Larian CEO Rails Against Game Subscription Models

[Blade-Runner]

https://www.techpowerup.com/318012/larian-ceo-rails-against-game-subscription-models

Swen Vincke, the co-founder and CEO of Larian Studios, has reacted to Ubisoft's recent declarations about customers becoming increasingly comfortable with games subscription models. The discussion revolved around the French publisher's "evolved" tiers of Ubisoft+ services, but Vincke took great issue with (Director of Subscription) Philippe Tremblay's musings on the topic. Larian's leader has made it abundantly clear in the past that Baldur's Gate 3 will not be released outside of his preferred traditional distribution systems; he doubled down on this viewpoint with a barrage of Tweets: "Whatever the future of games looks like, content will always be king...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."

Baldur's Gate 3 was a top seller in late 2023, and a critical darling in terms of reviews and awards—but Vincke is not prepared to compromise on his stance. It would be quite easy to reach a larger audience with BG3 getting an additional release on subscription platforms (e.g via Game Pass). He elaborated on this matter: "Getting a board to okay 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."

 

[Lakados]

This has been popping up in more than a few places, good on Swen for actually saying something

 

[Twisted Kidney]

The serfs don't need to own things.

Swen needs to get with the times or I might start to really like him.

 

[Thatguybil]

You will eat bugs and ride in cattle car public transportation while your self identify “betters” will fly private to Davos to safe the world from “climate change”.

 

[Shoganai]

You will eat bugs and ride in cattle car public transportation while your self identify “betters” will fly private to Davos to safe the world from “climate change”.

I know this comment doesn't directly pertain to the topic, but it also kind of does. All these people think we're idiots. I love that 70,000 people flew in private jets for a climate change event. Some of these celebrities advocating for climate change produce more CO2 emissions in one year with their single private jet than a family does in several lifetimes. They could have just done a Zoom call. The whole do as we say, not as we do and you will own nothing and you will like it crowd need to piss right off. They say 15% of the population produce over 70% of CO2 emissions. They're not going to change their habits. Because it's not about changing anything. It's about control. They don't give a crap about the planet. One-third of the world's entire pollution comes out of China ... with another 7-8% from India ... and neither China nor India have to do anything to curb their pollution because they produce everything cheaply for the world. If the entire world went 100% green, China and India would still destroy the planet.

Everything being a subscription model these days is infuriating. It's more of the you will own nothing and you will like it mentality that seems to be destroying everything we enjoy like a cancer. On top of these subscription models being disgusting thievery, none of the extra money from these subs goes to developers. It goes to the higher ups within the company to fatten their wallets.

 

[DukenukemX]

Everything being a subscription model these days is infuriating. It's more of the you will own nothing and you will like it mentality that seems to be destroying everything we enjoy like a cancer. On top of these subscription models being disgusting thievery, none of the extra money from these subs goes to developers. It goes to the higher ups within the company to fatten their wallets.

It's the stock market that is to blame for a lot of this. You as the consumer are no longer a publicly traded companies priority. The wealth you generate for them is peanuts, but shareholders produce amazing wealth. For companies like Ubisoft, it's a balance of trying to extract the infinite wealth from shareholders, by trying not to piss off their customers entirely. Larian Studios is a private company, and therefore doesn't have to appeal to shareholders by showing growth. They made a game, it sold well, and money comes in. If Larian Studios were to go public, then BG3 would get micro-transactions and you'd see a BG4 next year, with a BG5 the year after. The games wouldn't be anywhere near as polished, as the content would just be mostly fetch and grind quests. Also, in the process, a lot of employee's would likely leave the company, taking their talent with them. The reason is they don't want to work for shareholders, and know that they only get a paycheck that isn't always there.

I just basically described gaming companies like EA, Activision/Blizzard, and of course Ubisoft. You don't see Valve there because again, they're a private company. There's a reason why we defanged the stock market after 1929, because it didn't align well with the economy. Then Reagan made it legal to do stock buybacks in 1982. It's not an accident that all the gaming companies that are the most hated are also publicly traded. It's also no wonder why developers hated Baldur's Gate 3 and criticized it, and how nobody else could ever produce a game like it, because everyone else worked for a company that had shareholders to please. As much as Swen Vincke talks a good talk, I can quickly see things change if Sony, Microsoft, or even Amazon were to even buy them, because then they're on shareholders clock. Who wouldn't want to buy Larian Studios and stuff BG3 full of micro-transactions with online gameplay?

