![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Movie/TV services do it.. and so does Music.. Just a matter of time before its normal for Games... People are to blame not Companies.. No one is forcing people to buy it.. People and there gaming addictions can't help it.
Disagree, I enjoy my game-pass and the bunch of games I played that I wouldn't touch/buy otherwise.
1. Service fragmentation is annoying af, but the base premise remains the same: business offers service, is it worth it for me? yes/no and I either buy or not based on that.
2. Some games are already purely a subscription model, and games without subscription model have been shutdown in the past as well. That is a different problem, typically multiplayer heavy games that are not player hosted will suffer from that, single player games don't usually and when they do developers/publishers should be brought to the fire for it.
7. Don't know what will ubisoft do, but on gamepass games usually stay 1, 2 or more years, and they warn at least some 15 days before they leave. There's also the opposite experience of FOMO where I try games I wouldn't otherwise buy and discover new genres/types I enjoy, also don't feel the sting of buying a bad game and feeling like I need to play it to justify the purchase (even with research sometimes it happens - looking at you M&B2).
8. Innerworkings are tricky, but some do reward based on time played, buying the dlc also goes back to developers. But if I really really enjoy a game I most likely end up buying it and DLC, so I do support the developers.
9. Modding is possible with subscription services (game pass for ex. allows games to be modded), this part is mostly up to the developers themselves. Devs/publishers that reduce moddability for secondary revenue streams is not a subscription model problem, it's something that already exists and it's up to each of us to support/play or not those types of games.
100% agree with this.
Not true, up to dev/publisher/service, there are games on game pass I've played offline without problems.
Like any anti-consumer practice, it will become the only option, or like modern Streaming services, one of many only options.
The only redeeming factor from Game Pass is that it's doing so poorly that Microsoft decided to stop reporting subscriber numbers. As history has shown us, this usually means poor sales. Suffers the same problems as Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ in that they don't offer you everything. No Baldur's Gate 3, no Resident Evil 4, no Alan Wake 2, no Talos Principal 2, no Pizza Tower, and no Star Wars Jedi Survivor. These are arguably most of the best games of 2023, which means you still gotta buy the games or subscribe to other services like Ubisoft+ or EA Play. You still won't get access to all the games.
The problem is that games do come and go on these services, which can be a problem if you were planning to play said game but then found out it was shuffled out for some other game.
No amount of internet out rage is going to hold any company accountable when a game is shutdown. Sometimes they walk back, but then a year or two later it's still shutdown.
Consider this that consoles like Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 still come with Blu-Ray drives that only hold up to 100GB but a USB thumb drive that's 128GB is only $15 on Amazon. Sony and Microsoft wouldn't pay that price for a thumb drive, plus not all thumb drives need to be 128GB. So why aren't Microsoft and Sony selling physical copies of games on something similar? You could even put game updates onto it, and some games could probably load straight off it to save storage space. Nintendo still sells physical games for the Switch, and there's no cost difference from a digital download or the cartridge. My point is that if Microsoft and Sony really cared about game purchases, then they could have easily innovated on this. They sell digital only consoles for this reason. It's pretty clear that Sony and Microsoft want to push for subscription services. Now we have individual game studios trying their hand on it as well. I'm not sure how successful they'll be, but one things for certain is that they're trying to do away with game purchases.
I did try it and that is exactly my problem. I played a bunch of games that I'd never have touched otherwise. They weren't awful but the only reason I tried them is to make more use of the subscription before it expired. I could've spent the time wasted there much better.
It might seem like a good deal in the short term, but you must also consider long term consequences of that choice.
I didn't say it isn't already a problem, but with the subscription model applied to more games it will only become a much bigger issue. Surely you can see that.
These were all reasonable assumptions based on existing examples, you need to give reasons why do you think it wouldn't apply to gaming subscriptions.
And you think 15 days is enough to play a game? C'mon. For someone who wants to waste time and has nothing better to do than try games they'd never touch otherwise it might be better value.
The problem with this is that in game cash shops esp. in single player games are a plague in of themselves. For DLCs the more common is that the lower tier subscription will give you access to the base games, and a higher tier where you also get access to the DLCs as well.
I agree the problem is not directly linked to the subscription model, but subs can only mean more and worse anti-tamper tech, not less.
That's exactly my worry, it is up to them, and esp. ubisoft is not one to pass up a chance for yet another justification for why there is no offline play.
I'm not planning on subscribing to any of them, when I buy a game I can rely on it being there years later as well. If I just subscribe I have to pay again and again and again, and as soon as I stop paying my access is cut off. I don't even remember when was the last time ubisoft put out a game that I wanted, but it must be years. However I still play their older games occasionally, so I'd have to pay the fee despite not wanting anything new from their catalogue.
