Recently, a comment by Ubisoft’s subscription chief drew a great deal of attention and controversy after claiming that players should get used to the idea of not owning their games – with subscriptions being pitched as the future of the industry. Fortunately, not all developers believe this to be the case, with Larian Studios reiterating their commitment to game ownership.

Following the controversial comments by Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions – Philippe Tremblay – who stated “One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection,” many devs and players alike have spoken out to refute this notion.

One of the most impactful rebukes comes from Larian Studios – the developers behind last year’s GOTY winner and the best selling game on Steam – with studio head Swen Vincke taking to Twitter to say:

“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.”

He continued, “Getting a board to ok 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.”

Vincke concluded by saying “There is nothing wrong with that but it may not become a monopoly of subscription services. We are already all dependent on a select group of digital distribution platforms and discoverability is brutal. Should those platforms all switch to subscription, it’ll become savage. 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.”

The full statement by Vincke can be found HERE, but in essence it seems as though you shouldn’t expect Baldur’s Gate 3 to come to Game Pass or PS Plus any time soon.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Ubisoft’s statement? Do you agree with Larian’s response? Do you take issue with subscription services? Let us know down below.

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