I think this is a good place to link Stop Killing Games. There’s currently an EU initiative under way to mandate that developers have to plan for the retirement of games with online services in a way that customers can still enjoy the game after the online services are shut down.
If you are a citizen of any EU country, please take your time to read through the initiative and sign it.
That’s not true. There was no way to own a television show until DVDs, and now that’s disappearing. Yes, there were compilation VHS “best of” tapes and whatnot, but you’d never have the entire season. Hollywood was so threatened by the mere existence of home video that they charged an arm and a leg for a copy and set up profit sharing deals for rentals, because they thought this threatened their stranglehold on charging for the theater viewing. Now we’re at a spot where you can buy a “digital copy” of movies and TV shows, which is the same thing as not owning anything at all, because once their store goes down, so does your “copy” of the movie you bought.
Across the entire landscape of consumer media, there is only one industry in which this business model of non-ownership and dependence on subscription services is not rapidly becoming the norm: video games.
Think of how many songs, movies, or TV episodes you can get through in a month for one cheap subscription fee. Now think about, on average, how many video games you’ll get through in a month. That’s just simple economics. It’s usually more worth it to buy the games outright.
Games will likely never be free from aggressive and unnecessary DRM software. AAA titles in particular are falling victim to faux-live service systems where games cannot be played without a good internet connection, even if they are singleplayer experiences. I am not saying that buying the newest release from EA for $80 will guarantee your long-term access to it. It won’t.
Games will only never be free from this stuff if you keep accepting it as an inevitability and pay for them. In the meantime, do what you can to support the Stop Killing Games initiative. I wrote my representative asking for consumer protections for this stuff, knowing that she’s a member of the other party and likely doesn’t care, her e-mail response indicating as much too, but it’s better than doing literally nothing.
Think about the titanic power of the music industry in the 20th century. Back when people paid to own music, music idols were at the center of pop culture.
It’s funny, because all I heard back then was that the artists made hardly any money off of record sales and made all of their money touring. Now I rarely go to concerts because Live Nation is going to tear my eyes out with ticket prices, and there’s no competition I can go to instead.
I don’t see Game Pass as a threat to gaming. Their subscription numbers have stalled out, and they’re not doing the lousy things with it that Nintendo does, at least for now. Once again, just simple economics. Even Nintendo’s online subscription will eventually fade, perhaps over the course of a decade or more, as PC becomes more and more the de facto way to play games.
Game pass numbers stalled out because Microsoft stalled out on adding blockbuster games since Starfield, which was poorly received. Check the numbers once the new CoD, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., ARK, Indiana Jones all get added towards the end of the year. CoD in particular will likely show the reports about them reaching full saturation to be false
They increased the price for the tier that gives you access to the likes of CoD, so I don’t think this is going to grow that offering by much, if at all. I think the numbers stalled out because this (admittedly substantial) number of customers is what the market is for people who would get more value out of a subscription than buying the games outright. And besides that, I think the numbers are pointing toward the very real possibility that they’d have been better off without Game Pass.
Everyone is better off without game pass (though MS have had the capability to do it for a long time before they launched it, and that infrastructure was largely just going to waste). IMO it doesn’t change that the millions that show up to buy CoD every year will be direct marketed game pass as a way to get it for $20 instead of $70 and that will be highly successful
What does “witch hunt” even mean anymore? I feel like it has been overused to the point of losing all meaning. In this case, by “witch hunt”, the writer means “they have started going too far and making some bad calls”. They aren’t calling for people to mount heads on spikes or review bomb, as far as I can tell.
It’s a strange case, though. Who do we think follows these curators? The title of the list is in Ukrainian, so I’d guess it’s mostly Ukrainians. On the one hand, I don’t want to tell Ukrainian folks how to spend their money with respect to Russia. Maybe for some, even the slightest whiff of Russia will turn them off from the game, regardless of how logical it is. It’s not my busieness to question the mostly-harmless emotional reaction of a people under siege. For those, these curation lists might still be useful. Of course, people that care this much would probably research another way if the curator lists didn’t exist.
For others, I’m sure they would prefer a curator list that actually does the research and doesn’t list a game unless the purchase would very clearly benefit Russia in tax dollars. For those, this turn of events is unfortunate. On the other hand, those people are probably level-headed enough to do their own research on a game-by-game basis.