View: https://youtu.be/wLhiejYdo0U?si=bbfRBrIlFJQArQ_9

 

[Thatguybil]

And even if you “bought” your digital copy of your favorite movie or game, you still don’t own it in perpetuity. They can, will and have removed titles “bought” on platforms.

This is a space that needs some additional consumer protection.

 

[Nicklebon]

, but shareholders produce amazing wealth. For companies like Ubisoft, it's a balance of trying to extract the infinite wealth from shareholders,

WTF?? Shareholders do not produce wealth. IPOs produce revenue for a company when they happen then its done. Afterwards shareholders absorb company profits in the form of dividends, stock appreciation or both. Failure to produce said profits will result in the shareholders demanding changes in leadership. Customers produce the wealth.

 

[LukeTbk]

WTF?? Shareholders do not produce wealth. IPOs produce revenue for a company when they happen then its done. Afterwards shareholders absorb company profits in the form of dividends, stock appreciation or both. Failure to produce said profits will result in the shareholders demanding changes in leadership. Customers produce the wealth.

Customer do not producer wealth, they consume the created by others wealth, they do create the incentive for them to create the wealth.

IPO is not the only time a company will emit stock, it can be, but stock dilution is quite common.

 

[Shoganai]

Customer do not producer wealth, they consume the created by others wealth, they do create the incentive for them to create the wealth.

IPO is not the only time a company will emit stock, it can be, but stock dilution is quite common.

So if they sold zero games, it wouldn't have any affect whatsoever?

 

[DukenukemX]

WTF?? Shareholders do not produce wealth. IPOs produce revenue for a company when they happen then its done. Afterwards shareholders absorb company profits in the form of dividends, stock appreciation or both. Failure to produce said profits will result in the shareholders demanding changes in leadership. Customers produce the wealth.

They kinda do, but only as long as they believe your company has potential. Of course you do need to be making profits, because shareholders don't stick around if you don't. That can be faked like firing employees just before the quarter. Or fund a company called CoreWeave that buys your stuff. Whatever is the case, it's far more profitable than the money consumers give you.

So if they sold zero games, it wouldn't have any affect whatsoever?

Then you have an Enron.

 

[LukeTbk]

So if they sold zero games, it wouldn't have any affect whatsoever?

A game that people do not like do not add anything to humanity wealth one could say it was a waste of opportunity (destroyed the hypotatical wealth all that work could have been toward instead), sell is not a bad proxy here (not perfect).

If aliens would have made Baldur gates 3 for free and gave it to us on steam free of charge, we would have had all that wealth that game represent to us + everything the people that made baldur gates 3 made instead.

 

[Shoganai]

A game that people do not like do not add anything to humanity wealth one could say it was a waste of opportunity (destroyed the hypotatical wealth all that work could have been toward instead), sell is not a bad proxy here (not perfect).

If aliens would have made Baldur gates 3 for free and gave it to us on steam free of charge, we would have had all that wealth that game represent to us + everything the people that made baldur gates 3 made instead.

I have no idea what you just said.

 

[LukeTbk]

I have no idea what you just said.

It is not that easy to explain and English is a second language, would I try to make it simpler, wealth is created by making stuff, not buying stuff.

The existence of the game is the wealth that was created and it is the employee-leadership-investor, etc.. that created it, not the consumer, they consume it using the wealth they created at their own work to pay for it, the transaction are just money changing pocket not wealth being created, they make it possible and give reason to do so, but not the actual creation.

