Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke has expressed concern over subscription becoming the dominant distribution model for game.
Swen Vincke, Baldur’s Gate 3 director and Larian Studios founder and CEO, took to Twitter/X to express his concern and doubt over the subscription model becoming the dominant method of game distribution. He shared his thoughts in response to a statement from Philippe Tremblay, the director of subscriptions at Ubisoft, who said that gaming audiences need to get “comfortable” with the idea of not owning their games in order for subscriptions to take off.
According to Vincke, whatever the future of games looks like, content will always be king. He said 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 doesn’t. He believes the existing model of content delivery directly from developer to players is the the correct way to go about it.
The Larian Studios CEO mentioned that getting a board to green light a project fueled by idealism is almost impossible, and idealism needs room to exist, even if it can lead to disaster. As per him, subscription models will always end up being cost/benefit analysis exercises intended to maximize profit. He added that while there is nothing wrong with subscriptions, the market doesn’t need to evolve into a monopoly of subscription services.
Developers are already all dependent on a select group of digital distribution platforms, and, as a result, Vincke feels that discoverability is brutal. Should those platforms all switch to subscription, things will become savage, he said. He said that in such a world, by definition, the preference of the subscription service will determine what kind of games get made.
Vincke ended his statement by saying that Larian Studios’ games won’t be available on a subscription service. Though he clarified that he respects that the distribution model presents an opportunity for many other developers to make their games, and he has no issue with that. He merely wants that the other ecosystem doesn’t die as a result of the subscription model because he feels it’s valuable.
