Baldur's Gate 3 Caused A 40 Percent Rise In Digital Revenue For Hasbro
Baldur's Gate 3 has made bank for Hasbro, significantly contributing to a 40 percent increase in digital revenue for the company.
Baldur's Gate 3 has made bank for Hasbro, significantly contributing to a 40 percent increase in digital revenue for the company.
Wait, you mean if it is good and worth the money it sells and if it is a cheap worthless cash grab it does not????? Someone call Corporate!
Let's not forget it has no DRM either. AAA studios told us that no game can do well without DRM
The funny thing is I (and probably many others) didn’t even consider pirating it. It had great reviews and was readily available pretty much everywhere without any obvious drawbacks. So I spent full price for it.
My point; DRM doesn’t matter if you produce and sell your game in a consumer friendly way.
Corporate isn't going to take away the lessons we might hope. Folks at corporate at going to ask things like, "how much money was left on the table?" They can only fuck things up through paying attention.
The takeaways that will make it to the steering group PowerPoint:
Kill the p2w whales and you kill shit games
I won't lie. I flew the black flag on BG3. I'll pick it up when it goes on a Steam sale, but I'm just not going to spend $60 on a video game no matter how good.
Inflation happens, even to the costs of producing a game, but no sale was lost through your efforts.
I didn't realise Hasbro were the publisher, now I feel a little dirty. Those bastards ruined Super Soaker.
Hasbro and WOTC are rotten to the core and, unfortunately, own D&D among other headline franchises you'd probably be familiar with.
Larian makes their own games and made BG3 after Hasbro was impressed with how well Divinity: Original Sin 2 turned out (which, imo has the best combat system of their games so far). That said, Larian really rounded out the dialog, conversations, and non-battle options in BG3. I hope they take that to their next title, preferably organically developed without Hasbro/WoTC.
I'm pretty sure hasbro/wotc had nothing to say in the development beyond ip related stuff. With dos1 larian moved away from editors to self-product all their games since.
I hope the lesson they take is "selling complete games with no online bull or micro transactions is popular and profitable"
The lesson they'll actually take is "money? MONEY!! MONEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!"
Steam could absolutely tamp down on this, by changing early access refund policy to be more restrictive.
Early access money should not be guaranteed. If someone wants a refund outside of the two hour or whatever game time they should get most of their money back. The timer should also reset at release, and players get a full refund if the gameplay isn't what was promised.
I'm curious to see if other CRPGs also had big revenue increases from BG3's success. After beating it I've bought Divinity Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium, Pathfinder WotR, and Pillars of Eternity II so far. I had never paid attention to the genre before and now I am deep into it.
Larian are really the only ones that play nice with a controller.
I understand that a lot of people play at literal desktops and prefer mouse/keyboard, but a lot more (regardless of PC split, it's also almost all console owners) would rather play with a controller. Having an official control scheme for one is meaningful to broad adoption.
I found out by accident that Disco Elysium plays surprisingly well with a controller. It’s kinda nice to just lean back and play that game.
BG3 plays awesome on both kn and mouse and a controller!
It reminds me of a few other games that are able to do both, and makes me sad how many game devs over focus on one or the other (probably due to crunch, but still).
They are also the ones doing multiplayer as far as I can tell. After my singleplayer playthrough I have two other ones going with different groups and it is just as much if not more fun.
The beam dog remasters on switch have pretty good controller support. It's a piss off that those controls don't exist in the PC versions, discovering that after attempting to play on steam deck
Maybe Dragon Age Origins, too.
Now you mention it, yes probably. I already owned BG3 in EA, and bought 2 similar games : Pathfinder & Solasta.
When i was a kid i player BG1 a lot. Later DOS.
And the other game above, i already finished them long ago. I think it would be an interesting data to see what kind of player play BG3 and compare our games. :)
Watch them milk it to death, thereby ruining the franchise
I don't think they really can. Larian has creative control over the project itself, Hasbro can't do much beyond input regarding DnD-specific things. Hasbro can try to milk DnD (as they have been doing), but this won't affect BG3.
It still pains me that Hasbro owns WotC now.
I've switched to Pathfinder. They lost me on 4th edition and will never get me back.
Daragon Age Origins is awesome. It was fun playing the game where your choices affected the outcome of the game. And you got to play different characters--poor, rich, royalty, slave.
Baldur's Gate 3 is like this game and updated.
DOS2 working so well is a big part of why I bought BG3. I mostly play handheld (steamdeck, with a little bit of switch), so controller support is a huge factor for me.
larian do a candela obscura based game next pls
As much of a pipe dream as that is, it would be super cool.
It sucks, because I want to buy this game, but I refuse to give WotC/Hasbro money, and I don't want to pirate it because I want to support Larian.
It really sucks.
Do Larian deserve your money less because they licensed trademarks from a company that considered and then backed down from a license change? And for this you'll rob yourself of a fantastic experience? What a strange value system. Wait until you find out how they made sausages, or your phone.
Could buy gift copies of some other Larian game then pirate this one to potentially sate your personal morals for the situation
Look man, initially WotC didn't move on with Larian's pitch and only changed their minds later on. I get it, you don't like WotC but you're robbing yourself of a fantastic experience because of this stance you've held. Baldur's Gate 3 oozes with passion and creativity, you only do yourself a disservice by ignoring it.
It's probably my favourite game of all time and loads of people refuse to play it because they know it'll make other games feel bland by comparison. You have nothing to lose but your money.
I will continue to buy stuff that Hasbro has licensed to people who care about the games they make even if Hasbro indirectly profits from it to show support for doing it right. Like the DnD movie and BG3, but not Beyond or the tabletop stuff until they reverse course on those.
If nothing else there is an opportunity for Hasbro to catch on at some point and the people they license to get to make quality stuff to enjoy in the meantime. It isn't like Hasbro is Nestlé and ruining countries.
Just pirate it, and buy a gift pack of dos2 or dos1