# Larian Studios - House: Developer - Date: Founded 1996 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/larian-studios/ > A stubborn Belgian independent that spent two decades making Divinity games on a shoestring, crowdfunded its way to Original Sin, and then made Baldur's Gate 3, the RPG that conquered the mainstream. **Why it matters:** Larian revived the deep, turn-based party RPG and with Baldur's Gate 3 brought Dungeons & Dragons' rules and the classic computer RPG to an audience of millions, capping the genre's 21st-century renaissance. ## Quick answers **What is Larian Studios?** A stubborn Belgian independent that spent two decades making Divinity games on a shoestring, crowdfunded its way to Original Sin, and then made Baldur's Gate 3, the RPG that conquered the mainstream. **When was Larian Studios founded?** Larian Studios was founded in 1996 and is based in Ghent, Belgium. **Who founded Larian Studios?** Swen Vincke. **What is Larian Studios known for?** Divinity: Original Sin II and Baldur's Gate 3. **What happened to Larian Studios?** Active and independent, with Tencent holding a minority stake; its next game, a new Divinity, was revealed in December 2025. ## History [Swen Vincke](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/swen-vincke/) founded Larian Studios in 1996, and for most of its life it was a small Belgian developer fighting to stay alive. Its first project, the RPG *The Lady, the Mage and the Knight*, was cancelled in 1999 after trouble with its partner, Attic Entertainment Software. Larian kept going partly on smaller projects, including educational games, and finally shipped *Divine Divinity* in 2002, an action-heavy RPG in the mold of [Diablo](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/diablo/) with a large, reactive world. The Divinity name stuck. *Beyond Divinity* (2004), *Divinity II: Ego Draconis* (2009), in which the hero could turn into a [Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/dragon/), and the strategy hybrid *Divinity: Dragon Commander* (2013) kept the studio going, though publisher troubles left Larian determined to own its future. It turned to crowdfunding: *Divinity: Original Sin* (2014) raised $944,282 on Kickstarter and became a hit, and a second campaign funded [Divinity: Original Sin II](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/divinity-original-sin-2/) (2017), which reached a far larger audience. That success won Larian the chance to make a new Baldur's Gate for [Wizards of the Coast](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/wizards-of-the-coast/). The studio grew to hundreds of staff in offices across Europe, Canada and Asia, and a minority stake was taken by Tencent. [Baldur's Gate 3](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate-3/) spent nearly three years in early access from October 2020 before its full release in August 2023, when it became a critical and commercial phenomenon and won Game of the Year at The Game Awards. Larian then decided against making the expansions it had planned and moved on; in December 2025 it revealed that its next game would be a new Divinity. ## Notable work [Divinity: Original Sin II](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/divinity-original-sin-2/) is the purest expression of Larian's design: [Turn-based combat](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/turn-based-combat/) where fire, poison, water and electricity interact on the battlefield, up to four players in cooperative play, and quests that can be solved by talking to animals, stacking crates or murdering the quest-giver. The Game Master mode even let one player run adventures for others, a nod to the tabletop. [Baldur's Gate 3](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate-3/) applied the same systemic freedom to [Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-5th-edition/) and the [Forgotten Realms](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/forgotten-realms/). Its cinematic dialogue, fully voiced companions and dice rolls shown on screen translated the experience of a tabletop session with a generous [Game Master](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/game-master/) into a computer game, and its [Mind Flayer (Illithid)](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/mind-flayer/) plot and cast of companions drew millions of new players into Dungeons & Dragons. ## Legacy Larian finished what [Obsidian Entertainment](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/obsidian-entertainment/)'s Kickstarter and its own Original Sin campaigns had started: the return of the deep, party-based [Western Computer RPGs (CRPG)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/computer-rpg/) from niche to mainstream. Where the original [Baldur's Gate](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate/) made AD&D's rules playable in real time, Baldur's Gate 3 made them visible, turn by turn, and showed a mass audience why people had loved those rules at the table since the 1970s. The studio's independence is part of its legend. Vincke's long insistence on owning Larian's games and its decision not to milk its biggest success have made it a model for developers who want to build what they would want to play. With a new Divinity underway, the studio is returning to the world where it began. ## Facts - [Swen Vincke](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/swen-vincke/) founded Larian in Belgium in 1996; its first project, The Lady, the Mage and the Knight, was cancelled in 1999. - Its first released RPG, Divine Divinity (2002), began the Divinity series that Larian has worked on ever since. - Divinity: Original Sin (2014) was funded partly through Kickstarter, which raised $944,282. - [Baldur's Gate 3](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate-3/) entered early access in October 2020 and was fully released in August 2023. - Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2023, among many other honors. - Larian chose not to make planned Baldur's Gate 3 expansions, and in December 2025 revealed its next game as Divinity. - By 2025 the studio had about 530 employees in seven locations, from Ghent and Dublin to Kuala Lumpur and Quebec City. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larian_Studios) - [Larian Studios](https://larian.com/) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.