Fair enough, megacorps certainly are amoral in their decisions, which generally leads to evil outcomes.
Have you considered what happens to indie game devs, which aren’t megacorps? They list games on Gamepass to increase exposure. Microsoft takes a cut of the monthly fee and the rest is dispersed to the publishers and then all the way down to the game devs getting a small slice of the monthly fee.
When OP issues a charge back, the game devs aren’t getting paid. Is that fair to indie game devs? They don’t get paid if Microsoft and the various publishers don’t get paid.
Granted, I’m not justifying subscriptions. I personally dislike Games-as-a-Service as I prefer to own my games. But using a paid service, and then charging back against the company? Especially when it’s smaller game devs on that platform, too, hoping to make it big one day.
I don’t think indie devs should eat your ass, or the original commenter’s ass. Frankly, they need money to eat and pay their bills just like us plebs.
Regardless of how you feel about Game Pass, shouldn’t Microsoft (and the game’s publisher and dev) get paid for a game rental service you fully used and benefited from?
With my morals, that’s not something I could do. Definitely doesn’t sit right with me.
Agreed. I guess it’s that value proposition: if you have the time to play, and you play their whole catalog and have a blast, that’s $16.99 well spent.
As for me I love owning my games (where possible due to licensing and DRM), so the value isn’t there. But my spouse and I certainly took advantage of the heavy discounts they offered like the $1 month. I planned it so that I could try as many games as I could during that period and ended up buying them on GOG or Steam if I really loved them.
If their whole catalog is refreshed and they have another heavily discounted offer for 1 month, I’ll pick up a month just to try those games. But I definitely would never be a long term customer, I’d be a parasite loss-leader lol.
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Fucking love the Nintendo 3DS. My favorite console of all time. Comfortable, fantastic games, great range of first party titles that implemented 3-D extremely well, and of course my favorite feature: StreetPass. My god I loved StreetPass. So much fun bringing it anywhere and getting that green flashing light telling you visitors arrived on your 3DS.
I played the hell out of the StreetPass mini games, and also enjoyed some of the implementations in various titles.
A Link Between Worlds probably takes the crown as my favorite game on 3DS. I also installed custom firmware on it, and when I’m not playing SteamDeck, I bust out the 3DS to play old roms. I have so much nostalgia with this portable, my spouse and I would play this all the time when we were dating too. I cherish the 3DS.
I learned about MissingNo back on the playgrounds and read about how to catch him. It said it was risky, but me a kid, tried it anyway thinking what could be the harm.
I caught it! I was scared of losing it, so I hit Save and turned off my Game Boy Color. Booted it up, and my save file was gone. Kid me was crushed, and I chastised myself for being so stupid to risk it despite all the warnings.
My first play through of Pokémon Red was wiped out completely. My first party, my certificate of getting all Pokes (that I desperately wanted to print with a Game Boy Printer my folks never got us), all gone. I spent HOURS trying to find Mew under that damn truck. All of it - gone.
We’re pushing AAAA gaming forward, to grow our fledgling AAAA Gamer-base! We are excited to introduce AAAA-as-a-Service. We think you’re gonna love our AAAAaS.
Stay tuned in 2032, when we launch our connected AAAA-as-a-Service-Subscription! Now you’ll be able to get ground-breaking AAAAaSS gaming at an affordable value. Paid subscribers will get even more checklists, even more overwhelming map icons, and an even larger empty world with no payoff to explore to complete in our games! Do you love going here and pressing the A button? What if you could complete those map markers while not only pressing the A button to end the mission, but instead, having to swipe your credit card while timing the press of the A button? We feel this rewarding challenge will introduce a sense of pride and accomplishment in gamers, and introduce more money in our coffers.
Gamers:
Dude, just create new innovative games with new IPs that aren’t monetized to hell! We’ll buy those! We miss the old Splinter Cell days.
Uibsoft:
MoNeTiZaTiOn, you say??!! Splinter Cell as a Service, you say?! We hear you loud and clear!
The different school in 8 months after Skull and Bones launch:
Our curriculum isn’t doing well. This is not the curriculum we wanted to deliver. Players expect better, yada yada yada, you know the usual school’s apology stuff. We need to lay off 100% of teachers so as to realign, synergize, refocus, retool, and remoney our money-making money curriculum disguised as a “game”. We will do better. We hear you loud and clear (kind of), and we probably learned a lesson of some kind.
User accidentally opens Uplay when trying to double-click Steam
A store banner ad shows ‘Skull and Bones’
User immediately frowns in disgust and tries to spam the X button to quit Uplay
Uplay privacy-invading telemetry captures an image of the user frowning via the webcam, and tracks the movement of the mouse cursor moving across the banner ad of ‘Skull and Bones’
Uplay closes, telemetry is uploaded to Ubisoft’s servers