A wholly subscription-driven games industry would be "savage", says Larian CEO

17.01.2024 - 19:11 / rockpapershotgun.com / Philippe Tremblay

Larian CEO Swen Vincke has been reading Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay's thoughts from yesterday about how players need to "get comfortable" with renting their games as a package, rather than "having and owning" an individual copy. His broad takeaway is: that ain't it, chief. In a social media thread today, Vincke wrote that "it's going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not". He feels that "direct from developer to players is the way". As such you shouldn't expect Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2 or any other Larian RPGs to join the Game Pass bandwagon anytime soon.

Where Tremblay made a case for why consumers should be at ease with purchasing access to an evolving blob of videogame releases, Vincke addressed things from more of a developer's perspective, arguing that subscription models give platform holders too much creative authority and will inevitably breed conservatism.

Whatever the future of games looks like, content will always be king. But it’s going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not. Direct from developer to players is the way. https://t.co/wEUvd5adt0

"Getting a board to ok a project fueled by idealism is almost impossible and idealism needs room to exist, even if it can lead to disaster," he wrote. "Subscription models will always end up being cost/benefit analysis exercises intended to maximize profit.

"There is nothing wrong with that but it may not become a monopoly of subscription services," Vincke added. "We are already all dependent on a select group of digital distribution platforms and discoverability is brutal. Should those platforms all switch to subscription, it'll become savage. In such a world by definition the preference of the subscription service will determine what games get made. Trust me - you really don't want that."

It goes without saying, then, that "you won't find our games on a subscription service even if I respect that for many developers it presents an opportunity to make their game," Vincke went on. "I don't have an issue with that. I just want to make sure the other ecosystem doesn't die because it's valuable."

To editorialise a bit more than I did in yesterday's post on Tremblay, I have extremely mixed feelings about the subs model. I can't deny that I've stumbled on some fascinating games by means of Game Pass, and I've heard from a few developers that subscription services have helped their stranger projects find an audience.

Other developers, however, have said that they increasingly feel they have