Prince of Persia: The Lost Throne was a critical hit but didn't sell very well, and Michael Douse thinks that's entirely Ubisoft's fault.

Larian director of publishing Michael Douse, never one to be shy about speaking his mind, has spoken his mind about Ubisoft’s decision to disband the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown development team, saying it’s the result of a “broken strategy” that prioritizes subscriptions over sales.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is quite good. PC Gamer’s Mollie Taylor felt it was dragged down by a very slow start, calling it “a slow burn to a fault” in an overall positive review, and it holds an enviable 86 aggregate score on Metacritic. Despite that, Ubisoft recently confirmed that the development team has been scattered to the four winds to work on “other projects that will benefit from their expertise.”

This, Douse feels, is at least partially the outcome of Ubisoft’s focus on subscriptions over conventional game sales—the whole “feeling comfortable with not owning your game” thing espoused by Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay earlier this year—and the decision to stop releasing games on Steam, which is far and away the biggest digital storefront for PC gaming.

      • @BimfredEnglish
        16•27 days ago

        Even the Stream version doesn’t require Steam. You can just run the executable. A few folks over on Reddit claim they’ve given the game to their friends just by copying the files from an external drive.

        • ayayaEnglish
          13•27 days ago

          The multiplayer also works no problem without Steam. I own the game on Steam and I did a playthrough with friends who torrented it. They just had to keep the patches up to date manually.

          • WIZARD POPE💫English
            3•27 days ago

            Love how that worked but me and my friends had version issues even though all 3 of us own the game on steam

    • @errerEnglish
      -1•27 days ago

      Yeah but is that technically purchasing the game, or just a license? Not that they have any means of enforcement if it’s DRM-free but you still might not technically own it.

      • @[email protected]English
        14•27 days ago

        Practically, outside of second-hand sales, there’s no difference between e.g. GOGs offline installer and a physical copy of the game. No, you don’t technically own it, but for all intents and purposes you do.