Baldur’s Gate 3 will never come to Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus – Boss makes a clear announcement

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Anyone who planned to get the role-playing epic Baldur’s Gate 3 cheaply as part of a gaming subscription will be disappointed. Larian’s boss, Swen Vincke, has just given a clear rejection of subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus – for ideological reasons.

This is the situation:

  • In recent years, “subscription services” have become fashionable: you take out a subscription, pay a relatively small amount every month and in return you receive some fresh games once a month at no additional cost
  • The best-known models are the “Xbox Game Pass” and PS Plus
  • But the boss of Larian is now clearly rejecting these models for “his games” like Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’s on principle. In a world where this model is “dominant,” you don’t want to be a gamer, he says.

    • Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to PS5 – trailer sets the mood for the console release

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    Larian-Boss doesn’t want a world in which subscription services decide everything

    This is what Vincke says: In a series of posts on Twitter, the company boss explains:

    “You won’t find our games on a subscription service, although I recognize that such a service is a way for many developers to develop their games. I do not have a problem with it. I just want to make sure other economic models don’t die because they are valuable too.”

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    Why is he explaining this? Vincke refers to an announcement from a Ubisoft man: Players should get used to not owning games but renting them if subscription services become more and more important.

    Vincke says: Content remains king. But it will become increasingly difficult to develop good content if subscription services become the dominant model. Because then a small, select group of people would decide what goes on the market and what doesn’t.

    In a world like this, you have to convince the bosses of the subscription services about your game and no longer the players. That would be a big step backwards.

    For him, “directly from the developer” is the right way.

    A model in which a subscription service decides which games come onto the market and which do not is not a world in which gamers want to live. You should trust him.

    Larian wants money from players, not publishers

    This is what lies behind it: As PC Gamer notes, Vincke’s attitude comes from his own painful experience: Larian did not get the money for its most important projects in 2015 in the usual way, through large publishers who were convinced by their own games.

    Instead, for Divinity: Original Sin, they took the route of taking out a loan from a bank, through outside investors and through backers on Kickstarter. Still, they were on the verge of bankruptcy.

    If the original Divinity hadn’t been a success back then, it would have ended with Larian and there would never have been a Baldur’s Gate 3.

    More on the subject:

    Baldur’s Gate 3: Game of the Year will never end up on Game Pass – the boss thinks that’s only fair

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