Baldur’s Gate 3is out now onXbox, but don’t expect to hear that familiar refrain: “and you can play it right now onGame Pass.” ThoughLarian Studiosbrought the acclaimed RPG to Xbox Series X|S, the company has no plans to bundle it intoMicrosoft’s subscription service.
“Oh, we always said from the get-go, it wasn’t going to be on Game Pass, it’s not going to be on Game Pass,” the game’s directorSwen Vincke told IGN’s Kat Bailey.
“So look, we are in the business of making a game that has a beginning, middle, and an end. We made a big game, so I think there’s a fair price to be paid for that, and I think that that is okay. We don’t charge you any micro-transactions on top of it, so you get what you pay for. Upfront it’s a big meaty game. So I think that should be able to exist as it is. This is what allows us to continue making other games.”
If you’re like me and attempt to pick everything up on Game Pass orPS Plusif possible, that might be a bummer. Baldur’s Gate 3 is selling for $70 on Xbox, and this generation’s $10 price hike has taken a bite out of the amount of games that the average player can buy. It’s understandable to want to get games for as cheap as possible when most necessities have gotten more expensive in recent years, and wages haven’t gone up at the same rate (if at all).
But there are real dangers for the long-term health of any medium that’s consistently devalued, framed as content that fills out a service rather than art worth paying for on its own. With the advent ofSpotifyand other music streaming services (though Spotify is the worst offender) it has become increasingly untenable to pursue a career in music. For decades, fans of a band or artist would buy their albums to listen to them. But the rise of streaming made it possible to listen to all of their music at no added cost, just the price of the base subscription. Now, to make money, musicians need to tour, sell merch, have a Patreon, or all three. One company’s business practices devalued an entire medium. Though vinyl records are popular now,those salesaren’t anywhere close to approximatingthe value of the CD market 20 years ago.
So, it’s important to have developers who hold out, who don’t make their games readily available on subscription services, who don’t feed into the expectation that games should basically be free. Larian has clearly weighed the pros and cons and decided that it is in its best interest to sell copies of Baldur’s Gate 3 instead of leasing them to players through Game Pass.
Though the economics of Game Pass aren’t especially clear, it has been a great thing for some developers. Pentiment director Josh Sawyer said that his team’s medieval murder mysterywouldn’t have been pitched without Game Pass, and the service has undoubtedly allowed for cool/small/weird games to exist that wouldn’t have made it past the idea phase without it.
But, it’s important for the long-term health of developers and the broader industry that they do not give too much away for free. It might seem like a world where every game is available on Game Pass would be a pro-consumer utopia. But there’s nothing utopian about a world where games are no longer seen as worth anything on their own, where developers can’t make a living making games.