For a while sure, but for movies and TV the ability to purchase has already started to disappear in favor of digital renting.
That was not my experience at all. Just to clarify that point: I tried some games that I wouldn't otherwise and found them to be good and enjoyable experiences outside my usual type of games. That was definitely a plus on my book. ( I also tried some games that weren't good or enjoyable for me and felt quite comfortable not playing them further because I did not pay for them specifically)
A game gets added, if you haven't touched it in 1 year you're probably not that interested in it in the first place. After that you know it might get out at some point and you get a minimum of 15 days warning, no one is forcing you to start and finish a game in 15 days.
Did you not read the OP?
They want to lull you into the mindset that you don't need to own your games and then be paid every time you play their games. They are absolutely looking at the DVD industry as their example on what to emulate. As an avid disc buyer I can tell you buying media is MUCH harder now and more costly. Streaming has decimated sales and prices are up to compensate which leads more people to streaming simply because costs rarely go down like they use to. It use to be there were sales lots of people bought at certain times of the year, now they are few and far between and no where near as low as before, and many things aren't even available due to exclusivity with streaming services. You say you do not expect game purchases to disappear and both can coexist, but we already saw how coexistence will never happen once the number of subs can support a publisher's bottom line with Adobe software. Do not be fooled by silly promises from companies that they will continue to sell games for you to own. Both Adobe and Autodesk made the same claims while they were building up the subscriber base. Then the moment it was financially viable they cut off perpetual software sales, then they slowly removed the ability to re-activate the older purchased perpetual software. So there is definitely precedence that it can happen and with games, especially Ubisoft's direct to your face telling you they don't want people to own their games, that this is not speculation but their end goal.
not me. mp3's are bad enough. the thing people don't realize is utube serves 128kbps m4a and to get mp3 it has to go through a second lossy conversion. in this day and age of when you can get a hi-res player that does gapless for ~$100 i have no idea why anyone would want to continue to listen to compressed lossy audio?
For publicly traded companies like Microsoft, the lack of growth is bad. Of course they make money, but they need to make even more money, because shareholders. This is why streaming services like Stadia were shut down, because there was no growth. Microsoft did this with Xbox One, and Blizzard did this with World of Warcraft. They clearly made good money, but there's no growth.
If it's my job to figure out what the service I'm paying for does or doesn't have, then I'll just unsubscribe. You wonder why they have no growth.
There's a better solution. I like how you guys want to uphold your morals when corporations don't. Also who among us doesn't have a backlog of games on Steam they've been meaning to play from all the Humble Bundles?
you're not missing much!
♤♤ SUPER THIS ♤♤
The 360 was doing fine, but the Xbox One is when things went down hill.
You don't know that. If Game Pass was doing "just fine" then show me the numbers.
They'll just make games exclusive to Xbox again and kick out PC. Why you think Microsoft is buying up all these studios? Playstation guys thought this would never happen, and where's their Starfield? Where's the PC version of GTAVI?
The Xbox One owners with Kinect would like to have a word with you.
Microsoft stopped reporting Game Pass numbers in January 2022, which was still COVID. Ubisoft was also in decline as was Blizzard during COVID. Nobody was interested.
Is anyone going to actually pirate Ubisoft games? They're so bad even the pirates wouldn't even touch them. Also yes.
Corporations do it all the time and it's legal. Why you think all our junk in made in China, or why IT is now in India? They're taking advantage of conversion rates. The only reason games are region locked is to prevent you from doing the same thing they do.
You should take another look at the Game Pass web page and look at their games carefully. Who could ever forget such games like Those Who Remain, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, Super Mega Baseball 4, and of course Hell Let loose. Where as Humble Bundle current offers for $10, you may have heard of this game Boyonetta, Borderlands 2 Game of the Year Edition which has a native Linux port and is still better than Borderlands 3, Celeste
, Sprawl , Blood Stained Ritual of the Night is a pretty decent game, Astalan , and Sonic Adventure 2 which I still have for Dreamcast. While Game Pass has no Sonic games, no Borderlands games, no Boyonetta, and no Blood Stained Ritual of the Night. The same price as one month of Game Pass, you get to keep these games.
If you don't finish the game before it's removed from the store? What happens?
Again, if the game is installed then what are they going to do to prevent me from playing it and backing it up?
