Larian Studios founder and CEO Swen Vincke has reacted to the news of Ubisoft telling fans they might want to get “comfortable” with the idea that people no longer own games but only license them. Posting on social media, Vincke said the rise of subscription services in games could have a negative impact overall. He didn’t mention any game subscription services by name, but some of the most popular ones these days include Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, and Nvidia GeForce Now.
“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 said.
If the video game industry becomes dominated by subscription models, the people in charge will inevitably try to make the most money possible and this might come at a quality cost, Vincke said.