These days we are expected to be subscribed to tons of shit, including stuff that simply doesn't justify subscriptions. We know it's not a benefit to us, but to the companies that dish them out.
This too! So many genuinely good games at genuinely good prices. This is true even on Switch, where Nintendo is known to put AAA efforts into genres otherwise filled entirely with indie games (not to mention the Nintendo tax)
Just wanted to mention that just like with any other F2P games, there are gacha titles that are fun without paying anything. Not as many as the predatory kind but still.
I think the worst one I’ve seen recently was a note taking app on Android. Developer made a glorified PDF reader you could write on and wanted $10 to use the fucking app annually. I hope that dev ends up homeless and broken.
Jesus fucking Christ, why not charge a subscription for notepad.exe while you're at it.
The worst I've personally seen was a subscription for an Android launcher. No actual cloud services attached and no way to pay outright. They wanted for a subscription for an app that launches other apps.
Ironically I had to buy a subscription to Nvidia to play BG3 on Mac with my friends because they silently delayed the Mac release on release day for 3 months.
I tried running it on Linux, game posting toolkit, and windows via parallels (another subscription, yay), and I could not fix the invisible textures.
They’ve since launched the game fully but it was upsetting they reneged on their release without so much as a word multiple times.
Weil if that isn’t the consequences of your choices.
Seriously I’m sorry for you individually that you were delayed that way - it reminds me of my fellow Linux gamers complaining about incompatibility though - while running Nvidia cards.
Macs are amazing pieces of hardware - and the price one pays is that one has to accept that some devs don’t want to climb the wall into that walled garden.
Weil if that isn’t the consequences of your choices.
So it’s my fault that a studio with a good history, knowledge of the platform and has worked directly with Apple on their last game, with a working public beta running on my machine, decided to delay release without any announcement?
Larian are generally great, BG3 is awesome, the release comms were shit.
Last time I checked working with and for apple platforms is a pain. A release delay after a public test as you described is a strong pointer in that direction - or do you claim that was done out of spite?
Every (your currency) spent on apple supports this holier than you attitude.
We have nothing to worry about because no one wants to play ubisoft games already, I already bought Assassin’s Creed seven times I don’t want to do it again.
Corporations want gamers to want mass subscriptions because they want to rent out their games forever instead of getting only a single payment for their product. And then they find flimsy excuses to push subscriptions for products that do not warrant subscriptions but are mutilated to squeeze some way of adding subscriptions into them. And then the corporations let games without subscriptions fail while pretending that subscription-based services are delivered because there’s demand and not because they don’t want to deliver finished products that don’t generate easy endless trickling revenue streams.
Wow, Larian really breaking the 4th wall in this game.
One of those boss fights where you really regret having to fight him because he actually has a good point.
Probably still evil though.
Honestly I don’t regret paying a subscription for WoW. Maybe it’s different now, but when I played it felt fair. You got reliable servers, frequent updates,somewhat reasonable balance changes, and seasonal events. You didn’t get any loot box bullshit, just playing the game regularly generally got you the rewards with minimal effort.
Sure expansions also cost extra, but that was $30 and about 1 every 2 years.
For a game that ate all your free time, it didn’t hit your wallet that hard.
“We need ideas to find a way to monetize our active playerbase!”
“We already are. They pay us money each month. In turn, we continue to make sure the game is fun and has stuff that keeps them interested.”
“Aha! Carry on.”
I used to hate subscription games with a passion, but seeing what followed, in-app purchases, lootboxes and FOMO-driven battlepasses, turns out subscriptions were the lesser evil.
Unfortunately it works the same way as with StarCitizen, you’re aware it’s a ripoff, but if you want to play this particular type of a game, pay up or leave.
With MMORPGs specifically, here are the options:
Free to Play. Enormous cash shop, often pay to win. Usually these games actually require the most money to play on high level, or waste your time by slowing down the grind and having an optional “premium” sub, which effectively makes it a sub MMO.
Buy to Play. Much less predatory, rarely pay to win, but often with huge cash shop. Get ready to see tons of cool cosmetics that are only available through micro transactions, and the base game often receives scrapes from the table. Still, some of these games like TESO effectively force you to pay a sub by introducing a mechanic (like bottomless reagent bag) that make the game without them miserable on high level.
Pay to play. Most obvious predator, nobody needs this much money to develop a game that already charges almost full price for base game and for all new DLCs, but also usually has the most tame cash shop. WoW for instance has a tiniest (comparing to games like TESO) cash shop with 20-ish mounts and pets nobody cares about.
This creates effectively a pick-your-Devil situation with these games. No good monetization, pick whatever feels least predatory for you
I mean, now that the video streaming industry has shown us how the endgame looks like for subscription models, you'd have to be crazy to want that for the videogame industry.
Whatever short-term gains you can get in convenience or price by buying into their penetration stage are not worth contributing to leading the hobby down that road even an iota.
It’s not even about what we want, but what the stakeholders and decision-makers push for in order to rack in more profits.
The gaming industry was at its highest in terms of fun and variability and innovation when the industry was still figuring out best ways to make mad money, no matter how ethical or morally bankrupt - now they know they can use fear of missing out and predatory tactics to lure people into essentially gambling in a free-to-play online game, or pad out a singleplayer one with mechanics that contribute nothing to the gameplay, but manage to fool game journalists (the ones that weren’t already paid) into praising the game for its deep and branching loops, attracting more investor money or something.
A lot of people accuse us gamers of being a whiny crowd that cares too much and doesn’t like to have fun, but I guess yeah, we do care a little too much and that’s why so many of us try to actively influence the industry to go into a better direction when we vote with our wallets or write reviews or discuss games and practices in ways that can be hopefully seen by the industry’s decision-makers.
Not to say there isn’t just as many (if not more) gamers that don’t care enough and still pour money into games and practices that are ultimately making the industry worse, only to make the stakeholders and CEOs wealthier.
He’s wrong. It seems that people are trending towards game subscriptions like game pass. It makes sense, people won’t finish bg3 once let alone multiple times. They don’t need to own the game outright they can play it on their gsmepass subscription for a month then move on to whatever is in next month’s pass.
Failed to reach target isn’t a sign gamepass is failing. They have 30 million subscribers. In only 4 years they’ve gone from 10 to 30 million and seem to still be growing.
Didn’t imply it was failing, hell they’ve announced they’re making profit off of the service, I’m pointing out that your hypothesis that people are trending toward game subscriptions is weak.
Let’s look at it this way, there are 132 million active steam users and game pass is at 30 million with new game pass subscribers are beginning are slowing down and seeming like it’s reaching a plateau.
Here have another article that goes a little more in depth at the current situation with game pass subscribers.
That article is only speculating that the gamepass user growth has slowed or reached a plateau. Even if we say that gamepass has reached its peak thats 30million people subscribing monthly. Platstation plus is at 50million monthly subscribers. BG3 is estimated to have sold 7m copies so they aren’t exactly in a position to say what the market wants.
Subscribing to gamepass is better value than buying the games outright. The up and coming generations are far less opposed to subscriptions and as they get older and have more money I see them just paying $10-15 a month for an endless supply of games. Maybe they buy a few games here and there the ones they know they will play a lot of.
I obviously havent thought much about it and am just kneejerk reacting to the headline. While I do think the apatite for full priced, fully developed, content rich games is there and BG3 proves to developers that its viable. I also think that subscription bundles and games that release with only core content and use microtransactions or subsciptions to fund developement of more content are easier to make, easier to get investors and overall safer to pull off and that is why I believe the market is trending towards games as a service.
pcgamesn.com
Aktywne