Swen Vincke from Larian studios, makers of Baldur’s Gate 3, recently tweeted a response to the subscription service model an Ubisoft executive commented on. “Discoverability is brutal. Should those platforms all switch to subscription, it’ll become savage… it’s going to get 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 is the way.”
I recently made a post about the pros of subscription services and games being “owned” digitally. This part of the industry didn’t get included in my analysis. With the already increased money being spent by Sony to crank out live-service games, a company whose PlayStation brand has become extremely successful on single-player narrative-driven games, it is something we should start to worry about. It would seem Swen’s biggest concern here are that games will have to change to fit the mold of the subscription service model. This would most likely look like games that have content fed to the player over long periods of time to keep them coming back.
The newest Hitman reboot would be a great example of what this would look like. Originally, the first game in the reboot saga was released slowly over the course of several months. Each level would be released separately until the entire game was finished. This works for Hitman (it didn’t work at the time and they changed that in the two subsequent entries), but would it work for a game like Ghost of Tsushima? A game like Alan Wake 1-2 is already broken down into chapters, so it’s possible for it to work. However, Alan Wake is linear. Ghost of Tsushima is an open world. It is broken down into three parts, and we would likely see the game released throughout the year to fit the new model. How much extra side content would be added each time to feel like players were getting enough for their money? By the end, it could feel like there is so much bloat it becomes overwhelming. The exact reason I don’t hop into a long running MMO for the first time.
Larian’s own Baldur’s Gate 3 was released in early access for quite some time, allowing for these content drops to trickle out to players. Early Access is not the same as a full release, though. It’s understood the game isn’t finished and still needs polish. I don’t want to pay for a subscription service to get Early Access games. That would feel like a complete rip-off. After all, Netflix still allows you to binge-watch the entire season of their show, day one.
I think we will see this start to happen in the coming years as more and more companies look to get steady revenue from the subscription model. However, there are still developers pushing to keep the old model alive.
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Related: Ubisoft Executive Says Players Need to Get Used to Not Owning their Games
I was born and raised in a town so small there were more cows than people. I joined the USAF as soon as I could, and I currently reside in San Antonio. I am a singer/songwriter on the side, but I've been a gamer since birth. I grew up with PlayStation and Nintendo, though, I don't discriminate between consoles and PC. I have a PC with a 3080, Steam Deck, and a PS5.
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