You might've heard that Larian Studios is being sued over Baldur's Gate 3 being too good. It is 2023's highest-rated game, after all. But the lawsuit is a complete fabrication, stemming from a satirical TikTok video.
As reported by GamesRadar, the rumour spread after Stazima made a video claiming that Activision Blizard, Ubisoft, and EA filed a lawsuit against Larian Studios for "defaming the game industry by actually making a game that works and unfairly raising expectations by setting the bar too high for other companies to match". This video also claims that they're trying to pocket a "cool $100 billion in damages"--as if it wasn't clear enough it was satire from the defamation claims.
But of course, despite being obviously fake, many in the comments took the video to be 100 percent true. "So they basically started a lawsuit with Larian for their game being too good..." Keano said. "What... a lawsuit for making an actual playable game? Yikes," Richie said. "Guess I won't be buying games from the other developers then [shrug emoji]," Kevin Sapp83 said.
These comments are still flooding in and plenty of people are scrambling to Google information on this supposed lawsuit. You won't find anything... because the video is very clearly a joke.
"EA has no room to talk after Jedi: Survivor's unoptimised release," seafur13 said. "Time to boycott any company part of the lawsuit, vote with your wallets," HomesickCaribou said. "I wonder if Microsoft will make Activision drop it," Jason said.
There are also plenty of people saying that they cannot find anything about the lawsuit online, with the only evidence being this random TikTok video that went viral overnight. There's probably a good reason for that, eh? $100 billion is a stupidly high and unrealistic number for a settlement and companies aren't going to go around suing each other for making really good games. If that were the case, winning awards would be like putting a target on your back.
If anything, this is a good lesson--don't take everything you hear to be gospel. Granted, this is plainly satire, but anyone and everyone can upload videos to TikTok. It's not a curated platform and there are no hoops to jump through before you can post something. Anyone can say anything. Granted, this is satire and was clearly not intended to dupe the masses, but if you see a TikTok making outlandish claims with nothing online to back it up, it's a safe bet that it's not true.