Owlcat hits 600 employees, commits to CRPGs, and would take on Baldur's Gate 4 as a 'great challenge'

Owlcat Games is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a lot to talk about: 600 employees, two games in active development, and a co-founder who says the studio would consider making Baldur's Gate 4 a "great challenge" if Hasbro ever came knocking. Co-founder and creative director Alexander Mishulin gave interviews to both PCGamesN and IGN to mark the milestone, laying out where the studio stands and where it's headed.

Mishulin was direct about the CRPG question: "We will continue to make CRPGs because we love them. We do not want to become stagnant. We will be trying different approaches for our RPG games, trying to find the best possible fit for the idea of the game." The two projects currently in development reflect exactly that range. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a Mass Effect-style action-RPG set in the TV show's universe — a sharp departure from Owlcat's house style. Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, on the other hand, iterates on the CRPG engine from Rogue Trader and introduces an ambitious detective and investigation metagame, trading the studio's usual ruler-fantasy setup for something more reactive and grounded in the 40K Inquisition setting. On the Baldur's Gate 4 front, Mishulin was asked directly — apparently prompted by the fact that Archetype Entertainment, another Mass Effect-adjacent studio, was previously offered the project by Hasbro and turned it down. Mishulin's response: "You already said that we are a little bit masochistic. So yeah, we will consider it a great challenge!"

At 600 staff, Owlcat is now firmly in the top tier of RPG developers by headcount. For comparison, Larian Studios — fresh off Baldur's Gate 3 — was last reported at over 500 employees, while Obsidian sits in the low 200s after Microsoft's recent layoffs. CD Projekt Red's Warsaw studio alone had 615 people as of a 2023 financial statement. BioWare, once the gold standard for running parallel RPG franchises with Mass Effect and Dragon Age simultaneously, is now estimated at 100 or fewer following post-Veilguard cuts. Owlcat, originally founded in Moscow, is now headquartered in Paphos, Cyprus, with staff also in Armenia. The studio has faced scrutiny over alleged business ties to Russia and accusations against specific staff members regarding posts targeting Ukrainians and recruitment activity in occupied Crimea — Owlcat has responded to those claims previously.

With two major RPGs already in the pipeline, taking on a Baldur's Gate 4 in the near term seems unlikely regardless of enthusiasm — Archetype cited exactly that kind of workload pressure when declining the same opportunity. But Mishulin's comments, combined with the Dark Heresy announcement and the studio's rapid growth, paint a picture of a developer that's genuinely expanding its ambitions rather than narrowing them. The CRPG faithful have reason to feel reassured.