Devolver Digital prefers to sell games rather than launch them on Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus

Nigel Lowrie, the co-founder of Devolver Digitalsaid the company’s strategy is to “sell games”rather than considering the idea of ​​publishing them directly within subscription services, such as Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus.

This philosophy was also mentioned in one of the documents presented to Devolver Digital shareholders last year, but now thanks to an interview with GamesIndustry.biz Lowrie has delved into the company’s point of view towards all-you-can-eat subscriptions , which he believes are slowing down and offering increasingly less advantageous deals to independent developers.

“A lot of the companies offering these services are a little unclear about how many subscribers they actually have,” Lowrie said. “Every now and then you hear how many subscribers these services have, but you’re not sure about it. And you don’t know how active they are.”

“From a developer’s point of view, you have to convince people to spend money on your game rather than on a service that offers 100 or 200 games. That creates a bit of a problem.”

“We still strongly believe in selling games, because for the last 15 years we know that there is an audience that buys these games. And we are looking at subscriptions more than anything for late in the sales cycle, for people on the fringes who don’t would have ever spent 40, 30 or 20 dollars. I hope the industry is going in this direction.”

Said this, Devolver Digital doesn’t even rule out the idea a priori to publish a game within subscription services. Indeed, as Lowrie recalls, it has already happened with Fall Guys (of which Devolver was the publisher), published at launch as a free game for PlayStation Plus subscribers. The choice therefore also depends on the type of game, with clearly a battle royale title that could benefit more from subscription services than a single-player one.

“We don’t rule out launching on day one in a subscription service It also depends on the type of game and the public to which it is addressed. For most of our games we would prefer to sell copies first.”

“One of the ideas was that Fall Guys needed a lot of people to play it right away, so we made a deal with PlayStation and brought it to PlayStation Plus on day-one. It made a lot of sense to us.”