Yes, that’s more or less my point. These preemptive complaints needlessly frame it as a competition, and go on to demonstrate bad sportsmanship in that imaginary competition. They could be praising everyone who worked on this masterpiece, and take it as inspiration for their own work, but they’ve chosen instead to dampen everyone else’s excitement about it. It’s a jerk move.

They also do us a disservice by presuming that an unusually high production budget is what we will come to expect, rather than basics like a good story, or simply avoiding exploitive garbage like microtransactions, DRM, and online-only requirements.

I wish they would just let Larian have their glory. Congratulate them, even. It was well earned.