish woman over here. They've talked to me about how they feel when they visit family over there, and have to go covert lesbian "friends". Not cool, and not a nice feeling. I just think that if I were an employer with a Malaysian operation, and obviously not knowing the sexuality of all my staff (nor expecting them to declare it), I'd be wondering quite seriously about the position I might be putting some of them in.

I'm the sort of person who stays away from meetings for that reason. Not because of any claim to be "for great justice!", just that I'm tetchy and the more I'm supposed to not mention something that's just wrong and glaringly obviously so the more likely I am to snark about it. Even at the best of times I've been told off for being "flippant" simply for having an opinion. Well okay, repeatedly taking the piss out of my idiot manager was perhaps a minor factor too.

But people do need to speak up and not be suffocated by misuse of etiquette. I'm fairly confident where the Larian chaps stand.


Yeah, that's nasty. Probably too easy for me to say "I'd just refuse to go" when there are all sorts of commitments, whether personal, work or both. It shouldn't be that way.

I wouldn't claim to know much about Larian as an organisation, but hopefully you're right about their culture. As a rule, I tend to think it's a rare company that doesn't need to be kept honest, to some degree.

What I'm wary of, because I've seen some variation of it so many times, is a company position of keeping "politics" off the board, and just focusing on the nice things they're making. To give an extreme example, a company that uses blood diamonds will come out with something like, "Hey guys, let's keep politics out of this - we just want to make great jewelry!" That's extreme, as I say, but it's remarkable how often attitudes essentially along those lines crop up.

That is an extreme example, and not a fair one, blood diamonds are a major labour issue, but usually when a company want to keep politics out of it,, its in reguards to content, not labour, aka they don't want the story they are doing to be political, they want fun.

LGBT rights are a fairly major issue if you're LGBT (and quite often if you're not), especially if there's a risk of serious human rights violations. As is often the case with me I'm not strongly supporting either viewpoint because I personally feel rather out of my depth discussing boardroom politics but aside from that I get the point that Kaspar is making.

I suppose the point is that Larian aren't directly profiting from highly immoral things such as blood diamonds and the local political climates are somewhat disconnected, so there is that, but... well, I dunno, I mean I mentioned the US a few posts back and the UK is also at risk of sliding backwards on that point too; indeed if the increasingly hostile press coverage is anything to go by, it already is.

Well, I made it clear that the example was extreme, because I wasn't inviting a direct comparison in that sense. The point was simply to illustrate the commonplace corporate attitude of "Let's focus on the nice outcomes, and let's dismiss the moral elephant in the room as 'politics'."

Having said that, I think that the case could be made that the comparison may differ by degree, but not by nature. Malaysia's flogging practices are classified by Amnesty International as "the widespread use of torture", and LGBT rights are non-existent. By investing there, one is almost certainly benefiting from cheaper labour, and who knows how many people one is employing are having to live secret lives on pain of being brutalised.

My assumption is that the Malaysian branch is a case of having a more significant presence in the Asian markets rather than anything cynical. But I do take your point and there certainly are companies that profit by offshoring as a means of circumventing those pesky hard-won labour laws and human rights issues.

I remain ambivalent because I don't think there is anything dodgy with this decision (after all, one of Larian's strengths in a market dominated by several companies who are now primarily noted for their unsavoury practises is that they aren't like them, so I doubt they'd do that for the PR hit alone) but if I was called on to spend time in a country whose laws make it basically illegal to be me I would be extremely uncomfortable. I mentioned a few posts back about the bullying manager who got all shouty that I would need to do precisely that and that he was given a roasting by our HR woman.