You’ll Never See Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS+ or Game Pass, and for good reason

Baldur’s Gate 3 director and Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke decided to share his thoughts on the whole “subscription service ending up being the primary way people access the game,” providing a reason why you won’t see BG3 release. Admirable reasons for being that way.

In case you’re unaware, Ubisoft Subscriptions Director Philippe Tremblay recently had some discussion in an interview with GiBiz, suggesting that players need to be more comfortable with the idea of ​​not owning games in a traditional way in order for subscription services to continue to take off in the gaming space. As you might expect, this hasn’t gone down well with many people inside and outside the industry.

One of the most interesting responses so far came from Vincke, who posted a lengthy Twitter thread explaining his stance on subscription services versus traditional methods of pitching and releasing games.

“Whatever the future of gaming looks like, content will always be king,” the developer first said, “but if subscriptions become the dominant model and a select group decides what to do, it’s going to be much harder to get great content in.” Market, etc. Directly from developers to players is the right way.”

He went on to outline that in his view, “subscription models will always end up being a cost/benefit analysis exercise aimed at maximizing profits,” which isn’t necessarily an issue at the moment, but could be if these services eventually end. one question. Monopolize the game market. “It’s almost impossible to get a board to approve a project driven by idealism, which needs room to exist, even if it could lead to disaster,” Vink explains.

The developer also added that the increased importance of subscription services could make discoverability more of an issue for developers.

He concluded by saying, “Even though I respect subscription services, you won’t find our games on subscription services because that gives a lot of developers the opportunity to make games. I don’t have a problem with that. I just want to make sure the other ecosystem It’s not going to die because it’s valuable.”

As Vincke mentioned in that conclusion, the issue of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus vs. the traditional model is a bit complicated, even if monopoly situations involving the former clearly do more harm than good.

For almost any premium game like Baldur’s Gate 3, if it’s inextricably tied to a subscription service, it’s able to take off on its own and gain advantages it might not otherwise have access to, whereas games like Pentiment An equally unique game like this might not even be promoted without something like Game Pass.

While this is a bit of a cop-out, the ideal situation might be to give developers the ability to choose between the two approaches rather than being locked into one ecosystem as they try to get players to care about their next cool game project .

In other Baldur’s Gate 3-related news, an Xbox update designed to correct game save issues on the platform is now available.