Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get ‘Comfortable’ Not Owning Their Games for Subscriptions to Take Off::An executive at Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft has said gamers will need to get “comfortable” not owning their games before video game subscriptions truly take off.
I’m comfortable not owning Ubisoft games. ;)
Ever since they started the Epic/Uplay exclusivity stuff, it’s made it easier than ever to avoid buying their games.
If it’s not on Steam it doesn’t exist
possessing a copy of them, sure. ownership is a legal construct that doesn’t really matter that much to me.
If buying something doesn’t mean you own it, then pirating something doesn’t mean you stole it! As long as there is a subscription fee, take the justifiable torrent option to choose to pay ZERO. The only way is not to pay!
Legally speaking, piracy is not theft. It’s copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement with NO monetary loss—the very definition of a victimless crime.
Remember kids, if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.
I like this guy!
And if corporations decide they can charge a fee when we DON’T play, then we can decide to NOT pay when we play! The only way to make them feel their greed is to wave the ol’ Jolly Roger!
I’ve seen this saying going around and while I do like it, something about it bugs me. These corpos want to treat everything as a service. If you acquire content from a service via illegal means you are indeed still stealing, no?
You’re either selling a service or a product, you don’t get to lay claim to both, and you don’t get to walk with peoples money by using linguistic tricks
What content are you acquiring from their service if you get it somewhere else? If what they’re selling is service, not content, then getting the content elsewhere doesn’t affect them, right?
I just want to start off by saying Arrrr, I’m on your side.
But I just don’t follow the logic. Netflix is selling both service and content. When people pay for Netflix… yes they pay for infrastructure related to streaming content. They also pay toward the cost of producing original content and acquiring licenses.
No: I didn’t take it from them since they never owned my copy. The Supreme Court said piracy isn’t stealing. The corporations lose NOTHING through piracy.
Nope. We refuse. But fuck you for asking.
I don’t know. A lot of people seem willing to pay for battle passes, which is already halfway there.
It was good to see a little bit of resistance this year and particularly the success of BG3, but I’m concerned that the overall trend is negative. Any publisher beholden to investors will be under strong pressure to monetize, monetize, monetize.
All I can do is not give them money, but someone else probably will.
Yeah, people in this thread are saying this is absurd and nobody will go along with it, like have they met gamers from outside Lemmy?
In the wider world, people think I’m insane for not loving Microsoft’s game subscription service. Even here and on Reddit I’ve received flak for not wanting games as a subscription service. It’s weird.
Game subscriptions will happen. The wider market, unfortunately, loves the idea of paying a monthly fee to play games.
I’d rather quit gaming. Fuck Ubisoft and their predatory practices.
Why quit gaming? Enjoy it for free on the mighty sea!
I dunno man, I get a pretty solid sense of pride and accomplishment after pirating a thing, so I think I’ll stick with that.
The hard work of crackers is admirable, they are the unsung heroes! Take from the rich and give to the poor!
Every time I pirate a ubisoft game I regret it, I never play more than maybe an hour with them and then I have to seed them to get > 1.0 ratio (private site rules). So I just stopped pirating them lol.
Honestly had slight hopes for Avatar because the art team really outdid themselves, but I knew in the back of my head that the actual game would be shit.
Maybe I am just an old nostalgic fart but I have games that I own that are over 30 years old that I still have access to and regularly play and that’s how I like it.
I personally don’t at all see any benefit to the consumer that subscription based gaming provides. Arguably you can access more games for less money, but if video streaming is anything to go by (increased prices, less content across more and more services, ads creeping back in etc), that value proposition won’t last long.
The benefits are not meant for the consumer.
The fact that some people are ok with, “subscriptions taking off” in this very post is troubling.
The future, where you own nothing, pay a subscription for everything.
The only games I’m comfortable with having a subscription. Is a game like WoW where they are supporting a large server farm/infrastructure for the game.
