This week offered another example of executive foot-in-mouth disorder when Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay suggested in an interview that games subscription business models are the future – and expressed his belief that the thing getting in the way of its wider growth is that gamers like owning the games they buy, though Tremblay also believes that the shift in mindset will become inevitable.
Tremblay’s statements in that interview appear to have riled up Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke, who wrote a Twitter thread that rebuts Tremblay’s statements and the push for subscription services among gaming’s largest corporations.
“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.”
Vincke goes on to state that while subscription services being “cost/benefit analysis exercises intended to maximize profits” isn’t a bad thing, a future where the limited digital distribution platforms available become sub-based would make discoverability even harder for game devs than it already is. “In such a world by definition the preference of the subscription service will determine what games get made. Trust me – you really don’t want that,” he writes.
Larian Studios, of course, is the developer behind the wildly successful Baldur’s Gate 3, a single-player/multiplayer RPG that won the hearts of many gamers, particularly for the fact that it released a fully-featured product from the very jump. The game also went on to easily win our Not-So-Massively Game of the Year award for 2023.
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. https://t.co/wEUvd5adt0
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) January 17, 2024