Ubisoft can try, but if you don't offer all of your latest titles on this service then you can bet that people will look elsewhere. That includes piracy, but again I wouldn't recommend pirating Ubisoft games because again they aren't worth $1, let alone your time. There are so many better games, particularly on Humble Bundle, that are worth your time. You can also take your time playing those games because again, you own them. If you wanted to play Baldur's Gate 3, which isn't on Game Pass, you can comfortably leave whatever game behind and know that it'll still be there because it's not on Game Pass. Imagine playing A Plague Tale on Game Pass to leave it for BG3, but came back to find that you can't continue because the game was removed. At which point I would have visited GameCrackWorld and cracked the game, and you can argue what is or isn't morally correct and legal, but I'll be damned if I couldn't continue my save game.
With subscription you are paying per access. It doesn't matter if it is monthly, daily, or hourly. Same concept.
I can't believe that it still hasn't sink in for some people that piracy is a service problem. Everyone has their own line set in sand, to limit how far backward they are willing to bend before they say enough is enough and stop paying for a service. Whether someone chooses to pirate after that line is reached is completely irrelevant to the service provider's predicament. They are not victims of piracy they are the victims of their own shoddy service.
And how many games did you try that you didn't find enjoyable? Trying 5 games to find one that is somewhat enjoyable is not a good usage of my limited free time, this is why I said subscriptions promote unhealthy gaming habits. You feel like you need to try games to not let the subscription waste away. It incentivizes you to play even if otherwise you'd do something else.
Do you know how many games there are in my steam library that have been sitting there for over a year waiting for me to play them? And what if I only learned about the game weeks before its removal?
I'm not talking about consequences for you, but consequences for the industry, if subscriptions reach critical mass, the option to purchase will be erased completely.
It will be too late to unsubscribe after your prior cheerleading for subscriptions have killed off ownership of games.
IDK whan dreamland you live in where corporations do things that benefit the consumer at the expense of their profits or revenue growth.
They wouldn't be promoting it if they didn't see it as a way to increase their bottom line. There is no win-win scenario here. They win, we loose something in the process.
Owning games is better than renting them.
If ownership is really important to a gamer, the only choice for buying games is GoG. It is the only digital store where you actually own the full license rights to use the product you purchased because it has no DRM on it. Though some GoG users like to argue that in fact some games do have online DRM because it has to use galaxy to connect to multiplayer aspects of the games. Even with that, GoG is still the only true seller of Games that you actually own, simply because you can install it with an installer that you can download without any client software at all. No activations, no can't find store client running for license checks, just install and play.
Not only GOG. Itch* and Zoom Platform also provide DRM-free offline installers. And there are some games that can be purchased directly from the dev/publisher, which is even better because there's no middleman adding overhead.
Would it not be for game needing to be patched dozen-hundreds of times during their life, that could be quite similar to torrented movie too (not sure why replaying it change that).
No its not. The games on there are trash with an occasional fun game. Not worth the annual cost when added up. I dropped mine.
Like 0.05% of the population knows what a torrent is. You're argument doesn't stand strongly with reality.
That sound low by now (specially for the people with the first spotify-netflix accounts, the first few years of those services), but "free" streaming from a pre-made android streaming box by people that assume it is perfectly legal because they are sold in store, at least in Canada.
I already did this a few times, and it was OK for mediocre games that I never want to play again. But for good games it is worse, because I want to play them more than in a span of a single month.
IDK, I'd never purchase a single song from an album, that is weird to me, either an album is worth buying or it is not. Back in the day napster was actually a great way to find music that I wanted to listen to and eventually bought. Of course I downloaded much more than what I purchased, but I did not buy the rest because it did not make the cut. Or in some cases I wanted to buy it but simply couldn't. Now music streaming and youtube serves the same purpose as napster back in the day.
They will triple in price as soon as they manage to normalize not owning games and quietly take away the option. I think the subscription model for games is the worst of both worlds, you get lower quality games as well as end up paying more in the long run compared to buying the 3-4 games a year that you are actually interested in.
And when the prices go up, if the value is no longer there for me I won't buy/subscribe, same logic for buying games.
That's in a scenario where subscription only exists, again I don't believe it will go that way, your opinion might differ and that's fair.
No I don't, again I'll pay while the value is there, if it's not I won't.
Sadly you know how many people will sign up? Even if a new game doesnt come out except every 6 months or a year....
Most of the games I tried I enjoyed/finished. I don't grab every random game that gets added, I do a rudimentary check to see if it's something I'll enjoy. Picking up a game to see if I enjoy or not also happens when I buy it. In this case I might try a game for half an hour or so to check if I like without a comprise, and that works for me. Just because that is my experience doesn't mean it has to be yours, to each their own.
That's not how I approach it. That seems like an anxiety problem that transcends the subscription model question. Like saying chocolate is bad because I can't stop eating it. My approach is, i have a subscription, if I feel like playing something on there I will. After a month or two if I look back and see that I have not been using it then I cancel it.
Again seems to me that's more to do with perspective and anxiety. I know how the subscription works and every now and then check what's added. When I feel like playing something new I go and take a look.
