You also gave Larian a fiscal reason. The game was in development for 6 years and was funded by Larian and the early access sales. They have every incentive to release a game 'good enough' upon running out of money.
I can find no indicators that suggest Larian was running out of money. If you look at the yearly revenue against the budget for the development of the game, they had plenty of cash on hand through 2023 - even before the sale of Bg3 they had 12 Million in revenue plus easy access to streams of credit if they needed it, plus the extra money from EA sales, plus a warchest from DOS2 that they came into development with (around $400 million or so).
Oh and another chunk from the Tencent deal, but I don't know how much that was. Although they didn't allow that stake to be sold for cash as much as access to China.
Revenue is not profit. 12 mil per year for 6 years is 72 million which is a 28 million deficit against a conservative 100 mill game budget not including marketing if we assume pure profit, which is not how that works. Do you have a source for the 400 million number?
12 Million was just 2023 - the annual revenue was $110 million per year based on sales from DOS2 or roughly $600 million. There are simply no indicators that larian was struggling financially here. I've looked, but they didn't take on any new debt, they didn't sell assets, or lay off employees, or shutter studios.
1) 110 mil from DOS 2 is impossible. It made 85 mil in revenue the year is was released. https://gamingbolt.com/divinity-original-sin-2-made-85-million-in-revenue-according-to-superdata#:~:text=Divinity%3A%20Original%20Sin%202%20Made,In%20Revenue%2C%20According%20To%20SuperData
I have no idea why one would think making more money off DOS 2 each following year from the one it came out in is reasonable.
2) I looked for 2022 and 2021 revenue numbers and it was estimated at 12 mil with median revenue per game at 9 mil https://vginsights.com/developer/12015/larian-studios The only place 110 mil is found is for 'currently' in 2023 which accounts for BG3.
3) You said they had a warchest of 400 mil from DOS 2, Source?
4) I will correct an assumption. Larian does not have to be broke and begging for their to be financial reasons in releasing a game early. They moved up the date of release to avoid Starfield. That is an early release for financial reasons alone. You can still release a game early due to running out of money, but not have to take on debt because you responsibly projected development costs and released early so you would not have to do that. Lack of debt or closing studios and finances running too low to keep BG3 in the oven for 6 more months to a year are not mutually exclusive.
