Gameplay Programmer
About the job
- At least 4 years of experience in C++.
- A strong understanding of role-playing game systems and gameplay.
- Experience with commercial proprietary game engines.
- Familiarity with state machines, pathfinding, and artificial intelligence routines.
- Game development experience.
- Ability to communicate in English.
- Software design, problem-solving, debugging, and software architecture skills.
- This is a full-time, on-site role requiring presence in the office.
- Work on all aspects of game systems, including engine features, gameplay, user interface, audio, animation, scripting, and tools.
- Collaborate with other departments to implement required game components.
- Work with content creators to deliver required features.
- Write robust, maintainable, auto-testable code using test-driven development practices.
- Participate in game design and production as a technical member of the creative team and provide initial feedback.
- Help scope features and advise on effective implementation approaches.
- Work within an international team distributed across multiple studios.
- A bachelor's degree in computer science or software engineering.
- Experience with machine learning algorithms.
- Experience with test-driven development and entity-component-system architecture.
- A background in role-playing games.
- Experience shipping game or console titles.
About the company
Larian Studios develops premium role-playing games (RPGs) for PC and consoles, with Divinity: Original Sin 2 as a flagship title. Its products are complete, story-driven games that blend combat, exploration, puzzles, and dialogue to create immersive experiences. The company monetizes through game sales and may offer DLCs or expansions, while keeping the core games as the main focus. Larian emphasizes high-quality development through strong internal tools for tracking performance and player feedback, and it engages with the community to refine its games. It differentiates itself with deep, tactical RPG gameplay, strong storytelling, cooperative multiplayer options, and a global approach to reach RPG enthusiasts. The goal is to deliver engaging, well-crafted RPGs to players worldwide and continuously improve them by incorporating feedback and expanding content.
Company Size
501-1,000
Company Stage
Pre-seed
Total Funding
$3.2M
Headquarters
Ghent, Belgium
Founded
1996
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- BG3 mod downloads crossed one billion on August 4, 2026, proving enduring demand.
- Vincke said April 2026 the new Divinity is 'coming alive' and entering production depth.
- Larian keeps shipping BG3 hotfixes and console content, sustaining revenue and brand relevance.
What critics are saying
- Larian abandoned Baldur's Gate 4; Wizards of the Coast controls that franchise's future.
- Baldur's Gate 3 will never reach Switch 2, limiting platform expansion and sales upside.
- Divinity must clear BG3's standard; a weak launch would crush Larian's prestige.
What makes Larian Studios unique
- Larian owns Divinity, avoiding Hasbro approvals and preserving creative control over sequel strategy.
- Its RPGs pair cinematic writing, tactical combat, and systemic reactivity better than peers.
- BG3's official mod tools and console curation extend player engagement far beyond launch.
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Benefits
Flexible Work Hours
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
10%1 year growth
10%2 year growth
10%6 years ago, Baldur's Gate 3 first arrived and was completely unrecognizable from its final release. October 6, 2026, 11:00am There have been countless reviews and thousands of hours poured into Baldur's Gate 3, which has been considered one of the best RPGs of the decade, if not of all time. The way this game adapts a D&D framework and gives players the freedom to craft truly unique adventures is astounding, but it was not always the same game players talk about from 2023. The first iterations of BG3 looked quite different than its final, Game of the Year winning version, giving players only a small view of the title it would eventually become. Developer Larian Studios took a lot of time to turn Baldur's Gate 3 into the juggernaut of an RPG that it turned out being, and continued to do so for quite some time after it launched. New character subclasses coming out in future patches combined with additional story changes, extra cutscenes, and even new endings for players to explore post-release. Although Larian will not be a part of anything related to a potential Baldur's Gate 4, the new features they added reflect a willingness to change their games drastically compared to other big development groups. Baldur's Gate 3 launched into Early Access back in 2020 with only Act 1 playable for testing. On October 6, 2020, Baldur's Gate 3 