Larian CEO Rails Against Game Subscription Models

[Kapone33]

What a refreshing story. The only subscription service I use is Humble Choice. That means that I am still supporting developers as they get a nice cut of the Humble Choice world. Game pass has been bad for the industry as a whole by design. If MS is leading the way I fear for the industry. It is worse for us in the long run because it will curtail innovation as new ideas will be much less available with the acquisition of so many studios.

 

[Yraggul666]

Well said Mr. Vincke!

 

[Totally]

Are you saying there are no alternatives to Adobe software? I can name many alternatives and plenty of them are very good options.

In the professional sphere it is very hard to get away from Adobe, no other choice in some cases.

 

[Minus Infinity]

You do own things on Steam. You bought game licenses to access, with indefinite duration, with the expectation of lifetime ownership.

True, but I can never sell them so I don't fully own them. It's better than you keep paying or software stops working, but it still sucks.

 

[Totally]

True, but I can never sell them so I don't fully own them. It's better than you keep paying or software stops working, but it still sucks.

you can sell the account

 

[ChipBoundary]

You do own things on Steam. You bought game licenses to access, with indefinite duration, with the expectation of lifetime ownership.

I think you greatly misunderstand how software licenses work. You leased the licenses and they can be revoked at any time, with no refund required. It has ALWAYS been that way, since the inception of software, and it will never not be that way. You own absolutely nothing. Even if you had physical media, they could still revoke your license and leave you with a blank piece of media.

 

[Vayra86]

I think you greatly misunderstand how software licenses work. You leased the licenses and they can be revoked at any time, with no refund required. It has ALWAYS been that way, since the inception of software, and it will never not be that way. You own absolutely nothing. Even if you had physical media, they could still revoke your license and leave you with a blank piece of media.

Good luck in court with that. There is no precedent for the event millions of users are suddenly out of millions of licenses that they all bought with the expectation of access. This wont just pass, thats for sure.

 

[Gucky]

He did not, He just make games for fun, not for money, if you study his whole career.

HE might does it for fun, but below him are many people that depend on their jobs.
If he fails, at worst he has enough money for the rest of his days, but the other 100s of people working at Larian might not that that luxury.

Noone thinks about the people that lose their jobs, just because a company is growing too fast and hiring too much people.

 

[dyonoctis]

...looks at World of Warcraft and all the BS that has happened. Now we have 4 different versions of the same old s**t. I can't see how that is progress.

Subscription based games and subscription based stores are not really comparable...the former is very old, and is often better than the free to play model in MMO's (where the game mechanics themselves push you to spend money in the store) It's meant to fund the always ongoing development of those type of games. Even Buy to play games that keep developing new content always have some form of microtransaction, nobody makes a game as a service for "free". WoW issues are issues that are inherent to any MMO that lasted for so long, no matter the business model.

Subscription only based stores are a different problem, because you effectively take away a big chunk of the customer power, games are heavily curated, and can become unavailable at any moment. Digital ownership has always been an issue, but it might get worse if subs become the only way to play games.

Meanwhile, the always online nature of an MMO already implied that you don't really own the game, since it needs an infrastructure to work beyond the game files.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Easy for him to say once their game has been commercially successful. I know a lot of people are fans of Larian, but this guy's pure hot air, and if there's something I dislike, it's hot air coming from an arrogant know-it-all of a CEO. If Baldur's Gate 3 had flopped (and it wouldn't on its name alone), it'd be on Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus tomorrow.

 

[dyonoctis]

Are you saying there are no alternatives to Adobe software? I can name many alternatives and plenty of them are very good options.

If you make money from that activity, you might end up in a situation where you'll have to work with a team, or provide templates that the client will need to edit. In those cases, not using the industry standard will make you the annoying guy to work with .

There are alternatives, their market share is just abysmal, and/or they don't provide a suite with the same coverage and fairly well integrated between them.

 

[Pepamami]

HE might does it for fun, but below him are many people that depend on their jobs.
If he fails, at worst he has enough money for the rest of his days, but the other 100s of people working at Larian might not that that luxury.

Noone thinks about the people that lose their jobs, just because a company is growing too fast and hiring too much people.

If you think that way, you will end up with a game studio, that no longer can make games, since you will always go Safe.