My point is: the impact of these curator lists existing is probably minimal. But maybe i’m wrong, idk. What do y’all think?
They aren’t calling for people to mount heads on spikes or review bomb, as far as I can tell.
In the context of the article, it’s not about the consequence - obviously, nobody’s getting burned at the stake - but about the how: the finger-pointing based on vibes or false accusations of something done by another person.
On the one hand, I don’t want to tell Ukrainian folks how to spend their money with respect to Russia.
The number of users to have voiced their disagreement already exceeds that of the admins.
Seems like it’s kind of a moot point then, no? If even a majority of Ukrainian users are aware of the issues with the list, I would expect most would just leave and the list would fade into obscurity.
We don’t know one way or another. Even if it misleads some people, that needs to be called out. The clearly defined criteria are displayed to many of those who join, yet they’re being put aside to essentially make up evidence and then turn to the really questionable definition of what is Russian that would also cover the likes of Telegram (reportedly used by 75% of Ukrainians), Google and so on, as rightly noted by someone in the group comments. They could have gone with that definition from the start, not baited and switched.
A good definition of witch hunting would be “to publicly label one or more individuals as belonging to an undesired group, with little to no regard to accuracy”. It fits really well what the article claims those users to be doing.
OK, but how much did actual game sales make? I’m willing to bet the proportion of that money this is citing that’s hyper-exploitive microtransactions is pretty damn high.
I have no real interest in a library over owning games (I did pay the ~$30 difference in Black Friday sales to add the library for a year on PS5, but I own my games for the most part), and I think everything being day one gamepass on Xbox weakened their already not great first party ecosystem and encourages microtransactions to an extent.
But the biggest existential threat isn’t “pay $x a year to rent a library”. It’s lootboxes and other microtransactions built to milk everyone they can for every penny they can. It fundamentally alters the design of games when “how can we extract more cash” is part of the process, and it’s not something that just happens after the fact. It also, unlike renting games, actually pushes invasive anticheat, always online requirements, and onerous mod restrictions on games that should be single player, because they can’t milk you for cosmetics if fans can make their own for free.
I never understood the appeal with Xbox Game Pass.
Like you’ll have the game available for you while you pay for it, ok, but what happens when some license disagreement occurs and the game is removed or is removed because of censorship? Why not just pirating that game if buying is less interesting than paying for a subscription.
Not only that what happens when eventually a game is released only via subscription model? How people gonna pirate it? We need to hope that someone will upload the installer on the web? What happens when the game is not install on your machine but instead is the stupid idea of streaming? How pirating works for that type of shit? If people can’t pirate it, how the game is preserved when they are removed from the library like I said before? That’s for me the biggest concern.
In games like CoD, I would bet iron sights are supposed to less good. That way they can push players to leveling up guns to get better attachments. If they happen to sell a gun in the Mtx store that has a really good sight/scope even better.
“in this essay” The article you’ve written is not an essay. It is at its top, an opinion article
And as Vodulas points out, they generally serve as a game mechanic. Either you are recreating set guns from history or it’s lower level gun meant to be a bit crappier.
What even is this articles point? Iron sights are crappy? Yeah, we know, that’s why that was improved upon and they barely exist on IRL guns today
While I agree that’s it’s nice to have the option of a physical copy, I own too many games to want a physical copy of all of them. And if they are ever “taken away” I will not hesitate to get them back. I don’t want to own physical copies of my games, but I do feel entitled to continue owning them even after the store I bought them from no longer exists. I will just download any game I have owned that I want to play again but no longer have access to the paid version. Kind of like how emulation works. I only use it to play games I own that I don’t want to play the physical copy of.
Yeah, I do alot of that too. I own like 500 games or so. Way too many to ever play them all. Though I have played through at least half, so not -that- bad. Hehe.
“in this essay” The article you’ve written is not an essay. It is at its top, an opinion article
And as Vodulas points out, they generally serve as a game mechanic. Either you are recreating set guns from history or it’s lower level gun meant to be a bit crappier.
What even is this articles point? Iron sights are crappy? Yeah, we know, that’s why that was improved upon and they barely exist on IRL guns today
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