It would help I think, if during a month at one point, media-pundit-politic would talk about the economy without ever using money, talking-thinking too much in dollar at some point can create strange idea of the type idea that destroying bridge and rebuilding them was a creation of wealth because a lot of people were employed and made money (or destroying an coal power station to replace it by a new less polluting system that create the same amount of energy at the same price was a creation of wealth because it created a green sector of the economy and a lot of jobs.... no cleaner air to breath was the wealth created, money changing place in computer is just that and normally in a free market a proxy of how much people valued that wealth)

 

[Nicklebon]

Customer do not producer wealth, they consume the created by others wealth, they do create the incentive for them to create the wealth.

IPO is not the only time a company will emit stock, it can be, but stock dilution is quite common.

You are confusing wealth with intellectual property, widgets or services. These are not the same. Wealth is the accumulation of something of value. If no one pays for the IP, widget or service then it has 0 value. The only wealth a company produces is money customers pay for its products whether those products are widgets or IP is irrelevant. There is just as much worthless IP as there are widgets in the world. Any thinking otherwise you can take up with Karl. And yes, there can other offerings than the IPO but these are less common with actual public companies as shareholders do not take kindly to them. They usually come out interest that has been held back from previous offerings. My point was that an increase in stock price generally does not produce gains for the actual company just its stockholders.

 

[M76]

You are confusing wealth with intellectual property, widgets or services. These are not the same. Wealth is the accumulation of something of value. If no one pays for the IP, widget or service then it has 0 value. The only wealth a company produces is money customers pay for its products whether those products are widgets or IP is irrelevant. There is just as much worthless IP as there are widgets in the world. Any thinking otherwise you can take up with Karl. And yes, there can other offerings than the IPO but these are less common with actual public companies as shareholders do not take kindly to them. They usually come out interest that has been held back from previous offerings. My point was that an increase in stock price generally does not produce gains for the actual company just its stockholders.

If the only way to generate wealth is through customers paying for your products then how do vaporware companies like Nikola, Theranos get to billions in value? Tesla didn't become the highest valued car manufacturer through selling cars to customers either.

 

[LukeTbk]

You are confusing wealth with intellectual property, widgets or services.

I mean by wealth something like:

a
: all property that has a money value or an exchangeable value
b
: all material objects that have economic utility

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wealth

The property of value talked about (here a popular video game) was created by the employee-financier-director involved in making it, not by the customer, possible future customer made their investment into making that wealth possible and created incentive to make it. The wealth a company produce is product-service customer want and do pay for.

Wealth would exist in a world without money that is a tool to make easier to create and trade wealth (imagine a world with only 5 families of humans that never meet each other the one with the largest amount of sheep is wealthier) and saying that an piece of art that went into public domain is not part of humanity wealth created (or a open source project that millions of people use everyday) would restrict it to something smaller that what I meant.

 

[Nicklebon]

If the only way to generate wealth is through customers paying for your products then how do vaporware companies like Nikola, Theranos get to billions in value? Tesla didn't become the highest valued car manufacturer through selling cars to customers either.

Your conflating the transient price of the stock, almost exclusively emotionally driven in today's markets, with the actual value of the company's coffers.

 

[Nicklebon]

I mean by wealth something like:

a
: all property that has a money value or an exchangeable value
b
: all material objects that have economic utility

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wealth

The property of value talked about (here a popular video game) was created by the employee-financier-director involved in making it, not by the customer, possible future customer made their investment into making that wealth possible and created incentive to make it. The wealth a company produce is product-service customer want and do pay for.

Wealth would exist in a world without money that is a tool to make easier to create and trade wealth (imagine a world with only 5 families of humans that never meet each other the one with the largest amount of sheep is wealthier) and saying that an piece of art that went into public domain is not part of humanity wealth created (or a open source project that millions of people use everyday) would restrict it to something smaller that what I meant.

As I stated earlier wealth is the accumulation of something of value. Thank you for saying the same thing with appropriated words. If someone is not willing to exchange something of value for a widget/service then that widget or service has no value. In your example having more sheep than is required to maintain the herd and feed yourself is of no value unless there is someone is willing to exchange something for the excess. In your example there is not and as such your example fails. Your video game example has zero intrinsic value without a customer to exchange something of intrinsic value for it. As stated earlier you are clearly a disciple of Karl and that means we are done.

