Over the last decade or so, the entertainment industry has seen many rises and falls across all brands. These changes have affected music, TV, movies, and even video games. Things “for sure never going to fail” started to fail. Then, things that “could never work” have done well and made many wonder if things could go further down that path. One such path is that of the “game subscription service,” which was punctuated by the Xbox Game Pass, which has done wonders for Microsoft. However, Larian Studios isn’t on board with this notion, nor with notions of such services made by fellow game developers.
Specifically, we’re talking about how Larian Studios head, Swen Vincke, fought back against a statement from Ubisoft. As you’ll see in the tweet below, the head of Ubisoft’s upcoming game subscription service noted that gamers “should get comfortable not owning video games” anymore. And when Swen saw this, he was incredibly blunt in his response:
This is hardly the first time the studio has commented about these services. It was noted last year that Microsoft had such little faith in the then-upcoming RPG from Larian that they didn’t even make a bid for it to be on the Xbox Game Pass. That was fine by them because they never wanted it to be on the service in the first place! They noted that they had a “full game” and felt the price was fair for it. They were 100% right in that regard.
But what did he mean by his remarks? Well, the principle here is that while game subscription services have merit to them, especially with Xbox Game Pass, there is still a cost. The big being that while it may be cheaper to use the Xbox Game Pass versus not buying all the games, you’re not in charge of how long the game stays on the service. Some games are only on there for a few months, then disappear for several months, and then randomly come back for a few months period before vanishing again.
If you just bought the dang game, you could play it whenever you wanted, no strings attached. And, as Swen noted, there may be really good titles that get “lost in the shuffle” because of all the “new arrivals” or “returning favorites.”
So for some, like Larian, it’s just better to release the game in full, have gamers pay for it, and experience everything it has to offer without a middleman “guiding them.”
