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Amazing.

> But as people embrace [the model of subscription video games], they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you'll be able to access them when you feel like. Thats reassuring.

-- The Ubisoft director of subscriptions just the other day.

What is going on at Ubisoft? Is it incompetence? Like, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing?

They do understand how terrible this looks, right?

Right?


God bless and long live and please never betray us Larian Studios. The large success of Baldur's Gate 3 is a large contrast to Ubisoft and underlines the lie that this is necessary.
Larian Studios is a tiny developer. These sorts of things only happen to big developers/publishers who've grown too large and bloated.
It’s been at least a decade since I’ve felt Ubisoft has had their shit together.
No, see, you don't understand. The users needed to keep paying for the service in order for it to stay up. It's their fault that the service ended; Ubisoft is just trying to run a business.

/s

Anyway, I kinda get the point of view even if I dislike it. People really do continue to buy the newest CoD and sport franchise games despite the predatory monetization. Those are the people who are predicted to "embrace" their business model. And Ubisoft may actually keep some services running, though I suspect it will be only after they've sufficiently perfected the ~gambling~ ~Skinner box[0]~ ~money-grabbing~ gaming experience.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

Yeah; maybe that is the point of "Subscription" gaming.

Netflix frequently removes shows from their collection. Maybe they don't want us to pay for - and own - specific games. Maybe the idea is to convince us to pay $10/month for access to Ubisoft's "complete" collection of titles, with new games coming out regularly and old games being retired at a steady rate.

That would surely mean, not paying sticker price for a new game, right Ubisoft? Riiight?

Even with music I'm increasingly missing my old CD library. I miss knowing that I'll always be able to play my favorite songs even if some music lawyers have a fight, or my internet connection drops out. The subscription economy sure seems brittle.

when myst online was going to shut down, the players rallied together to fund the operation. i don't know the details, but from what i know the company listened and set up a donation meter to share the funding status of the server operation. the servers will keep running as long as there is enough funding to keep the people needed for that. if there is additional funding they may spend that on features and bugfixes. they also allow community contributions, and i think the first of those contributions have gone live not to long ago.

in the end i think besides releasing the sources this kind of crowdfunding is the most likely way how an online game can be kept alive.

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