Larian Studios founder and CEO Swen Vincke has claimed that his studio will never allow any of its games to be released on a game subscription service, seemingly crushing any hope that Baldur’s Gate 3 might appear on Xbox Game Pass. Vincke, 51, made the statement in response to recent remarks from Philippe Tremblay, director of subscriptions at Ubisoft, who told GamesIndustry.biz this week about how gamers may have to get “comfortable” with not owning games due to the advent of Ubisoft+ and other subscription services.
Vincke’s thoughts on game subscription services:
“…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.”
Ubisoft’s Tremblay on the “consumer shift that needs to happen”:
“One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That’s the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That’s a transformation that’s been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don’t lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That’s not been deleted. You don’t lose what you’ve built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it’s about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.”
Vincke shared a different thought:
“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.”
Source: @LarAtLarian