"Philippe Tremblay, director of subscriptions at Ubisoft, explained to GI.biz what needs to happen before subscription services become a more significant slice of the video game business."
One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.
"I still have two boxes of DVDs. I definitely understand the gamers perspective with that. But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you'll be able to access them when you feel like. That's reassuring.
They want games to be like streaming movies and TV shows. He talks a lot about how "reliable" those streaming services are, and thus people felt comfortable ditching their DVD and Blu-ray collections. But the funny part is that the lack of reliability in those spheres is leading to a huge increase in piracy. So how comfortable are they really not owning their media? Partly I think it's that once people got comfortable ditching those collections and relying on streaming, they were able to squeeze customers and it started getting worse. I feel like this happens with everything as the growth curve reaches its limit.
No one knows where to find stuff, ads are increasing even for paid subscriptions, you have to go to multiple services to finish one show, and sometimes they're removed and nowhere to be found (not even moved to another streaming service or physical media), prices are increasing faster and faster, work is being canceled after the artists and creators have put in their effort but before it's released, and Google is pulling all that shit with ad-blockers and YouTube. Right now game subscriptions seem great, but I'm sure they will be no different once they reach maturity in this cycle.
Despite capitalism being the best system for protection of private property according to its advocates, I'm fairly sure our oligarchs would prefer if everything worked on a rentier model and we owned nothing (and everything we do own, we are in debt for).
Oh nah. If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't steaing. Fuck out of here, Philippe.
Their is no physical way to own the product anymore is the biggest history lesson here. They're essentially selling a promise that can be broken for whatever reason they find.
Lol they should get comfortable with me pirating all their stuff or literally not consuming anything that they're remotely involved.
You gotta love how every single communism trope actually becomes realized under capitalism sooner or later. Turns out it's the capitalists who want to take away all your personal property and turn everything into a rental. You don't own your media, your books, or your computer. Everything, is an internet connected subscription nowadays. As soon as you stop paying, or the company decides to cut service you're shit out of luck.
we're already seeing it with stuff like game pass, which is just paying a monthly fee to rent games. not to sound paranoid but I swear the amount of times I've seen the phrase "game pass is the best value in gaming" on social media like reddit/twitter/etc. makes me think they've been astroturfing this shit hard and it's frustrating to see people fall for it.
If I can't pay money and own the game then I'll just steal it or do something else with my time
I don't understand how people don't see this. Yes, game pass is a great value right now, but so was Netflix in the beginning. How do people not see this pattern happening again? Humans are supposed to be great at pattern recognition!
Ubisoft always comes out hard with the anti-consumer takes and their games aren't even good. They weren't particularly good in the 2000s either, they got some hype in the 2010s with Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six, but now they're back to making mediocre games and... nobody takes you seriously Ubi.
But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue
Unless it will stop to continue, as many many times previously, and iirc Ubisoft is the main culprit doing that.
Hell the old games on physical DVD (or even floppy discs) can be fucked up too by relying on defunct installation software, poor OS compatibility or even hardware (like many games on GoG are functionally unplayable).