 

[LukeTbk]

Your video game example has zero intrinsic value without a customer to exchange something of intrinsic value for it

But my video game example (baldur gates 3) as ton of customer willing to pay for it....I am not sure if money has intrinsic value too. I am 99% almost certain you fully agree that is Larian studio that created the value/wealth here (and that why they are those being paid for it)

In your example having more sheep than is required to maintain the herd and feed yourself is of no value unless there is someone is willing to exchange something for the excess.

It was implied that they had a useful amount of more of them here, no need to go overboard where there is not value anymore. If the 4 other family has 0 sheep and the 5th one has 16 of them, they are wealthier even in a world where trade and money does not exist.

 

[M76]

Your conflating the transient price of the stock, almost exclusively emotionally driven in today's markets, with the actual value of the company's coffers.

The stock price can be turned into value by the company through selling off stock that they still own. The higher valuation also means they can take out bigger loans by using the valuation as collateral. The higher price and vaporware promises also attracts independent investment.

 

[LukeTbk]

They also incentive they're workforce and pay them in part via stock option quite often, which would be one of the most common source of dilution and use of the stockmarket post ipo in some sector.

 

[DukenukemX]

As I stated earlier wealth is the accumulation of something of value. Thank you for saying the same thing with appropriated words. If someone is not willing to exchange something of value for a widget/service then that widget or service has no value. In your example having more sheep than is required to maintain the herd and feed yourself is of no value unless there is someone is willing to exchange something for the excess. In your example there is not and as such your example fails. Your video game example has zero intrinsic value without a customer to exchange something of intrinsic value for it. As stated earlier you are clearly you disciple of Karl and that means we are done.

It's an Adam Smith thing. If someone produces, then someone has to consume. The problem with game subscriptions is there's little producing, but lots of consumption. It's a cheat code to making lots of money with little to no work. Great for shareholders, but bad for consumers. Look at Game Pass and Ubisoft+, because the majority of games are either old and/or crap. Things that used to lose value are no longer losing value, because now you have digital scarcity. The other problem is that games can and will be designed to waste your time. Ask a World of Warcraft gamer like myself how it feels when games put copy and paste quests, or better yet daily quests. It also puts stress on you to log in everyday just to get your moneys worth. It's no coincidence that Starfield has a lot of boring repeat quests, and is also on Game Pass.

What needs to be done is that the copyright system needs a lot of rework done to it. Lots of people say you don't own anything, just a license that can be revoked. That needs to be challenged in court, and I bet it will be challenged at some point, especially in the EU. The digital goods you bought should be able to be resold. This stopped once physical media stopped being a thing. Watch what happens to subscription services when people can sell a copy of their games. Then they'll have to go back to making good games like Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[Flogger23m]

The other problem is that games can and will be designed to waste your time.

This is also worth looking at closely. Currently single player games as they are have gotten bloated and too long. Once subscriptions become common I expect games to be designed to be even longer and more bloated. The idea is again, extending the hour length. If you make a well crafted game that is 30 hours long, you will get less subscription money than one that is 80 hours long because people may have to space out their subscriptions across another month. So you'll end up doing more unavoidable generic side quests per well designed story mission.

I assume they'll also start releasing games and DLC at the end of the month, with the intention of forcing people to renew next month to continue playing their new game/DLC. They will likely devise a way to get people to start subscriptions on the 1st of a month in the first place, like running a discount for subscribing on the 1st-3rd of a month with the idea that most people will continue their subscriptions without thought. Eventually they will likely have a large portion of customers auto renewing on the 1st of a month, so they can intentionally do new releases right before their subscription ends.

Multiplayer games are already grindy and fully of stupid events. It often makes playing games tiring when you have to do XYZ to unlock your content on a specific day. I can see that spilling over more into single player.

 

[Nicklebon]

The stock price can be turned into value by the company through selling off stock that they still own. The higher valuation also means they can take out bigger loans by using the valuation as collateral. The higher price and vaporware promises also attracts independent investment.

1. No
2. No as using the property of others is illegal AF
3. As far as public companies go ... no.

Seriously read up on SEC rules for public companies.