became available for PC players through Early Access, making the game's first story Act playable for everyone to try. After a few closed beta tests at large-scale events, this was the first time the game was put into players' hands officially, opening up playtesting and feedback for Larian Studios to view. The game put out at this time was vastly different from the 2023 version of Baldur's Gate 3, beyond just the existence of Acts 2 & 3 that came out with the later launch. Early Access BG3 was full of different character options, story paths, and even specific mechanics that didn't make it into the final cut of the game. For example, players could Long Rest indefinitely in the first edition of BG3 without any consequences, but patches in the Early Access introduced Camp Supply systems that required players to gather resources to fully restore their party's health and spell slots. At the same time, Larian introduced Karmic Dice later in Early Access, giving players ways to earn more successful rolls without relying completely on random luck from their dice, making an optional feature based on feedback. Some other changes were harder to notice, but the big Early Access refinements that took place over three years had a huge impact. By the time Act 1 was done, it released with 30% more content than when it started, adding new character dialogue, combat encounters, side quests, and other content. On top of UI/UX polish, here are some of the biggest features added to Baldur's Gate 3 during Early Access: * Level Cap raised from Level 4 to Level 5 to allow characters to access better features in Act 1. * Alchemy Crafting systems were added to make collecting ingredients useful beyond just contributing to Camp Supplies. * New Reaction pop-up system to work with certain spells and abilities. * Far more cutscenes throughout different character interactions to make gameplay feel more cinematic. * Extra character customization options for more personalized body types and visual details. * Addition of Half-Orc and Dragonborn racial options with unique abilities. * Addition of the Monk class with unique abilities, resources, and progression features. * Ability to respec class and subclass whenever you like instead of being locked into one option from the start of the game. Character stories & gameplay segments looked far different in Early Access before being changed. However, perhaps the biggest changes from Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access to full release was how it changed the story surrounding origin characters. Important figures like Gale and Wyll were much different in Early Access, with Gale being a far less sympathetic figure and Wyll acting far more cocky and unlikable. The main game fleshes out these characters far more, giving them greater nuance and appealing qualities. Gale and Wyll from Early Access might as well be different characters altogether in some cases, with others like Karlach being non-existent for a time too. Although the end of Early Access gave players the ability to play as origin characters too, it wasn't until the full release that some characters' stories were relevant at all. Karlach was almost a last-minute addition, a strange thing to consider now as she is likely one of the most popular companion characters in Baldur's Gate 3 these days. The same can be said of the Dream Companion, a character you build alongside your own to appear in your head and offer advice throughout the game. The Early Access version of this figure was alternatively called "The Guardian," and was a much more malicious character than their more mysterious version established on release. Player feedback adjusted many elements of Act 1 from Early Access to make it incredibly refined. The Early Access story of BG3 had plenty of pitfalls that got corrected over time, such as a bloated tutorial section on the Nautiloid ship getting trimmed down significantly. Other parts of player feedback influenced what BG3 eventually became, such as having your racial option no longer impact your character's Ability Score stats. The expansion of spells, items, character interactions, and story content were largely based on what fans of the Early Access wanted to see, in addition to general iterations the developers applied. In an era now dominated by mods for this incredible RPG, it's fascinating to remember how different it was when the Early Access first dropped. Although the foundation was there, half of the game's most exciting parts wouldn't have existed without the changes made during the Early Access period. For that alone, Baldur's Gate 3 is a crowing achievement and a testament to how important Early Access can be to a game with as many moving parts as Larian's award winner. What was your favorite part about BG3's Early Access? Let Comicbook know in the comments below!