I could say that about Destiny 2 but I still feel dirty about giving any sort of money to Bungie
I’ll be perfectly honest.
I love and strongly prefer physical media games.
However, I also love Game Pass at least as a concept.
I’ve had it for several years now thanks to Live Gold conversion and VPN…
That said, regardless how much “value” it may provide, I will NEVER pay full price for it… I just don’t feel like it’s worth the price they’re asking to me personally.
It’s great for trying out the occasional game I’d never have bought or played otherwise though… And sometimes it introduces me to games that I feel like are worth buying that I hadn’t heard of anywhere else.
For example, I bought Aragami 2 because I tried it on Game Pass and enjoyed it but I wasn’t finished with it yet when rumors appeared that it was leaving the service.
I also played and thoroughly enjoyed Cocoon and High on Life thanks to Game Pass and feel like they’re both worth buying at the right price.
I personally don’t enjoy watching YouTubers and I rarely read reviews so I wouldn’t have known much about most of those if I didn’t have the chance to try them.
It’s almost like it’s replaced the demos that used to be so common but we can play the whole game now if we want.
Editing to add:
Also, fuck this Ubisoft exec… Subscription models should NEVER become the default way that we are expected to “consume” games (or any other entertainment really for that matter) and it’s arrogant as hell for this prick to presume that we’ll all just be okay with it.
>Director of Subscriptions
“Ubisoft director of paying them money every month says gamers should pay them money every month”
i’m so excited for the fucking subscription fad to die. people have gotta get sick of it at some point right? what could be enticing enough to replace it for both corps and users?
It won’t. Normies just see their franchise like Assasins or any Tom Clancy’s and they buy. It does not matter to them what bullshit payment model it is. Look at Fifa games for example. Litearaly the same game year after year with the tiniest adjustments possible but they still break a sales record on a almost yearly basis.
Hopefully, streaming services fail and gaming companies see the writing on the wall. If not, buckle up for bullshit.
Screw these guys.
Why can’t they release the server code or whatever so the community can keep playing the games. I’ve got a bunch of games that I can no longer play because there’s no servers. There was a community attempt at putting something together, they were working from scratch, but it seems to have failed.
The devs won’t support it, but they won’t let anyone play with the abandonware either. Took their ball and went home.
I like how in this article the greedy cunt is talking about consumers just getting used to the idea of not owning the game being okay because they’ll keep their progress and can come back to their game any time. Like we haven’t seen media disappear off streaming services all the time. Like nobody has ever fallen on hard times and had to cut ongoing costs. Fuck off.
Literally the debate is happening because games and media have vanished… including Ubisoft games!
Solution for greedy company
Money is all they can understand! To the high seas!
Counterpoint: I dont fucking want subscription services to take off. I want to pay for the game I’m gonna play and only the game I’m gonna play.
Their reasoning is that consumers have gotten used to it in other media forms like music and video.
- It doesn’t make it right.
- The hell we have.
Most people have gotten used to it with music, so far anyway. As long as most of what they want to listen to is available through a single service, and the price isn’t prohibitive, most people I’ve talked to seem to be okay with streaming music.
Streaming video is a fucking dumpster fire that no one wants. All the streaming services fought to get the biggest catalog for the cheapest price than folded over on themselves like somebody turning the switch off on a flailing tube man. Now the prices are all cable level and the catalogs are all crap.
There was an old quest communications commercial back in the day. Guy rolled up in a old car to a motel in the middle of nowhere. Ask the guy at the desk where they had on TV, He responded back everything ever made. That’s what I’m expecting to see from streaming video now. It’s all sitting around, it’s all available. For the price of cable we should be able to afford everything over 6 months old that was ever made.
Gamer here. Go fuck yourself Ubisoft. You can quote me on that.
If a service isn’t doing me any kind of good, I don’t pay. This is just showing piracy will win, cause it’s a service issue not a pricing issue.
But no money isn’t lost revenue, because you weren’t getting my money anyway.
