- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10828130
Always good to see someone in the industry push back on all of these shitty tactics the AAA publishers want to push.
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Yeah, fuck the subscription model and all of this “as a service” bullshit.
Personally “as a service” is OK if it’s actually sold that way. If I pay a fee per month or in some other way per use and that gives me access to the whole game as long as I play then I’m a happy camper and it gives the developer a steady stream to use towards improvements and keeping the servers online.
When you start double dipping or even triple dipping is when I start getting peeved. You can’t do a monthly fee and also lock stuff behind microtransactions, it might be somewhat OK if what you lock away is purely cosmetic and if you can still get them via say an in-game auction house a la SWTOR.
But some games have all of these:
- Pay for the game itself to let you play it
- Pay a monthly fee or have season passes to get access to certain content or very needed “convenience” features
- Have microtransactions that aren’t just cosmetics but give power / convenience or unlock features/content
And then it just feel like a money milking machine.
Generally if you do one of those you’re most likely OK, two can potentially work if you’re really careful. But all three is a no-go.
The Division did two and felt OK to me, the microtransactions on top were only cosmetics but it felt kinda shitty when you had already bought the game and paid for a season pass/expansions.
Destiny also did two and felt OK as well but after I quit I heard they made some really unpopular changes to the cosmetic system and their microtransactions?
League of Legends did one, the last one, and still felt OK from a monetization stand point. Same with Valorant.
Diablo 3 did all three and was brutalized for it to the point of changing it, but that’s the only example from the top of my head of someone triple dipping.
Destiny was doing fine until clearly expansion/content gear was put into the mtx store. Then the whole content vaulting happened and everything went down hill.
The content vault was done to reduce storage space requirements by removing the main story and multiple planets. The story put in to replace the base story made little sense and was just badly designed. In effect this meant the base game (previously paid content) and paid expansion content was removed. No refunds or anything as the policy you sign to play says they can remove content at will.
I don’t actually play a lot of games, so it doesn’t make sense for me, but honestly for people who do play a wide variety of different games, Microsoft’s GamePass is a brilliant deal. A Netflix-like subscription where you pay one amount per month and get access to all the games in their library, including patches and DLC.
At $11/month, just 3 AAA games per year and it’s a better deal. Or 7 $20 games per year, which I know a lot of gamers will easily go through.
But a subscription to an individual game? It better be getting quality ongoing support, with content, bug patches, etc. It made sense back in the day for MMOs, but it’s a damn tight rope to walk. And it can only work for the types of games that people are gonna sink their lives into, with hours per week over years. It’s a very hard sell, and in not sure I’d pay it even for the two games (from the same franchise) that currently get 90% of my gaming time.
As long as it remains an option among others, I don’t see any issue with the subscription model. I play video games for 20+ years, and I can say it’s impossible for me at this point to play once again to most of the games I played in the past. A subscription model is the cheapest way to play most games if you do not play it more than once (which is the case for most games, at least for myself).
Even in the rare case where I would like to play again a game I did not buy at the time, between discounts, remake / remaster (or even emulation), and even if I have to buy it 5 years after its release, it will still be worth it compared to the dozens of games I had not bought.
I am much more concerned about DLCs, season pass, bugged games on release and so on. Releasing incomplete or imperfect games (and this also count for BG3) implies that one day, using a physical copy of nowadays in 20 years will be a subpar experience because you won’t have access to any of this content by legal means (assuming Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo shutting down their online services for old generations, which has already happened and will likely happen again in the future). Retrogaming for games released nowadays is kind doomed if you do not follow the piracy route (which is probably the only secure way to keep track of both DLCs and patches in the long run).
Least controversial news story of the day.
I think what Ubisoft and Microsoft don’t get is that SOME users are okay with subscriptions, but that’s a small bit compared to people who don’t.
Just cater to the niche that do want it and quit thinking you can make the whole market a subscription service.
Ah the enshittification proceeds. Content is not king. Revenue is king. Those railing against it will be swept away as the shit tsunami envelopes everything.
I mean BG3 absolutely wiping the competition in every regard kinda goes against that idea