Baldur's Gate 3 mods have been downloaded more than a billion times, as Larian celebrates new milestone. Larian Studios just celebrated 500 million downloads, but it's actually double in reality Last Updated on August 5, 2026 Yesterday, the developers behind Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studios, celebrated a total of 500 million downloads across 13,000 mods on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. But that's only half the picture. This milestone only counts for mods downloaded directly through the in-game mod manager. There's another 500+ million downloads online, bringing the total to more than a billion. The in-game mod manager arrived with official mod support in Patch 7 for Baldur's Gate 3, back in September 2024. The game's modding scene has flourished even more since these official tools were published, and there have been a number of large-scale mods in production that are still yet to be released - the biggest of which is set to be Path to Menzobarranzan. A billion downloads and a recent Baldur's Gate 3 modathon. Glance over at the Nexus Mods homepage, and you'll see that Baldur's Gate 3 currently has the seventh-most mod downloads on the site, with over 509 million. Unsurprisingly, Skyrim still leads the pack by a long way, across two different versions of the game. Either way, BG3 remains an active modding community. In fact, there was a month-long community modathon throughout July. Nearly 200 new mods were uploaded to the site with the BG3 July Modathon 2026 tag. Video Muted Latest PC & tech deals. Prices correct as of July 10th, 2026. The CEO and founder of Larian Studios, Swen Vincke, proudly posted on X to celebrate the one billion milestone after it was pointed out online, not long after he was celebrating the half-a-billion figure from the in-game mod manager. Baldur's Gate 3 received its final major update, Patch 8, back in April last year, so it's the modding community that keeps the game alive and kicking. As it stands, Larian Studios will not be developing Baldur's Gate 4 and is instead working on its next Divinity game; Vincke says BG3 will "continue to do well" without them thanks to the thriving mod support. Which Acer Predator Atlas 8 handheld are you most interested in? Acer recently announced UK pricing, but which one do you think is the best config/price? At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.
Baldur's Gate 3 console version gets A spellcasting Barbarian, A Shadow Reaper Class, and new Druid Wildshapes. Published Jul 27, 2026, 6:15 AM EDT Sam Woods is TheGamer's Senior Reporter. He's been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 2,500 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He's interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry's top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He's also interviewed some of the world's biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark's cancellation, got context around some AI drama, and revealed how Lady Dimitrescu's actress would love to step back into the character's giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam's journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He's covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on more than one occasion. He's been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he's done countless times. Sam's first review was 2020's Battletoads reboot, and he's since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. After what felt like an eternity's break, Larian is truly back in the swing of dropping new Baldur's Gate 3 content on the console version of the game. In the last few weeks, it has vetted, approved, and uploaded almost 30 new pieces of content, including additional encounters, a custom combat creator, and multiple new classes and subclasses, such as a Witch Elf. It appears Gamerant is back at the cadence of one new drop a week, after a three-week break, and the latest batch is here. This time, Larian has added 15 new pieces of content, including a spellcasting Barbarian, a Shadow Reaper Class, and additional Druid Wildshapes. Baldur's Gate 3's latest console content drop is here, and it's A fantastic one. Baldur's Gate 3 console players aren't blessed like those on PC. While sites like Nexus Mods host close to 19,000 mods for PC players to download, console players have to wait for Larian to manually add them before they can get their fill. And the number available is nowhere close to PC. That being said, the effort the team puts in is valiant. With so many mods available, it chooses the best, vets them, and uploads them to the console edition of the game. The latest 15-piece content drop is here, and Gamerant has got details of all new additions below: * Armor of the Githyanki - Adds 50 pieces of Gith-themed armor for Tav/Origin Characters to the tutorial chest. Some are body type/race restricted. * MysticDoubleResources - Gives the mystic twice as many psi points and psionic mastery charges. * Magmatic Hell Dice - Adds a magma-themed die. * The Rage Mage: A Barbarian Spellcaster Subclass - Adds a new Barbarian subclass that allows for spellcasting while raging. Based on homebrew by Mage Hand Press in Valda's Spire of Secrets. * Eridis: Tiefling Head Preset - Adds a new head preset for Tieflings. * Marcus Restyled (Hair Dye Remover) - Makes Marcus' beard match his hair. * Sorcerer Subclass: Conflagrant Soul - Adds a Sorcerer subclass, focusing on fire and grease and the control of the two destructive elements. * Druid Wildshape Addons - Adds multiple new Wildshape options for Druids. Includes Raptor, Spiders, Boar, Owlcat, Wolf, Rabbits, and Rats. * Short Rest Tweaks - Lets you recover Spell Slots, Sorcery Points, and Rage Charges on Short Rests. * The Shadow Reaper Class - Adds a Shadow Reaper class based on Kayne from League of Legends. The class is based around taking out crowds of enemies, plus allowing you to specialize into either the quick Shadow Assassin, or the Savage Darkin Slayer. * Level Cap 40 - Increases the game's level cap to 40. * Ezuneo's Draconic Tails - Adds 10 draconic-style tails to the character creator. * Gloomy Flower: New Hair For Shadowheart - Adds a new hairstyle for Shadowheart in Acts 1 and 2. * Aylin and Isobel Join The Party - Allows Aylin and Isobel to be recruited as full party members, with unique interactions in Act 3. * Flicker Hair Patch - Adds 11 cybergoth/punk hairstyles for all races and body types. This is quite possibly the best, most game-changing content drop Gamerant has ever received. Usually, the new class and subclasses would headline things, but they take a sideline to some of the other additions. Upping the level cap to 40 is huge, as is the addition of Aylin and Isobel as party members, and the new Druid Wildshape add-ons bring massive variety. I think this might be the update that brings me back from my hiatus.
