Subscription Services - a brave new world?

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Chopper
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Subscription Services - a brave new world?

Post by Chopper »

The Steam Summer Sale started yesterday. I'm looking at my wishlist of seven games, and six of them have discounts. But I'm wondering whether it's smart to actually buy any of them.

I've got accounts on Steam, the Epic Games store, Humble, the Paradox-associated Gamersgate and GOG. All of these with the exception of GG, give attractive games away for free regularly. The Humble Bundle can provide me with 7-8 games for 12 bucks monthly. Epic is giving away a game a week for the rest of this year.

Then we have PS+ and GwG; and the waters have been further muddied there with Gamepass and other upcoming subscription services.

Now, when I think about buying a game, in theory I have to check whether it's already on Gamepass, so that a sub there would make more sense than buying the game, whether it ever came out on PS+, whether it's a likely Humble candidate, whether it's a likely Epic candidate. Both of the latter are very likely, due to my own taste in gaming which runs to indie games.

So now I'm looking at Steam and out of the seven games, I have identified one game that is so obscure that it will never make it onto any of those services ("a sci-fi logistics simulator, where you grow your company from a local transport agency into an interstellar logistics behemoth!").

Interstellar Transport Company it is then. :lol:

This whole shift seems seismic to me. It seems that only recently we were trying to resolve the issues around digital (non)ownership, and it seems like that whole issue has been left in the dust by this brave new world. Who's gonna be buying games any more? How are they going to be financed? Are the storefronts/subscription services going to be the new publishers? Have we only ourselves to blame? Has consumerism run amok? :D
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hazeredmist
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Re: Subscription Services - a brave new world?

Post by hazeredmist »

Subscription models for games ("Netflix of games") is not something that interests me, I don't like it, I don't feel connected to games and I would get overwhelmed with the choice leading to playing nothing properly. It's like this with PS Plus - I have SO many Plus games in my library untouched.

Personally, I will in all likelihood be letting my PS Plus sub lapse in September, and my one remaining sub is Nintendo Online - the NES games / Tetris don't really feel like "my games" hence I don't connect with them fully either. I also know they can be ripped away at any moment like a show you're watching on Netflix that's pulled due to licences expiring or the actor getting done for noncing or something. That's a barrier I can't get past with this model. I also can't justify loads of gaming direct debits every month. It's ridiculous to me.

But I'm getting old. This new world isn't for me.
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Scrustle
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Re: Subscription Services - a brave new world?

Post by Scrustle »

hazeredmist wrote: June 26th, 2019, 12:41 pm Subscription models for games ("Netflix of games") is not something that interests me, I don't like it, I don't feel connected to games and I would get overwhelmed with the choice leading to playing nothing properly. It's like this with PS Plus - I have SO many Plus games in my library untouched.

Personally, I will in all likelihood be letting my PS Plus sub lapse in September, and my one remaining sub is Nintendo Online - the NES games / Tetris don't really feel like "my games" hence I don't connect with them fully either. I also know they can be ripped away at any moment like a show you're watching on Netflix that's pulled due to licences expiring or the actor getting done for noncing or something. That's a barrier I can't get past with this model. I also can't justify loads of gaming direct debits every month. It's ridiculous to me.

But I'm getting old. This new world isn't for me.
This mirrors my feeling more or less exactly. I think I have something like 200+ games attached to my Xbox Live account from GwG, but I've played hardly any of them. I've only ever put in more than an hour in to maybe half a dozen. Without having gone out of my way to actually buy them, these games don't feel like they have much meaning. I didn't choose them, and if I did have enough interest to do that, I would have bought them already. Same with when I look at something like Game Pass. I don't really care about a huge library of stuff I mostly have no interest in. If it has a handful of appealing games, I'll just get those.

I wonder what it does for the general attitude towards the value of games in future too. Will they become even more disposable than they are already treated as? I'm all for making games more accessible to more people, but is this really the way to do that? I worry that it will cause more harm than good, and there's precedent for this sort of thing too. Look at the state of the mobile games market, that started thanks to the war to the bottom they went through with ever lower and lower prices. And I've already started seeing people treat console/PC games differently these days, criticising them for not being constantly updated service style experiences. Or if they are, for not keeping up with some nebulous undefined pace of content additions.

And on another note, what happens if you happen to go through tough financial times and you have to tighten your belt a bit and cut down on luxuries? If you stop your subscriptions, that will be your entire access to a whole medium just gone, with nothing to show for all the money you previously put in to it. Building up your own library with sales and such, you'll always be able to go back to old games or pick up something cheap if you want. But to be able to play anything at any time with a sub you need to be constantly pumping money in to it. Not to mention of course what happens when a company goes under, or simply decides to take "your" games off their service.

Maybe this is a brave new world, according to Huxley at least.
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Simonsloth
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Re: Subscription Services - a brave new world?

Post by Simonsloth »

I suppose it depends hugely on what value I place on a given game. If I want to buy a game and it’s available physically I will opt for that. If it’s digital only I usually add it to my wish list and wait for an inevitable price drop.

Naturally if there’s a massive price drop I usually end up taking the plunge. Although by the time it’s a few pounds the window for it appearing on one of the streaming services or as one of the “free” games has probably passed. Having said that I’m unlikely to be hugely interested in the game by that point either so I might not even buy it haha.

I regret so many of the games trade-ins I opted to do when money was tighter as often it was a mistake. Streaming services and digital only purchases feel so fragile and I worry in 20 years time if I want to play an obscure digital only game will I even be able to.

I reckon Google will sign up some games for exclusivity on their service so you might not be able to even download it to keep on a hard drive somewhere.





The wealth of tv series I have started on Netflix or prime video only for them to disappear halfway through
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Scrustle
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Re: Subscription Services - a brave new world?

Post by Scrustle »

Stadia already has an exclusive, that happens to be something I'm a bit miffed about too. A game called Gylt, which looks like something of a cross between Little Nightmares and Silent Hill. It's from Tequila Works, who also made Rime, which I'm a big fan of, so I was looking forward to see what that studio would cook up next. Apparently I won't be able to. Although I suspect that this exclusivity may only be temporary. It doesn't seem like a game that requires the massive super computers that Stadia is supposedly running the games on.
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countstex
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Re: Subscription Services - a brave new world?

Post by countstex »

I see this rather like how I use Netflix. For a lot of stuff I'm happy to just watch what is on there. But for certain movies and shows I'll always get the UHD Blueray so I can a)watch it when I want. b)Ensure I get flawless quality c) Get a whole pile of extras/commentaries. This last aspect might be were games have to go. Perhaps collectors editions, in stead of having a ton of crap with them, can become experiences, with making of docs, soundtracks, and other aspects to get the purchase.

In the long term I think the industry might require some central licence control group so you can buy a licence to a given product and that clears you for downloading it on what ever devices/services you use. Once things are purely digital the idea of having things tied to specific hardware makes less and less sense. That will not be in MS/Sony/Nintys interests of course, they like to sell you games themselves, but in the end I can't see how it can go any other way.
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