Posted May 13, 2024
It's classic Silicon Valley Business 101. Make a service enticing to use with high level of service and subsidies from the company's pockets, venture capitalists, angel investors, etc. to rapidly gain market share. Then when saturation is achieved, management starts cutting costs, multi-tiering their services, and jack up the prices to maximize profitability.
Streaming, ridesharing, food delivery, social media, Youtube, Spotify, etc. are all displaying signs of decreased levels of services and higher prices. And since the games industry will always follow in the footstep trends of their film/TV entertainment industry older sibling, gaming will follow suit. Then no one won't bother to sell their game standalone because the niche market will be too small to be worth pursuing. Where have I heard that before?
Again, I think the concept of rental is completely fine AS LONG AS the option to still purchase and own games in some measure exists. There is a vested interest by all corporations to erode this from us consumers (make everything digital, make everything a service). Usually the play is outprice the competition by keeping pricing low while expanding your customer base (Uber with ridesharing, Netflix with tv). Once the majority of the competition is dead and you are one of the few players remaining, jack up the price and profit because there arnt any alternatives to compete with you (Uber and Lyft for ridesharing, Netflix/Prime/Disney for livestreaming, Twitch/Youtube for livestreaming and video sharing) The pathetic part is when consumers praise this as "good for the consumer" because its natural for technology to consolidate. Seriously want to tell them to stop drinking the coolaid.
Problem is going digital has already removed one aspect of ownership (the ability to transfer rights so essentially, users cannot resell their old games or old media to someone else). Unlike physical CDs, digital media is also tied to an account so if you anger big Tech for some reason and lose your account or a service decides to close shop, bye bye property. Im not saying GOG is perfect but at least I know I can still keep and play the games I have the offline installers for if the storefront ever goes down unlike Steam.
The problem of course being, that it's too appealing to normies because the price is comparatively low. But that is where it's necessary to talk about it and raise awareness, whenever possible and as you put it, explain why we're basically half way there already.
I do think a big problem is because of normies, publishers are succeeding in eradicating game ownership. Day One updates are becoming standard with publishers refusing to release "Definitive" or "Complete" versions of games with all DLC on the disc (meaning DLC content can be and has been lost as a result). Despite the big news with the Crew closing down, online multiplayer games like Helldrivers 2 are still incredibly popular with no pushback (the issue is with PSN accounts, not the fact that the servers will eventually go down), the industry emphasis in live-service games and trying to make everything live-service now (EA clearly wants to abandon single player, Ubisoft wants always online and is using Star Wars to appeal to normies, Square still focused on NFTs and blockchain). I suppose the only good thing is if there is another video game crash and all these live services burn to the ground, there are still a ton of amazing games that are still accessible and enjoyable in the industry's past from the NES era to PS3/early PS4 era.