Baldur’s Gate 3 ‘isn’t going to be on Xbox Game Pass’, Larian says

Larian Studios has explained why Baldur’s Gate 3 might never come to Xbox’s Game Pass subscription service.

After its release was held up by several months due to technical issues, the celebrated RPG launched for Xbox Series X/S to coincide with this month’s The Game Awards, where it won six prizes including the coveted Game of the Year award.

Asked by IGN if Xbox had attempted to bring the title to Game Pass, Larian founder and Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke said such a deal had never been on the cards, at least as far as it was concerned.

“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,” he claimed.

“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,” Vincke added.

“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.”

Larian’s director of publishing Michael Douse, previously leapt to Microsoft’s defence after it emerged that the platform holder had seemingly heavily underestimated how well the game might perform.

Court documents leaked this summer revealed that in May 2022, over a year ahead of Baldur’s Gate 3’s release, Microsoft thought it might be able to secure the game as a day one title on Game Pass for as little as $5 million.

Given the game’s success, Microsoft’s estimate now looks like a gross miscalculation, but Larian’s Douse wasn’t taken aback by the figure. Commenting on a report stating that Microsoft “completely misjudged Baldur’s Gate 3”, he said the Xbox maker wasn’t alone.

Further reading

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Baldur’s Gate 3 director shares what he ‘wanted to say’ at The Game Awards

The event received criticism for the lack of time developers were permitted to speak

“In their defence, so did everyone else,” he wrote in September. “Same with DOS2. Comes with the genre, and the way we approach things, and the way we execute things.

“There just isn’t any existing data that could have told anyone how BG3 was going to perform. We just had to take giant spooky leaps.”

On Friday, Microsoft released an Xbox Series X/S firmware update designed to address an issue that could result in saves being lost on Baldur’s Gate 3.