'You won’t find our games on a subscription service' says the founder of Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian, after Ubisoft forecasts a future of players 'not owning' games
The CEO and founder of Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has weighed in on recent prophecies from Ubisoft's director: gamers will likely grin and bear a subscription-model future. Swen Vincke added to the discussion on Twitter in a thread this morning:
«It’s going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model,» Vincke writes. «Direct from developer to players is the way.»
From Vincke's perspective, subscription models will wind up driving further «cost/analysis» driven games «intended to maximise profits»—which would make games with smaller fan bases a thing of the past. He argues this would hobble creativity in the medium:
«Getting a board to O.K a project fueled by idealism is almost impossible, and idealism needs room to exist, even if it can lead to disaster,» he argues. «We are already all dependent on a select group of digital distribution platforms and discoverability is brutal. Should those platforms all switch to a subscription, it’ll become savage.»
While he's not wrong in theory, I feel like I should point out that we're already there, in a sense. It's incredibly hard to turn a profit from a game full-stop, especially for developers with a vision. Then again, Vincke would be the most familiar with that struggle—not only is Larian independent, it's also a studio that almost became bankrupt when it was developing the first Divinity: Original Sin game. As our senior editor Wes Felnon wrote back in 2015:
«To make their dream RPGs in Divinity: Original Sin, Larian went independent, borrowed money from the bank, got outside investors, raised nearly $1 million on Kickstarter, sacrificed Divinity: Dragon Commander and still nearly ran out of funding. If Original Sin hadn’t been a serious success, that could’ve been the end for Larian.»
While it's somewhat comparing apples to oranges, if we turn to the state of on-demand subscription service TV we do see a pretty desolate landscape. Shows that are critically
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