Let's talk about subscription gaming

[almoststew1990]

I read on PC Gamer that Anthem had joined EA Origin Access and thought that the article was the epitome of what I don't like about modern gaming: Here's a game that's designed to churn money as a service for a large publisher ahead of actually being fun, with absolute contempt for gamers, which you can now pay £4 a month to play, but never own, with the potential for additional content coming, which usually isn't free so you'll need to buy that along with your subscription, but you can also play a whole bunch of other games, but not from another publisher; you'll need another £4 a month for that, with another whole loads of strings attached.

However I then did some maths:

Buying individual games:
I have bought 310 games over the last 10 years on Steam, Origin etc. I rarely buy full price, more like £15. Let's say all my games cost £20 to cover the new occasional new release but also the Steam sale splurges. Over 10 years I have spent £6,200 on games (bloody hell).

For the subscription option:
£20 a year for Origin The Basic One
£15 a month(!) for Uplay Whatever
£4 a month for Xbox Game Pass
Say 2 games at £20 each that I want to play that aren't on the lists.

This comes to £288 a year; If we say £300 a year to cover price increases at some point over that 10 years, it comes out to £3,000 for 10 years gaming.

Subscription gaming costs £48% of the cost of buying individual games. What does the extra £3,200 get you?

Buying:

• I can not spend a penny once the 10 years are up and I still have 310 games to play any time I want, forever...
• ...But Steam will, one day, turn off and access might be lost to your 310 games. Low-ish Risk.
• The game list is fixed and I can go back and play friggin Alpha Protocol 8 years after launch if I want and it is still in my library.

Subscription:

• This cost doesn't cover all of the games I might want to buy. I don't really know how much coverage could be achieved, but it is unlikely I would be able to go subscription only. Considering I don't really buy new releases it might be I only achieve 60% of the 310 games. I would need to spend say £10 each (on the basis the games not on the lists would be older, obscure games) so £124 extra, over 10 years...
• e.g. Out of the 136 Game Pass I want to play 26; Origin Access 22 (different games);
• I would however definitely have access to a much, much wider range of games, say 2000, but will only want to play the 310 of them that I would have bought outright. However, I might find an extra 50 that I like that I wouldn't have tried if I was buying them outright. There is Added Value here.
• After 10 years I lose access to my games unless I keep spending money. The service might stop if EA go bust, or it could migrates to the Xbox Two/720/Dreamcast 2. Higher Risk compared to Steam going dark. I would still have the 40% I bought though...
• Games could disappear off the list. I notice Battlefield 1 has quietly disappeared off the Origin Basic list? Also e.g. Mafia 1, San Andreas disappearing and reappearing without the soundtrack or songs removed).

There are definitely some quite significant drawbacks to subscription gaming but I am not sure that overcoming them is worth effectively paying double to play games. Especially as a mix of subscription and outright buying would be unavoidable and seems to not affect the costs much.

I really wanted to hate subscription gaming; I like the idea of owning things, but I'm not sure I like it enough to pay double. It might be different if I was guaranteed that I could keep my bought games forever, i.e. physical media. But you don't have that with digital, DRM-based purchases.

I should say I recently got EA Basic (which was the same price for a year as BF V, the game I wanted to play) and Microsoft Game Pass (my friend convinced me to get it) and there are some cool games I want to try like but it is more of a side-gaming thing rather than how I feel I should buy my main games. If I was just starting out with no collection, I might consider subscription gaming. But I have amassed quite a large library over the years.

But then why are game companies pushing it if costs significantly less money? Do twice the number of people really buy subscription services to make up for the half the cost for the consumer? I suppose it takes the risk of "getting a sale" as they're guaranteed income for a month / year which can be allocated to games for the service (like Netflix)...

 

[Malevolence]

Here's a game that's designed to churn money as a service for a large publisher ahead of actually being fun

I have the vast majority of in-game cosmetics in Anthem (I could have them all, but don't need them as I don't fly the Interceptor) yet I haven't given EA a penny, and more to the point I'm having fun playing the game. So, care to clarify your opening statement?

 

[almoststew1990]

I have the vast majority of in-game cosmetics in Anthem (I could have them all, but don't need them as I don't fly the Interceptor) yet I haven't given EA a penny, and more to the point I'm having fun playing the game. So, care to clarify your opening statement?

