Since the launch of BG3, Larian has done a beyond amazing job of responding to all sorts of player feedback and making updates to the game to help turn it into the best version of itself that it can possibly be. This is why I'm so baffled by their sudden heel-turn of saying "Well we're done with the game and burnt out on it so we're going to explore our next projects". It's incredibly frustrating to see the developers' passion for the game suddenly fly out the window in the way it did.
The thing is, we can't say for sure that they did these post-release updates out of passion for the game. It could be that their only motivation was simply trying to appease fans and work on feedback.
Given the state of their development cycle, one can easily wonder if they ran out of passion during their work on Act 2, what with Act 3's myriad of problems.
As such it's not possible to say with any level of certainty that their passion had "Flown out the window" at the point they ceased major development post-release. What with it being possible (If not likely) that their passion had long since been gone and they just reached the point where it was too undesirable to continue working for free on a "Finished" product (That had already netted them a plethora of awards) and they instead decided to work on their next projects that they are actually passionate about.
Since when it comes to making updates to parts of the game, they can go on for literally years and years making lots of adjustments to make the game as perfect as possible (As we saw with Act 1 in EA, 3 years of taking on feedback and making updates to that singular Act). At some point they have to decide enough is enough, especially given that these updates don't earn them any money as they're released for free. Meaning even if they DID want to perfect the game with updates they'd eventually be forced to stop in order to work on projects that will generate revenue.
When it comes to it, I find it hard to fault Larian for stopping when they did. In my mind it's a miracle that they went as far as they did post-release. It's not often developers bother to patch things post-release and rarer still to have multiple patches.
Sure, it sucks for fans of the game that wanted Larian to go that little bit further to polish out this or that. But at the end of the day, they're not only a business which needs to put resources into things that generate revenue. But they're also a group of people, people who've been working on the game for the better part of a decade, one can imagine the burn out such an endeavor can provide ESPECIALLY in the light of other projects being scheduled that are far more appealing than doing the millionth tweak on a game that's been your only project for so long.
