Why is gaming going toward online models?

Money

In one word "ker-ching!" There may be some concerns over piracy (though that hasn't stopped them releasing their games normally), but it's really down to all wanting to be the next hyper-monetized Fortnite and chasing those "whales"...

How much does an AAA cost to make? $50m? $75m? Hopefully they'll make that back, maybe even double or triple over a decade. Meanwhile, Fortnite has made $2-5bn for Epic. Each year. And the bulk of it is the "Casual Audience (tm)" dressing up their digital dollies. That or pay2win cr*p from "booster packs" & lootboxes in FPS's to buying imaginary "coins" to unlock fake timers in mobile games. I'm just glad I grew up back in the 90's and have amassed 30 years worth of games that are actually pleasant to play, before the online gaming industry completely fell into the gutter...

Because it allows maximization of revenue and profit which MS does with their Game Pass. They just take the system of client bound gaming to another level. On the one hand they offer their games for consoles and PC, if you buy into their pass you will be able to play for a time, until MS decides to update the catalogue and remove it. Then you are forced to buy the game if you wish to get back to that game. So they earn on subscriptions, make profit on the games no matter how much development may cost, sales of games and selling your data to make even more money. Others might follow in their footsteps before long which turns the whole gaming business into a rental model. All it takes to prevent piracy, the second-hand market is dead anyways, which the younger generation doesn't really care about. They will consume and throw money at those shops and companies because that's all they seem to know.

Depends. Are we talking services like Games Pass?

Games as service like Apex etc?

Client-based storefronts?


Or games in general?

Because a lot of players enjoy playing online. That's why gaming companies are trying to offer lots of post-launch online content to keep the revenue flow going while the game is popuar.

Indeed:-

2001 - "Like Match 3 games? Become our customer and buy Bejeweled outright for $5. All gameplay included, works offline."

2021 - "Like Match 3 games? Be a consumer and rack up $84 in micro-transactions over 5 years for mobile Candy-Crush Saga. Online only due to In-App Purchases."

^ The number of kids who've grown up with the latter knowing nothing else is painful, and unsurprisingly PC gaming is going full steam ahead with copying as much of the same trashy monetization as possible for same target audience...

Whilst I am sure there will be responses such as, it’s users who want it, and it’s better for the user (and to some degree that might even be the case), it’s because first the user does not own anything (I.e perfect drm) and secondly they can market the data scrapped, collected, and in game. It’s win win for publishers and will become the only way to access content (film, tv, games, anything digital) very soon.

& Control

I think it's all about finances. The companies that develop games decided that it's better to get money from users every day or every month than just once for buying a game in the first place. For example the game Ingress Prime, an online multiplayer augmented reality game, this game is in great demand due to the fact that it has augmented reality. The company understands that they just can't miss the chance to earn on the users and decides to open the ingress items store through which the user will pay daily for different services or artifacts. Accordingly, the capitalization of the company grows and everyone associated with the company earns money.

Because you will own nothing and be happy.

https://www.un.org/humansecurity/agenda-2030/

Some degree? I'd call it a very large degree. Companies can pray for all the Bentleys and Beverly Hills houses in the world; if "many" of their (potential) customers/consumers/users don't agree with their products/methods, it's all moot.

GOG has been a paradox from the beginning: more customers leads to more DRM-free games, but (and thus) also to more people (in total) not caring about DRM-free.

I think you are correct. Many online models don't require much AI development, the servers act as DRM, and data scraping is built-in.

Although I left my original question somewhat ambiguous, I have always been fascinated by how much data can be scraped out of play sessions... and who the ultimate buyers of that data tend to be. I imagine an entity could piece together multiple game data sets to stitch a basic psych profile. I'm sure consoles have done this for years.

With DRM-free being the exact opposite, GOG certainly developed Galaxy to try and get into the "real" business -- data.