Larian boss says company won't bring games to subscription services
pcgamesinsider.bizThe CEO of Larian Studios, Swen Vincke, has said that the developer has no intention to bring its titles to subscription services.
In a post on Twitter, the exec said that while he respects the decision made by other companies to bring their games to such platforms, he felt that subscription services were a threat to high-quality projects.
"Whatever the future of games looks like, content will always be king," Vincke said. "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."
He concluded: "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."
Vincke was responding to comments made by Ubisoft's director of subscriptions, Philippe Tremblay, who was discussing what needed to happen for this business model to really take off in games.
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