The co-lead designer of Baldur's Gate 2 turned Baldur's Gate 4 down and I don't blame him - Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty much impossible to follow. Where there's a Wyll there's a way. After Baldur's Gate 3's enormous success, Baldur's Gate 4 feels like an inevitability. That's how the entertainment industry normally works: if a product everyone loves makes hundreds of millions of dollars, it's guaranteed a sequel. But I'm not sure that established thinking works when it comes to Baldur's Gate 4. First off, Larian itself moved on from Dungeons & Dragons to make Divinity. In an interview with IGN at GDC 2024, CEO Swen Vincke revealed Larian began work on Baldur's Gate 3 DLC and even gave some thought to a potential Baldur's Gate 4 before pivoting away to other projects because the team was "going through the motions." "You could see the team was doing it because everyone felt like we had to do it, but it wasn't really coming from the heart, and we're very much a studio from the heart," Vincke added. "It's what gotten us into misery and it's also been the reasons for our success." Hasbro, which owns Dungeonis & Dragons operator Wizards of the Coast, has since said it intends to make Baldur's Gate 4. But it turns out developers are actually turning the project down, and while that sounds astonishing to hear, it makes perfect sense to me. PC Gamer spoke with James Ohlen, co-lead designer of Baldur's Gate 2 and former boss of Hasbro-owned Exodus developer Archetype Entertainment, and he revealed that Hasbro asked him to make Baldur's Gate 4, but he said no. Ohlen told Hasbro boss Chris Cox, who had called him to ask about making Baldur's Gate 4 as soon as he found out Larian wouldn't, that he "would fail." Why? Because he didn't think he could compete against Baldur's Gate 3. "That would be insanity," he said. There's more nuance to this, and it goes back to the unique way the hugely ambitious Baldur's Gate 3 was made. Larian, which had years of experience making role-playing games with its own engine via the well-received and successful Divinity: Original Sin games before starting work on Baldur's Gate 3, put the game into Steam early access for years before its full launch in 2023. That long-running process and the invaluable feedback that came from it helped shape the game, But on top of that, the developers at Larian are just amazing at what they do, their writers the best in the business, their quest designers the envy of the video game industry. Baldur's Gate 3 is a masterpiece but it is also truly unique, with more content than any single player could ever hope to see. Most developers are not in the position to make a game like Baldur's Gate 3. None, other than perhaps Rockstar, has the time, resources, or the freedom to make the sort of creative decisions that went into Baldur's Gate 3. Baldur's Gate 3 is a single-player role-playing game that could last you forever, and truly, there are none in the modern era quite like it. Triple-A developers just don't build video games this way. They are not set up to, nor are they even able to, make a game in the way Baldur's Gate 3 was made. Especially now, with development budgets under intense pressure and publishers struggling for sales. Baldur's Gate 4 feels to me like a game only Larian could make. And as the studio has made perfectly clear, it really isn't interested at all. How do you follow Baldur's Gate 3, then? Ohlen, clearly, couldn't see a path forward. He said he'd need to start from scratch, because Larian has walked away from Dungeons & Dragons and taken its engine with it. So, he'd need at least half a decade to build the tech, and there's no way Larian would agree to licensing out its engine. Then there's Larian boss Swen Vincke to contend with. He's the CEO of the company and the majority shareholder, but he's also the director of Baldur's Gate 3, which means he is free to make creative decisions - for better and for worse. Most triple-A studio CEOs do not have such freedom or control. "Swen's always going to be the master of building those kinds of things," Ohlen said. "It's really hard to take him off that throne, just because of everything - the tools, institutional knowledge, team." Baldur's Gate 3: Best Romance Partner Face-Off Pick a winner I think Baldur's Gate 4 goes one of two ways: Hasbro tries to essentially make a bigger and better Baldur's Gate 3, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a