Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke revealed in an interview with TheGamer that surging prices for PC components are disrupting the studio’s development plans for its next Divinity project.
Vincke specifically pointed to RAM and SSD prices as the problem. The studio normally forecasts what hardware players will own by the time a game launches. Rising component costs are breaking those predictions.
“Interestingly, another [issue Larian is facing] is really the price of RAM and the price of SSDs… we’ve never had it like this,” Vincke said. “It kind of ruins all of your projections.”
The issue isn’t about whether Larian Studios wants to optimize its game. It’s about timing. Studios typically save certain optimization work for later in development. But if hardware prices stay high, fewer players will upgrade their PCs. That means the average player machine will be lower-spec than Larian expected.
This forces the studio to reduce memory usage and improve performance earlier than planned. “It means that most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point in time,” Vincke explained.
The timing matters because optimization work takes engineering resources away from building features and iterating on systems. Studios usually prefer to finalize their game systems before spending significant time on performance tuning. Doing it earlier can mean reworking optimization if those systems change later.
Larian is known for using Early Access periods to make major changes based on player feedback. Baldur’s Gate 3 spent nearly three years in Early Access before its full 2023 release. The studio added content, reworked combat systems, and adjusted pacing throughout that period.
The next Divinity game will apparently face tighter memory constraints during its Early Access phase than Larian originally planned. This could affect everything from texture quality to how many NPCs can appear on screen at once.
Why hardware prices matter for game design
Modern RPGs push memory and storage hard. RAM holds textures, animation data, world state, NPC AI routines, and audio. Fast SSDs stream open worlds and cut loading times.
If players can’t afford upgrades, developers must work within tighter limits. That can mean smaller texture resolutions, fewer simultaneous NPCs, or breaking large areas into smaller zones with more loading breaks.
