A member of Larian Studios (Baldur's Gate 3) lashes out at Ubisoft: "The hardest thing is to make a 85+ game... much easier to release one"

The dissolution of the Ubisoft Montpellier team responsible for ‘Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’ has been one of the worst news stories in the video game world in recent weeks. This is not only because the disbanding of a development team is something negative in itself, but we have the aggravating factor that we are talking about a fantastic game: 86 on Metacritic and a candidate to be among the 6 nominees for GOTY at the next gala of The Game Awards. As it could not be otherwise, it is a news that has been echoed by many other studios, one of them being Larian Studios, creators of the fabulous Baldur’s Gate 3.

Michael Douse, publishing director of the Belgian studio, has lashed out at Ubisoft, blaming the French publisher for the commercial stumble of “Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown” and making it clear what the keys were. Douse believes that one of the mistakes made was not to launch the game on Steam from day one, since we had to wait until last summer to enjoy it on Valve’s platform.

The news comes as far as Larian Studios

“The last notable game on their platform was arguably Far Cry 6 in 2021,″ said Douse on X. “The Crew, Mirage and Avatar came in 2023 and didn’t perform, so you can assume subscriptions were at a lull when PoP released by 2024. Which means people wouldn’t be launching their store all too much.”

“If it had released on Steam not only would it have been a market success, but there would likely be a sequel because the team are so strong,” Douse continues. “It’s such a broken strategy. The hardest thing is to make a 85+ game — it is much, much easier to release one. It just shouldn’t be done as it was.”

“If the statement ‘gamers should get used to not owning their games’ is true because of a specific release strategy (sub above sales), then the statement ‘developers must get used to not having jobs if they make a critically acclaimed game’ (platform strategy above title sales) is also true, and that just isn’t sensible — even from a business perspective,” the Larian Studios employee concluded.

Fortunately, and although this information has not yet been officially confirmed, the team that made Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is now in charge of a Rayman remake, so they have already found a new project.

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