 

[DukenukemX]

This is also worth looking at closely. Currently single player games as they are have gotten bloated and too long. Once subscriptions become common I expect games to be designed to be even longer and more bloated. The idea is again, extending the hour length. If you make a well crafted game that is 30 hours long, you will get less subscription money than one that is 80 hours long because people may have to space out their subscriptions across another month. So you'll end up doing more unavoidable generic side quests per well designed story mission.

Games are already designed to be too long and bloated. A lot of people think that game time = fun time, but there's a lot of games that already waste your time because this way they can claim things like hundreds of hours of play time. Games might be doing this now because it's not like companies like EA and Ubisoft don't already offer a monthly subscription to get access to their games. Everyone of these companies want to go subscription, and they've wanted to do this for a while.

View: https://youtu.be/tYbotClXe_c?si=OM6bfKyPJtSvX7Bp

I assume they'll also start releasing games and DLC at the end of the month, with the intention of forcing people to renew next month to continue playing their new game/DLC. They will likely devise a way to get people to start subscriptions on the 1st of a month in the first place, like running a discount for subscribing on the 1st-3rd of a month with the idea that most people will continue their subscriptions without thought. Eventually they will likely have a large portion of customers auto renewing on the 1st of a month, so they can intentionally do new releases right before their subscription ends.

You gotta think like a greedy corporate asshole. They'll have a tier where you pay more per month to get access to DLC. So instead of $10 per month with Game Pass, it's $13 for Game Pass+. Want all the micro-transactions? That's Game Pass++ for $15 per month. Maybe they'll just demand that you pay for the DLC and micro-transactions separately, per game. Which means if you stop paying your subscription, you stop getting access to the DLC and micro-transactions that you paid for. Gotta keep paying that subscription because you don't want that sunk cost fallacy to kick in. That is literally how World of Warcraft does it.

Multiplayer games are already grindy and fully of stupid events. It often makes playing games tiring when you have to do XYZ to unlock your content on a specific day. I can see that spilling over more into single player.

These games cater to a specific type of mind set, and by that I mean autism. There are people who think that time=difficulty in games. These people think that games like Dark Souls are for masochists, but Lawn Mower Simulator takes real skill. The thing is that as more games move into this direction, then older games that didn't will become more desirable. Look at World of Warcraft classic where it at some point overtook Retail WoW. Then you have remakes like Resident Evil 2, 4, and Dead Space which got everyone excited. Just because a game is new, doesn't mean it's better. You can always go back to play older games, and lots of people are doing it. The problem is that so many people are doing this, the cost of older games are sometimes too high.

 

[Flogger23m]

Games are already designed to be too long and bloated. A lot of people think that game time = fun time, but there's a lot of games that already waste your time because this way they can claim things like hundreds of hours of play time.

Exactly. I don't mind the occasional 80 hour game if those 80 hours were mostly worth it. But few of them are.

You gotta think like a greedy corporate asshole. They'll have a tier where you pay more per month to get access to DLC. So instead of $10 per month with Game Pass, it's $13 for Game Pass+. Want all the micro-transactions? That's Game Pass++ for $15 per month. Maybe they'll just demand that you pay for the DLC and micro-transactions separately, per game. Which means if you stop paying your subscription, you stop getting access to the DLC and micro-transactions that you paid for. Gotta keep paying that subscription because you don't want that sunk cost fallacy to kick in. That is literally how World of Warcraft does it.

Yeah I more or less posted that in another thread. There will be a basic subscription and then different tiers unlocking different DLC/editions of a game.

 

[M76]

1. No
2. No as using the property of others is illegal AF
3. As far as public companies go ... no.

Seriously read up on SEC rules for public companies.

1. That's no answer, are you suggesting that they are not allowed to sell shares?
2. Just what are you talking about? If individual share price goes up, then the value of shares already in your possession also goes up. How is that using the property of others? Are you saying that market cap has absolutely no bearing on the credit line a company is able to get?
3. No what? You can't invest into a public company?

 

[M76]

There are people who think that time=difficulty in games. These people think that games like Dark Souls are for masochists, but Lawn Mower Simulator takes real skill.

