this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Love the immediate contrast between this and the dude from Ubisoft where he claimed that people just need to get used to not owning games. Larian is definitely the way to run a company.
It's already been normalized for music and videos for people to subscribe instead of owning. It may just be a matter of time for video games, or it may be that there are real lasting differences between video games and other types of media.
Of course, there are several sorts of games you can't own already, and many games that are all but inaccessible as abandonware type things, so that process is at least somewhat started.
The indie scene in Video Gaming is FAR stronger than the Indie Scene for at least movies, which I think will cement the ownership vs subscription in a stronger way than music and videos had. Digital ownership does have its worrying traits, but I still think Video Game ownership will stay strong at least as long as Gaben is alive, past that, if Valve DOES nosedive, well the internet'll still internet
It's because of Unreal/Unity/Godot....we have extremely powerful and relatively free/cheap tools that ANYONE can use.
Making movies takes a much higher initial budget
It's more or less the case that all the music streaming services have all the music, so you can pick the one that offers the best balance of price, features, and other things like amount of money they pay out to artists, and then listen to whatever you want. That works pretty well for consumers, and streaming services don't get to dictate what music gets made.
TV and movie streaming services have basically ended up in a situation where everything's on exactly one service, and you need to pick which ones you pay for based on which have the things you most want to watch, even when that means tolerating an interface that barely works or annoys you with ads or trailers for things you'd never watch. This works fairly crappily for consumers, and streaming services pick everything.
Video game subscriptions seem to be going for the latter approach, and so overall, things are probably going to suck. Hopefully, nothing important ends up solely available via subscription, though, and experiencing the sucking remains opt-in.
Not that I want to defend Ubisoft, but I interpreted that statement similarly to this one, just from a different perspective.
Ubisoft wants to do the subscription model but the exec said it's just not viable until gamers are willing to accept it. I didn't get an implication that they would make gamers accept it, I think that's what he was ultimately saying, it won't happen until they do. Though tbf, I didn't read that article, maybe he said more that made the statement less ambiguous. The quote in the title just seemed like a statement of fact rather than a statement of agenda. Ubisoft doesn't have the power to make gamers accept that and acting like they do will hurt their bottom line rather than help it (is how I interpreted that statement).
Stop defending the trash or giving them the benefit of the doubt. Ubisoft is about profit, not making games good, or better or for your enjoyment. They 100% want to push subscription models.
When's the last time a good honest company pulled this kinda horse shit.. https://streamable.com/5np9o5
Companies need to earn trust, and that trust should be removed the minute the try to pull shit like what's in the video link, or other bullshit.