So am I, services/products that provide good value survive others don't. I think the purchase option being erased completely is very unlikely, but each of us have their own crystal ball.
Easy on the hyperbole there, I'm not cheerleading, I shared my experience, not all subscriptions are the same and not all are the devil. What works for me might not work for others.
Never said or implied that. Companies try to make profit period. Sometimes they provide products/service that I enjoy or find worth it, then I buy them.
Disagree, this is more nuanced and context based than you're portraying. Some products/services provide value in a way that was not there before, doesn't mean everything companies do force you to lose something, you have to look at it on a case by case and decide for yourself.
Agree, but at the same time not interested in owning all games I play, some I'm ok with playing for bit and be done with them.
I'm sorry, but I have a really hard time believing that almost all the games you tried you ended up loving so much that you finished them. You either don't have very high standards, or you did not try that many games after all. Of course you don't try every random game, but when I had games pass, after vetting their entire "free" catalogue I landed on about half a dozen games that I deemed interesting enough to try. And only one ended up being good enough that I played it to completion. It was some indie game, and only allowed me to play the first chapter. So in the end I still would've had to pay to get the full game. I could've probably bought the game in full for less than what's a game pass subscription goes for on list price.
That was my point, that is fomo working in full effect. You try games you otherwise wouldn't because what if they're good? Spoiler alert: If they were really good you'd have heard about them and wanted to try them long ago.
Except there is nobody there to take away the chocolate if you do not eat it fast enough. And you don't have to pay again for the chocolate you did not eat last month.
Of course it is anxiety, LOL, so I'm the problem for expecting that the games I payed for to remain available to me indefinitely? Or that I want to manage my own time? I'm still shocked that you actually think removing games is not a big deal.
That's naivety. Products and services don't survive based on how good they are for the customer. Even scams survive, because there are always gullible people to get scammed, that doesn't mean scams provide good value
You try to explain away every drawback of the subscription model, I call that cheerleading. If I wanted to be insulting I would've said shilling.
But if they make more profit that has to mean that they either extract more money from the customers or provide less value somehow. There are no free lunches.
I'm pretty confident that if we allow them to push the subscription model on us then eventually there'll be no purchase option for at least some games.
Call me cynical but publishers are not charities, as soon as they hook you on subscriptions and by you I mean the majority of players they'll put up roadblocks that will prevent you to sign up for one month to play a $70 game and then cancel.
Oh, I wish ownership and subscription could coexist. But just as large scale campaign expansions for games did not survive DLCs, I don't think ownership will survive subscriptions.
It seems to me that you are trying to bury your head in sand about the negatives and possible ramifications for the future of ownership. Look at the commercial software market, you can no longer buy perpetual licenses for most software, either you pay ad infinitum or loose the software, with some going as far as retroactively revoking perpetual licenses. We used to have a choice to remain on the same software version or upgrade to the new one if it provided value for us, now there is no choice, you have to upgrade and pay every year even if you find the updates detrimental.
Just because a game exists, doesn't mean it's worth playing. For example, did you know Star Wars Fallen Order is mediocre? Mediocre in gaming means it's a bad game. It's a perfectly serviceable game, but if you're not doing anything special beyond being a bad Dark Souls clone then the game is a waste of time. Gaming is so old now that there's plenty of classics that are worth your time. Again, games don't age. There's no such thing as outdated gaming design, just good or bad. Shovel Knight isn't shovel ware, and Hollow Knight as an Indie Game is 10x better than most AAA games released in 2023. Most games on Game Pass are trash, with some exceptions that make you feel like you're getting your $10 per month worth.
This is why we had demos and shareware back in the day. This is why Twitch is popular, because some people don't have a good way to determine if they'd like the game or not. A rule I have is if I never have any intention of playing a game twice, then it wasn't a good game.
The problem is that subscriptions are usually hard to cancel, by design. Also if you pay to try games before you buy them, then you're paying for demos of games. Good luck finishing Baldur's Gate 3 in a month.
Probably won't go that way, but it doesn't mean that's not the intention of corporations like Ubisoft. If consoles had succeeded in destroying the PC gaming market, then you'd have no mods. If Cloud Gaming had succeeded, then you'd have no mods. If emulation was illegal, then you'd have no mods for Nintendo games. It's hard to grasp how close we were to losing this powerful tool as gamers.
When you don't, it'll be too late. We're already at the point where digital downloads is the only way to get some games, and that means no used resale market. Used games was a way to control the price of games, and that's mostly gone. Renting games will further push away your digital rights of ownership. We got people here posting that you don't actually own anything, like that's a universally accepted rule. Remember, Foamy warned you.
