This is the best summary I could come up with:
Baldur’s Gate 3 just hit half a million concurrent players, and is already on track to challenge mega-franchise Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Legacy for this year’s Steam sales crown.
While old-school tactics franchises like XCOM vanish from purview, series like Final Fantasy drop turn-based gameplay altogether chasing broader audiences, and classic names like Diablo go always-online rammed with in-app purchases — Larian said no.
It’s also a turn-based RPG that follows cRPG traditions carried forward by a shrinking number of studios who seem to have convinced themselves in various ways that players don’t want this kind of game.
Forget for a moment that the game is just insanely good, with great writing, endless Dungeons & Dragons-inspired depth, and quite polished, optimized PC performance.
As such, I’m similarly nervous for Dragon Age 4, which according to leaks, has dropped tactical play in favor of chasing more action-oriented combat, doubtless with trend-chasing in mind.
Larian’s respect for its audience, the relentless pursuit of quality over quarterly targets, and the rejection of trend-chasing in favor of elevating classic gameplay conventions are being rewarded by gamers in droves.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
People are just tired of the anti-consumer bullshit and it shows. I’m glad Larian are thinking ahead instead of grabbing the cash now and running unlike most modern day triple A developers.
Really shows that they care for the games that they make and the audience they’ve amassed.
Hopefully this helps kill MTX, lootboxes and Battlepasses.
I hate MTX, lootboxes, and battle passes, but I cannot imagine that they’ll go away unless it’s to replace them with something even worse.
Those “games” on Nintendo Switch that are just a license to access a cloud streaming version of the title is, in my opinion, a much worse issue than MTX.
In fact, one of them was taken offline - the Switch is still active, which means there are people who paid full price for a singleplayer game and it no longer exists.
MTX is here to stay, the numbers speak for themselves. It’s unfortunate, but unless people stop buying them (they won’t) they aren’t going anywhere.
Dragon Age Inquisition was already a giant pile of shit, why would anyone expect anything else from a studio that hasn’t released a decent game in over a decade?
That’s how you succeed, you make a great game, and be pro customer. Not complicated.
This is great news. Hopefully their success will inspire more studios to hold onto the genre.
i’m telling you, i hadn’t really been considering it all that seriously, but all this positivity absolutely makes me want to just go ahead and dive in with everyone… and reward the devs…
Do what people want and they buy your game?
Lets get those fucking MBAs out of the gaming industry.
Fuck you bobby kotik for creating this mess.
Well think of the ROI for horse armor. One new model. How many sales do you need before you cover that cost?
I’m very happy to hear that make fantastic video games without any nonsense attached is still a business model that works today. Good to hear Larian and BG3 are doing great. Very well deserved.