The makers of Baldur’s Gate 3 have made it pretty clear that the game won’t be coming to subscription services like Xbox Game Pass any time soon, saying they believe the amount they charge for the game is fair. Now in a new statement responding to Ubisoft saying we should get used to no longer owning games, Larian boss Swen Vincke has gone a step further.
Vincke’s strikes an interesting position, going beyond the usual straightforward arguments about value, saying subscription services becoming dominant would reduce the vibrancy of the industry, as those who own the sub services would have a finger on what gets made. He doesn’t outright say it, but the implication is fairly clear – there’s a good chance Baldur’s Gate 3 wouldn’t have got made in a world where subscription services are king (recall how dismissive Microsoft once was of BG3).
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“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.
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. 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. 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.
TLDR ; 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. I don’t have an issue with that. I just want to make sure the other ecosystem doesn’t die because it’s valuable.”
I can see arguments for and against Vincke’s point. On the one hand, Game Pass has freed Microsoft to let devs to experiment more with games like Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush. That said, the huge variety of stuff you see coming out on Steam, Switch and other platforms would certainly be reduced if everything had to be filtered through a subscription service. The verdict is very much out on whether services like Netflix have been good for the movie industry. Ultimately, I think the reality is, there would be winners and losers if a world where subscriptions become dominant.
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The Baldur's Gate 3 creative director, Swen Vincke, stated that acquiring good video game content might be more challenging if subscriptions become the dominant model in the industry. The Baldur's Gate 3 creative director's comments were in response to recent statements from a Ubisoft executive who suggested that gamers may need to adjust to not owning their games as video game subscriptions gain popularity.
Over the last decade or so, the entertainment industry has seen many rises and falls across all brands. These changes have affected music, TV, movies, and even video games. Things “for sure never going to fail” started to fail. Then, things that “could never work” have done well and made many wonder if things could go further down that path. One such path is that of the “game subscription service,” which was punctuated by the Xbox Game Pass, which has done wonders for Microsoft. However, Larian Studios isn’t on board with this notion, nor with notions of such services made by fellow game developers.
The director of Baldur's Gate 3 has discussed the possibility of their games heading to subscription services, sharing: "Direct from developer to players is the way."
With the debate around the future of video game subscriptions heating up, one high-profile developer has come out strongly on the side of the traditional method of selling games.