Time is a kind of a difficulty, I don't see why you think that is not true. Skill and difficulty are not interchangeable. I have never heard anyone say that Farming simulator and such games takes skill like an action game. Are you sure you are not making that up? Just because you don't like a specific type of game doesn't mean you have to take a giant crap on it. To those who like these games they are just as valuable as dark souls is to you. Why can't they coexist?

 

[DukenukemX]

Time is a kind of a difficulty, I don't see why you think that is not true. Skill and difficulty are not interchangeable. I have never heard anyone say that Farming simulator and such games takes skill like an action game. Are you sure you are not making that up? Just because you don't like a specific type of game doesn't mean you have to take a giant crap on it. To those who like these games they are just as valuable as dark souls is to you. Why can't they coexist?

If you look at game design carefully you can see that many games will find ways to waste your time, and thus create the illusion of difficulty. This isn't a new thing since the arcade and 8-bit days you'd see games where if you die, you'll have to run back from a far away point. A game that comes to mind is Ninja Gaiden where you could end up running back often to try again at the last boss. That's not as bad as games that push you to farm to either upgrade or progress in a game. Assassin's Creed Odyssey comes to mind since that game prevented you from progressing until you reached a certain level. Then there are games like World of Warcraft that does have a monthly subscription, that pushes you to kill the same bosses every week, but not more than once per week. Then you have games like Death Stranding which just uses travel as a way to lengthen game time. Star Wars Jedi Fallen order loves you to do a lot of backtracking, which again is another method to increase game time. Ocarina of Time enemies dictate the rate of combat, which again creates the illusion of difficulty.

If you spent hours doing something in a game that is difficulty to get back, then you'll associate that as difficult. Farming Simulator was a joke, because nobody would consider that a difficult game. My point is that games do waste your time, because this easily creates content and difficulty. As much as I love Elden Ring, it did waste my time by running around the game world like 80% of the time. Plus there's no way of knowing what location has an item to pick up, unless you have a map in the second monitor. If games are tied to a subscription service then you'd bet that game designers will make use of these design tactics more often. It's not a mistake that Starfield has a lot of boring content in pointless worlds, and is also on Game Pass day 1.

 

[M76]

If you look at game design carefully you can see that many games will find ways to waste your time, and thus create the illusion of difficulty. This isn't a new thing since the arcade and 8-bit days you'd see games where if you die, you'll have to run back from a far away point. A game that comes to mind is Ninja Gaiden where you could end up running back often to try again at the last boss. That's not as bad as games that push you to farm to either upgrade or progress in a game. Assassin's Creed Odyssey comes to mind since that game prevented you from progressing until you reached a certain level. Then there are games like World of Warcraft that does have a monthly subscription, that pushes you to kill the same bosses every week, but not more than once per week. Then you have games like Death Stranding which just uses travel as a way to lengthen game time. Star Wars Jedi Fallen order loves you to do a lot of backtracking, which again is another method to increase game time. Ocarina of Time enemies dictate the rate of combat, which again creates the illusion of difficulty.

I'd not call that difficulty, I'd call that artificial roadblocks in front of progress. Like Hogwarts Legacy had it too, and it was the reason I quit playing the game without finishing it.

If you spent hours doing something in a game that is difficulty to get back, then you'll associate that as difficult. Farming Simulator was a joke, because nobody would consider that a difficult game. My point is that games do waste your time, because this easily creates content and difficulty. As much as I love Elden Ring, it did waste my time by running around the game world like 80% of the time. Plus there's no way of knowing what location has an item to pick up, unless you have a map in the second monitor. If games are tied to a subscription service then you'd bet that game designers will make use of these design tactics more often. It's not a mistake that Starfield has a lot of boring content in pointless worlds, and is also on Game Pass day 1.

The games I play I play them because I enjoy the journey, not just the goal i.e. an item to pick up. In Starfield I enjoy the journey without needing anything to string me along, I just roleplay as an explorer. Just as in Cyberpunk 2077 I roleplay as a merc doing gigs and go to lengths that are not imposed by the game, like often walking shorter distances or rarely using fast travel, even going home to sleep regularly. It doesn't matter whether the game rewards me for it or not.