Highlights
- According to a claim that surfaced in Eurogamer, director of Baldur's Gate 3 and CEO of Larian Studios Swen Vincke has confirmed that Baldur's Gate 3 will not be available on Xbox Game Pass.
- Vincke notes that since Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't feature microtransactions, you "get what you pay for" and that he thinks "there's a fair price to be paid" for its huge size.
- Furthermore, Vincke stated that the company's selected business strategy is "what allows us to continue making other games."
- After a delay caused by split screen troubles with the Xbox Series S version, Baldur's Gate 3 eventually debuted on the system last week.
Detailed Report
Although it was long assumed, that developer Larian Studios of Baldur's Gate 3 would not be bringing their Game of the Year-winning powerhouse to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass program, an official confirmation has finally been made, according to a report that surfaced in Eurogamer.
According to CEO Swen Vincke of Larian, the decision to limit the game's availability to a complete purchase was made because of the game's size and the absence of microtransactions. This choice is crucial for the studio's capacity to move forward with its future development plans.
"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 ... 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," Vincke said. You receive what you pay for because there are no additional microtransaction fees. It's a big, heavy game up front. That ought to be allowed to continue as it is, in my opinion. This is what enables us to keep developing new games."
Documents from the Xbox v. FTC case that were leaked in September disclosed that Microsoft had previously viewed Baldur's Gate 3 as a "second-run Stadia PC RPG" and that the game would only cost $5 million to add to Xbox Game Pass (compared to $300 million for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor).
Not A Unique Move Though!
Though Larian noted that it wasn't the only major player in the market to do so, the company was never certain that the critically acclaimed isometric role-playing game would become as popular as it has in the months after its release.
"Everyone else also defended them. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the same. comes with the genre, as well as the way we approach and carry out things," Michael Douse, director of publishing at Larian, commented in response to criticism leveled at Microsoft's evaluation. "There just isn't any data available that could have predicted how well [Baldur's Gate 3] would work. All we had to do was make enormous, spooky leaps."
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Notably, Douse previously chatted with Eurogamer and said that while he thinks Game Pass is "fantastic," he loves it when a game succeeds because players buy it directly rather than because it's part of a data-driven subscription program.
"My point, explicitly, is that I would always rather have our fate in the hands of the players than anyone else," he stated.
Conclusion
In the end, this is disappointing news for anyone who purchased Game Pass and was hoping to explore the Forgotten Realms without having to purchase the entire game, but it's not shocking. After all, Larian has never indicated that it would be interested in adding Baldur's Gate 3 to Game Pass, and the studio doesn't seem to be planning to reverse course based on Swen Vincke's remarks from the Eurogamer piece and earlier ones from Douse.
Fortunately for Xbox enthusiasts, Baldur's Gate 3 is now playable on Microsoft's systems. The game was delayed on Xbox Series X|S due to problems with split-screen co-op on the Series S, even though it was first released in August and later released on PS5. But since that function was omitted out of the Series S edition, it was released on the Xbox Series X|S last week after The Game Awards 2023.
