Revision 5

Larian Studios is the Belgian role playing game developer and publisher behind Divinity. Founded in 1996 by Swen Vincke, the studio is based in Ghent, Belgium, and self publishes its games.

Overview

History

Larian spent its early years on a range of projects before focusing on role playing games. The studio's breakthrough came with Divinity: Original Sin in 2014, followed by the larger Divinity: Original Sin II in 2017, both known for cooperative play and systemic, reactive design. In 2023 the studio released Baldur's Gate 3, a critical and commercial success that won multiple Game of the Year awards.

After Baldur's Gate 3

Rather than continue with Baldur's Gate content, Larian chose to return to its own franchise for its next project. Divinity, revealed at The Game Awards 2025, is the result, and the studio describes it as its biggest game yet. The wider franchise is covered on the Divinity Series page.

The change of scale was deliberate. Swen Vincke had previously suggested the studio's next game would be smaller than Baldur's Gate 3, and he has since explained that this was said while Larian was still weighing another game built on a licensed tabletop system, a plan the studio has since dropped.

Leadership

Swen Vincke is the studio's founder and head, and serves as creative lead and director on Divinity. He summed up the new project as the team unleashed, signaling a game built without the constraints of a licensed setting.

Recent Releases

Larian's two best known modern releases are Divinity: Original Sin II (2017) and Baldur's Gate 3 (2023). Both are turn-based role playing games with party play and cooperative multiplayer, and both used a paid early access period to refine systems with player feedback before launch. Baldur's Gate 3 in particular drew on years of early access on PC before its full release and later console versions.

Composer

The soundtrack for Divinity is being composed by Borislav Slavov, who also scored the studio's recent role playing games and won a BAFTA for that work. His return is one of the few named creative roles the studio has confirmed for the project so far.

The studio confirmed in January 2026 that Slavov had never left the project and was already busy composing and recording new material for it.

Studio Footprint

Beyond the main office in Ghent, Larian operates studios in Quebec, Dublin, Guildford, Barcelona, Warsaw, and Kuala Lumpur. The team grew significantly during and after Baldur's Gate 3, and by early 2026 a team of around 500 developers was working across these locations on Divinity.

Larian now frames this as seven studios worldwide. The team's growth is documented directly by the studio: it finished its last game with 411 people and had around 500 working on Divinity by January 2026. Director Swen Vincke has said that growth has slowed, because most of the team needed to make a large cinematic RPG is already in place, and that the studio sizes its teams to the games it wants to make and to what it judges the market to be.

Direction

Swen Vincke remains the studio's founder, owner, and creative lead. He is the director on the new Divinity project, and described the project at The Game Awards 2025 Reveal as the team unleashed, signaling a game built on a custom in house ruleset rather than a licensed tabletop system.