That opinion is not necessary universal though is it. I recall reviewers highlighted the game had many annoyances (which may have since been addressed, which is part of my point) that stopped the game being fun, and reflected that the game was being made by a developer who usually made single player experiences. How have you not given EA a penny?

And don't ignore the context - it was a comment on "Games as a Service" in general, examplified by Anthem by me saying epitome of what I don't like about modern gaming. Games like NBK, Forza 7, the later Need for Speed games with card and chance based loot systems.

 

[wesimmo]

I'll be honest, how many of those 310 games would you realistically play after that period? Very few probably?

In which case just use some of your savings to buy them, they'll be cheap by then!

I've had a blast playing SSX3 on the XBone which I owned at some point, but for the cost of a round with a mate I re-bought it and have got hours of play out of it with my daughter.

 

[almoststew1990]

I'll be honest, how many of those 310 games would you realistically play after that period? Very few probably?

In which case just use some of your savings to buy them, they'll be cheap by then!

I've had a blast playing SSX3 on the XBone which I owned at some point, but for the cost of a round with a mate I re-bought it and have got hours of play out of it with my daughter.

The thing is I will probably play all of them at least one more time, over a 10 year period. If a game gets dropped from the service after 2 years, I'll need to buy it again sooner. But I also say in my post it still works out cheaper to subscribe and then buy the missing games cheaply, so yeah I agree!

 

[wesimmo]

The thing is I will probably play all of them at least one more time, over a 10 year period. If a game gets dropped from the service after 2 years, I'll need to buy it again sooner. But I also say in my post it still works out cheaper to subscribe and then buy the missing games cheaply, so yeah I agree!

One thing about not having had time to game for a while but my daughter now being 9, there's a huge back catalogue of great games to play for next to nothing.

These subscription services are great if I wanted to start playing a lot again, especially if they include a lot of 'back catalogue' games.

 

[MegaPinches]

I've never liked subs to anything, I regularly mock people for having 5 streaming service subs and all that but some of these gaming ones are pretty decent and saved me loads of time and cash. Spend 60quid on BF5?, nah used some sub deal paid 5quid of something, played it 2 weeks realised it was pants and ditched it before my month was up. £69.99 on gears 5? how about 2quid 2 month sub, played 3 days not interested completely overrated and you can't jump, next.

I remember being pumped for forza horizon 4 was definately going to buy it, think paid quid or something for xbox pass offer, played it to death realised wasting my time getting told i'm the worlds greatest driver for coming 10th and uninstalled it after a week. With subs you can be truely critical without deluding yourself with buyers bias, I quite like them.

Uplay+ is free this month BTW with anno 1800 now

 

[Haggisman]

I think it very much depends on how many games you buy, 310 games over 10 years is an average of 2.5/month, which seems quite high to me?

For me, I've spent significantly less than that, steam calc shows £900 - £3300 for 324 games over 14 years, (but it's potentially less than that as quite a few are from humble bundles), I rarely pay more than £10 for a game unless it's something special, so that seems about right. That's less than £230/year, which is almost just the uplay one on its own, so for me at least, it doesn't really make sense.

 

[almoststew1990]

I think it very much depends on how many games you buy, 310 games over 10 years is an average of 2.5/month, which seems quite high to me?

For me, I've spent significantly less than that, steam calc shows £900 - £3300 for 324 games over 14 years, (but it's potentially less than that as quite a few are from humble bundles), I rarely pay more than £10 for a game unless it's something special, so that seems about right. That's less than £230/year, which is almost just the uplay one on its own, so for me at least, it doesn't really make sense.

I did think about using Steam Calc but it came out with £880 to £2939 with an average price of £11.57 per game but I thought that was based on current prices. It just seemed low to me, I though an average of £20 was reasonable

 

[bayo000]

The thing is I will probably play all of them at least one more time, over a 10 year period. If a game gets dropped from the service after 2 years, I'll need to buy it again sooner. But I also say in my post it still works out cheaper to subscribe and then buy the missing games cheaply, so yeah I agree!

Did you really play all your 310 games at least twice in last 10 years? I have 218 games in my library and maybe replayed 4 or 5 of them and vast majority of them I haven't even finished.

