Don’t expect Baldur’s Gate 3 or the Divinity series to land on subscription services

Larian Studios CEO and director of Baldur’s Gate 3 Swen Vincke has emphatically ruled out any of the studio’s games, including the Divinity RPG series, being made available on subscription services.

Vincke’s comments came in response to a recent statement by Ubisoft about how gamers will/need to get more comfortable with not actually owning their games and embrace the subscription service model. In a Jan. 17 thread on X (formerly Twitter), spotted by Eurogamer, Vincke made his feelings on the matter quite clear and expressed concerns of it being “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.”

Vincke’s argument is that subscription services are primarily focused on maximizing profit, suggesting it would be much harder for certain games to be made as a result; something that’s already quite difficult nowadays. “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,” said Vincke.

He obviously takes no issue with developers who do add their games to such services, acknowledging it can be beneficial, but he ultimately feels “Direct from developer to players is the way.” This is no doubt part of the reason why Larian won’t be bringing Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox Game Pass, but now you can apply this to services like PlayStation Plus, too.

This doesn’t necessarily rule out other Baldur’s Gate games from appearing on such services. After all, Larian didn’t have a hand in those; the only Baldur’s Gate it’s developed itself is Baldur’s Gate 3. In fact, it’s suspected the enhanced versions of the original Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 are going to be added to Xbox Game Pass at some point. Twice now, the Xbox Game Pass mobile app has sent users messages advertising both games for the service, yet they remain unavailable on Game Pass, with no word from Microsoft on when they’ll arrive.