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.
Not to mention that full price was up to 20 bucks cheaper than other new releases.
No regional pricing tho so I will wait for a sale
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:
- VideoGames based on our IP sell better than expected.
- Sales of our other digital products follow suit
- Larian Studios did this with minimal oversight
- No reason to assume any and all VideoGame products based on other IPs would not follow similar pattern
- Call to action: Fund additional Hasbro IP based VideoGames.
You know corporate will assume the opposite on all points though
Gve me a slay the spire style mtg and I’d be all over it.
Don’t give me hope. I still play Shandalar from time to time.
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 owns wizards of the coast, which is the owner of the D&D trademark.
wizards of the coast
Of the “sent the literal Pinkertons after a streamer” fame.
Tbf there’s a good chance that story was massively exaggerated and overblown. Like, supposedly they didn’t threaten him at all, and he willingly gave them the cards in exchange for something else. They were after whoever leaked the cards from their supply chain.
They said they were going to detain him and seize all of his cards, and make him prove he owns any of them.
That’s a huge disruption to his life and business.
It wouldn’t take a genius to be polite enough to be invited inside to talk about stuff, and slowly ramp up the severity enough to keep a guy listening and minimise confrontation.
It is completely overblown, and most people seem to be picturing the people from Red Dead Redemption and not a dead brand name that a Swedish security company bought to do collections under. Yes if you have sensitive possessions of a company they will send someone to get it, not trust you to mail it back to them.
The context that this was to prevent an NDA and happened within a month of someone else breaching an NDA with a leak that had a handful of noisy people declaring D&D dead is also pretty important, but never mentioned. It would never have even been a story without that context.
These kinds of stories tend to be overblown.
Particularly when a YouTuber posts a video about it afterwards. Although, one exception is Afroman and Will You Help Me Repair My Door.
I don’t know the story, but if it’s something that wasn’t supposed to be released, it’s pretty much definitely stolen property. You’re not entitled to keep stolen property because you think it’s cool, and sending PIs to recover stolen property instead of the police is the nice route.
Showing property that belongs to someone else online and can’t be acquired legitimately is absolutely grounds for an actual police search warrant.
It wasn’t stolen; it was sent to the streamer by mistake - they ordered something that had a very similar name and were sent the wrong item by the distributor. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/26/wizards-of-the-coast-sends-pinkerton-agency-to-person-that-bought-unreleased-magic-cards-in-error/
sending PIs to recover stolen property instead of the police is the nice route.
Exactly. However being in possession of stolen property is not itself a crime, you just don’t have any right to keep it. If you paid for it, then your claim is against whoever you paid.
They could have got the police to reclaim the stolen property, however perhaps that might not have been as effective for them in investigating the leak. In any case, the stories about the Pinkertons threatening him might not be true, and he’d have every right to refuse them entry or even to speak to them. The fact that he did suggests he willingly complied.
Yeah he complied his family was in a house surrounded by a group of men that could have had guns.
Knowingly being in possession of stolen property is a crime.
If there’s no legitimate source and a reasonable person would recognize that it’s stolen by default, you can definitely go to jail.
Knowingly possessing stolen goods is a crime, however that law is about addressing the trade of stolen goods, ie fencing. Merely possessing the goods is unlikely to attract a criminal charge, let alone a conviction with jail time, as it will usually be impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the buyer knew the goods were stolen. A reasonable person might think it is likely that they were stolen but would not know for sure.
Like I say, they were after the person who leaked it from the supply chain. If the police had been involved, they too would have been interested in the leaker, not the one-time buyer.
Edit: It can also vary by jurisdiction. Looking into it, there’s an interesting bit in the wiki for this in the UK section, where they distinguish between suspicion, belief and knowledge:
A person handles stolen goods if (otherwise than in the course of stealing), knowing or believing them to be stolen goods he dishonestly receives the goods
Belief … is something short of knowledge. It may be said to be the state of mind of a person who says to himself, “I cannot say I know for certain that these goods are stolen, but there can be no other reasonable conclusion in the light of all the circumstances, in the light of all that I have heard and seen.”
However I don’t think the US makes this distinction, as the US version of the law does not include “belief”.
They didn’t publish it, but they licensed the DnD brand to Larian
Wait, Hasbro owns DnD? It feels weird to me that a company can own DnD rights.
Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was originally incorporated by Gary Gygax in 1973. It went bankrupt and got bought out by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) in 1997. That purchase gave us D&D 3.0 and the original OGL, which was intended to encourage third-party publications of a game set WotC wasn’t overly confident in. This, after a decade of aggressive litigation by TSR’s VP Lorraine Williams who’d engineered Gygax’s ouster from the firm.
Hasbro acquired WotC two years later, in 1999, but was generally apathetic towards its administration outside of it being another revenue source. So WotC ran more-or-less independently until 2020 when the CEO noted on an earnings call that WotC was something like 40% of the company’s overall revenue. This triggered a sizable realignment of focus onto the various WotC brands (Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon card games being two other big players).
Now we’re seeing a much more traditional corporate refocusing on the WotC product line (movies and cross-promotions), a return to aggressive litigation against competitors, and a sharp increase in the price of WotC products to justify the increased expenses.
That is a great attitude towards everything DnD stands for, don’t lose it. Theres been a great deal of controversy this year, because the executives at wotc/hasbro believe that owning a popular brand like DnD means they’re entitled to shitloads of money, so they’re attempting to turn it into a cash cow, completely alienating the long standing community
Technically, Wizard of the Coast owns D&D, but they are a subsidiary of Hasbro (and have been since like ‘99).
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!!!”
“this game is a gold mine! It’s being underutilised at the moment, let’s improve the profitability with some in-game purchasable items and a subscription for bonus content”
I’m hoping a lesson they take is “let Larian make BG4” as well.
I love BG3 to death. But I also don’t want Larian to become the next EA under the yoke of some Hasbro/WoTC for BG4/5/6/7. I hope they continue to make their own games and forge their own path, with little to no reliance on megacorps. Their Divinity series is a treasure in it’s own right, and they said their next small projects are getting them excited.
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.
I thought Pathfinder kingmaker and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous supported controllers? I haven’t played them yet but intend to if I ever manage to put down bg3 (400 hours and 5.5 plays in, lmao)
They both do, I’ve played both on console. Honestly had more issues playing BG3 than either Pathfinder control-wise (mostly aiming between different heights). They’re grander in scale than BG3, and less open world (there’s an overworld map you use to get between different places), but they’re just as good. In Wrath of the Righteous I became a lich queen who ruled a continent, had a city full of undead minions and armies of them too. It’s highly recommended.
I know you didn’t ask, I just love that game.
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.
I bought that on the GOG Anniversary Sale pretty much because I finished BG3 and was in the mood for something new but similar. Hadn’t paid any attention to the Dragon Age franchise before.
I’m amazed at not only how well it holds up, but how much inspiration BG3 seems to have taken from it.
DA:O was made because the company that made Baldurs Gate 1&2 lost the rights to make 3
I actually got BG3 initially because people were saying it was so much like Dragon Age Origins.
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.
Who has merchandising rights though? Who’s going to be pumping out Astarian FunkoPop knockoffs for the next several years?
This is an interesting question actually. From what I read, larian has been screwed by producers many times in its past, so they should be aware of these kind of problems. It all depends 9n the contract hasbro and larian have. And if hasbro is as stupid as Microsoft, larian probably has a favorable deal.
Sometimes good things are just good things my man.
“We own something popular and profitable with a large userbase that hasn’t had every penny milked from it? Hold my beer.”
- Hasbro
“I hate when companies make money. Like when they licensed out this balls-out awesome video game”
At least they licensed it to someone who did a good job and provided value instead of buying out the product that added value to the game they owned and then running it into the ground like they did with DnD Beyond.
I think DnD beyond looks is great. I wish Games Workshop would move more quickly into the 21st century
Beyond stopped development when Hasbro bought them and the Encounter Tracker has been unchanged in beta for those years. They killed it by stopping development and flooding it with sponsored shit that gets in the way of using official stuff.
Killing doesn’t always mean broken, sometimes it means lack of progress on useful features and drawing existing useful features in shitty monetization that makes it harder to use.
the Encounter Tracker has been unchanged in beta for those years
Wait til you hear about the BG3 beta.
They’re going to suck it dry like a vampire till it’s dry, not cultivate it year round like a farmer.
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.
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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.
Just pirate it, and buy a gift pack of dos2 or dos1
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.