 

[Haggisman]

I guess it depends on the kind of games you play as well, if it's mostly single player story driven games with shortish (e.g. <10hr) campaigns, then I guess 2-3 of those a month is easily doable, whereas longer games, e.g. Sandbox or big RPGs, you get a lot more hours out of them and so the £30-40 spent on one will last you a couple of months instead of a few days.

 

[Unseul]

How long would it be before a game is dropped? And you want to replay it? Most games by then would likely only be a few pounds on sale etc.

 

[dragonslayer]

You also missed the dlc that you'd have to buy which would be 30-40 extra ( unless I missed it) plus if you don't get much time to game one month you have potentially lost money on every subscription you've subbed to

 

[Radox-0]

Personally I think these are fantastic and adding more options into the mix is always a good thing. I can see plenty of single player games which I will likely play upon release, but not touch too much after, so getting them on a pass as part of a release works out well and just stopping the pass if I see nothing interesting.

As to why the companies are pushing these pass's, well to be honest the Uplay one is kind of more expensive off the bat, but for the other's can easily envisage them noticing the pass price up by a 1 or 2 pounds after a while and people will still readily accept the increase for most the part (like Netflix).

I also suspect, crunching the numbers, the likely larger user base of people who play the game vs those only buying full price means additional content not on the pass's like cosmetic and DLC may get more sales so make up some of the revenue compared to a smaller user base buying the game at full price. Add to the fact the money for the pass's goes straight to the company rather then in some cases other storefronts selling them like Steam taking a cut or people buying off CD keys etc.

 

[Haggisman]

i can see plenty of single player games which I will likely play upon release, but not touch too much after, so getting them on a pass as part of a release works out well and just stopping the pass if I see nothing interesting.

Do they actually put new releases on? I have to confess I haven't looked at any of them for a while, but I was always under the impression they were generally games that had been out for 6 months +

 

[Rofflay]

Everyone loves a subscriber slave, It will be the future of gaming whole catalogues and dlcs for subscribers only. And i think Youtube are going to do this as well first comes the ads then it will be oh we had to stop hosting music because ya know it was free but if you subscribe we can pay the artists based on views or something and you get all the Youtube features from Premium too.


These people are waiting for an acceptable time i guess but you need a compelling catalogue. Blizzard could probably get away with this i have often thought about would people pay £11 a month for the entire catalogue of Blizzard games? You would have Wow retail, Wow classic and Overwatch etc. They probably require another AAA MP shooter to be fair.

 

[Radox-0]

Do they actually put new releases on? I have to confess I haven't looked at any of them for a while, but I was always under the impression they were generally games that had been out for 6 months +

Yes, some of these places are listing brand new / recently released games and some AAA titles not yet out.

On Ubisoft's pass for example, get Ghost Recon Breakpoint which goes for £50 and not yet out. Anno 1800 released few months back goes for £50 still on the pass, not to mention literally every other Ubi game they have.

On the MS pass for example, get gears of war 5 released few days back, Metro Exodus a new title and one I am looking forward too, Outerworld which is out next month. I paid £3.99 for 3 months. After that its £3.99 a month, So I will pay around £40 for the entire year. Those three games listed there alone go go for nearly triple that price (granted at current prices) and I expect I will play them within a year no problem, not to mention all the other games and so on.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

I can see this making sense for younger gamers which complete many games in a year.

For old gits like myself who only complete 2-3 games in a year, I think buying outright (even though you never own them via Steam etc) is the way to go.

 

[pestt]

Only games I have ever played more than once out of over 150 hundred is 2 (Deus Ex HR and MD) so makes sense to just rent them for me. Obviously not counting multiplayer.
It's been happening with other forms of consumer stuff for a while, how many people actually buy a phone now? And most new cars are sold on PCP contract hire agreements and even part own/rent houses are on the up (mainly due to being stupidly expensive though tbh). Throwaway society?

 

[aoaaron]

I really like it.

I don't personally do it but I think anyone who has the EA gaming pass (basic), Humble Monthly and the MS Game pass (basic) is going to get tremendous value for their money. Then just wait for the usual Steam/GMG sales and you're laughing.