sequel that takes years to develop, launches on the next generation of consoles as well as PC, and probably isn't as good as Baldur's Gate 3 anyway despite all the creative freedom its developers were promised. Or, Hasbro takes a completely different approach. It agrees that it would be insane to compete with Baldur's Gate 3 so it doesn't try. Instead, it tasks a developer with making something completely different, something unexpected, something unique to that studio. Something smaller scale, maybe cheaper, maybe quicker. Perhaps this would be more of a risk. Perhaps it wouldn't. Or maybe there's a third option - and the more I think about this problem, the more I come around to this as a solution - we just give up on Baldur's Gate 4 entirely. Does Baldur's Gate 3 even need a sequel? I'm not sure it does. I'm not sure it needs a TV adaptation that continues the story, either. Perhaps Hasbro would be better off doing to Baldur's Gate what Larian is doing to Divinity and make a soft reboot. Baldur's Gate 4 will face extremely tough comparisons with Baldur's Gate 3. I'm not saying a Baldur's Gate reboot wouldn't, but it would perhaps take the pressure off, ever so slightly. Which developer would you like to see make Baldur's Gate 4? Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected]. Get IGN's Biggest Stories FIRST. Set Us as Your Source. Add Source Recommends. Head to IGN rewards for giveaways, discounts, and more. Become a member and enter to win giveaways, claim free offers, discounts and more! Upgrade to IGN Plus for monthly games, ad-free browsing, and more!
New Divinity game is coming alive, says Larian CEO Swen Vincke. - Apr 6, 2026 at 04:40am EDT After a few months of silence, Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke has shared a brief development update on the new Divinity game, revealing to fans that it is starting to "come alive", even though a lot of it is still "rough and missing". In his X post, he wrote: I had a good day today. I realized I was having a good dev day when Adam, its writing director, started discussing the new Divinity game with me. He just spent a week running through various permutations of one particular situation, tweaking the words, and had plenty of ideas. The things he said made sense, but it wasn't that which struck me. He often has good ideas. Instead, it was the energy level he was at. It made me happy because it felt like I had returned to a good place after being away for a while, seeing that all my favorite people and spots were still there together with a whole bunch of new ones, waiting for me to explore. I'm talking about being in that stage of development where there is a lot that is still rough or missing, but where you sense that a game is coming alive. Something was created out of nothing and you now get to experience what it feels like, knowing that things are still very moldable and that from here onwards, it can only improve. It's a good moment in the life of any game. And it's one I expect many developers recognize. As its discussion flowed in the direction of the arcs of one of its antagonists and Wccftech Inc started discussing micro-details, I was saying to myself - yeah, this is good. Days like this really are why I love doing what I do. Following the incredibly successful release of Baldur's Gate 3 in August 2023, Larian famously decided to return to its own Divinity IP rather than make Baldur's Gate 4. The official announcement of the game took place during The Game Awards 2025, following an elaborate marketing campaign that included a mysterious statue placed in the Mojave Desert. Right away, the developer said the game would be even bigger than Baldur's Gate 3, which was already gargantuan. Later, they clarified that it will indeed be a turn-based RPG like Divinity: Original Sin 2, and Vincke also admitted they're taking extra care to build a more solid universe than in previous franchise installments. The studio also got embroiled in a controversy over the use of generative AI, eventually confirming they wouldn't use it for concept art, but that genAI tools would still help them in other departments. The new Divinity game is expected to debut in early access next year, with a full release possibly in 2028-2029. About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games. Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of its news coverage in your feeds. Products mentioned.