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. ;)
These people are like an adversarial neural network being trained to find the most efficient ways to piss of their own customer base.
I think it’s important to note that the entertainment landscape as a whole has been changing, and those changes have mixed with the shitty investor culture that already existed to create a terrible set of incentives that are wildly misaligned with consumer sentiment. I say this because I think that if we want things to change, we need to look at root causes.
The entertainment industry is feeling very threatened. It’s hard to make money. That’s a reality. And all the solutions to the problem are fucked up attempts to find ways to get players to give more money for things they don’t want.
I think we need a better patronage model.
A quality game for a good price that provides hours of entertainment is a good start.
I don’t find it hard to believe that the cost of making AAA games no longer matches the standard game price nowadays, because the typical $60 price hasn’t changed in at least 20 years. Publishers have used a lot of alternatives to recoup that like launch day DLC, deluxe editions, and microtransactions.
I honestly don’t mind deluxe editions with cosmetics for that reason, if someone wants to pay $100 for some extra outfits that’s probably the ideal scenario for everyone.
But I agree that Ubisoft’s insane DRM practices and subscriptions aren’t the right solution to that problem.
Well then maybe they should make less expensive games even if I think they’re still making a lot of money
These people are like an adversarial neural network being trained to find the most efficient ways to piss of their own customer base.
I think we forget how removed these people are from reality.
What’s funny is that they’re not detached from the gaming industry. The average person, if you asked them “Do you think players like live service games?” they’d say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
These people have a lot of really nuanced, heavily informed opinions on the history, present, and future of gaming. They’re just all highly unpopular opinions outside of people who demand to get a check in the mail immediately if not sooner because they just bought a share in a company they know little or nothing about.
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.
There’s the thing… Data is infinite. Piracy isn’t great - it does nothing to support creators - but existing structures siphon off most of the money before it ever gets to them anyways. We don’t have a working system.
Donations rarely can support a single person these days, and frankly it seems to require being a public social media figure of some kind… And that’s a skill unrelated to art or building things
I don’t see an answer aside from ubi - some of us live to create things, and we’ll do it whether we’re paid or not, whether we even release it or not. Take away the unnecessary coercion to make what other people want to survive, and you remove the stress from all of us. There’s no longer this requirement to monetize everything - we’ll make weird and beautiful things that makes everyone’s life better
Writing this, I had this idea for gaming in particular… What if you had a service where you paid whatever the creator demanded for a game (as we do now), but then your monthly spending was distributed based on your play time? Realistically, only steam or an app store could do something like this, but it seems like an interesting way to incentivize quality and lowering prices
Gamers says CEOs need to get comfortable not having a subscription model for their sales to take off.
We’re lucky that Ubisoft doesn’t make any good games.
R* and T2 rubbing their hands…
Actually I think Ubisoft unfortunately has some bangers in its back catalog.
Steep is by far and away the best backcountry skiing/snowboarding simulator (shreddders is better in the mechanics of snowboarding, but steep is better at being a giant winter playground).
Ghost Recon Wildlands looks awesome especially with the first person mod (though I would probably find the politics of the game insufferable)
Both these games are extremely detailed games, with massive open worlds and are generally fairly critically acclaimed at least at this point (not sure about release). These games sell for chump change now though. Steep regularly goes for $3 which is insane when you think about the fact that there isn’t a Steep 2 nor really any rivals other than Shredders (Riders Republic just isn’t focused on winter sports). Ghost Recon Wildlands sells for $7 which I guess is fair but still seems like underselling the game.
My point is that Ubisoft being attached to games actually reduces their value by quite a bit. If Steep had been made by an indie studio it would still be selling at $10 or more, it is a stunningly big game and nothing else comes close.
Oh yeah and Riders Republic, the game Ubisoft is/was trying to draw in a bunch of more casual players into a unified multiplayer sports game, has apparently really fun gameplay (though arcade-y for sure) but has a 45 MINUTE NON-OPTIONAL TUTORIAL YOU CAN’T SKIP. For a casual, multiplayer open world sports game….
It is hilarious how much value Ubisoft destroys in just being associated with products. They are the opposite of a business, they take valuable things and destroy their value to consumers. Some of the games they make could easily sell for premium prices way into the future but Ubisoft undermines the value of their games so much that they end up trying to sell these massive games, with huge open worlds carefully made through countless hours for chump change because everybody hates Ubisoft.
edit I forgot about Anno 1800, a momentously big city building game that is extremely critically acclaimed already being sold on sale for $12, that shit is bonkers. Any other dev and that game would never have to come below $20 until there was a sequel.
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.
honestly, i have plenty of games. im good if they stop now.
im ok with this game of chicken
Skyrim 4 Life
That doesn’t count. They re-release it for every console anyway…
I still have a lot of Kaizo levels to beat.
All of them. I suck.
Indie gaming is only getting better and better - unity self-immolating has slowed the tide a bit, but random individuals now have access to tools on par with professionals
Plus AAA games are compulsively running with lower and lower staff, putting more and more effort into micro transaction content, and pushing the game less and less finished. It makes indie games and standout hits feel better by contrast
Why quit gaming? Enjoy it for free on the mighty sea!
As long as they get comfortable with the idea of if buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.
Hehehe, this is my quote.
I’m the YouTube commenter in this screenshot: https://lemmy.world/post/1098344
Sounds logical but governments still seem to care to protect corporate IP while they don’t give a single fuck about customer ownership rights.
yeah I know what Im saying is a pipe dream because Im not my government’s actual constituency but a man can dream.
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.
We even have the current streaming services as examples, that’s why Ubisoft are greedy for getting people to subscribe.
Game streaming services will eventually be:
- Fragmented: You will need to have multiple subscriptions to play the games you want.
- Games will disappear without notice (We already see this on app-stores).
- Prices will be jacked up at a whim, and premium tier plans will be added.
- And as the pièce de résistance: Full of ads.
THIS. This right here is the problem.
If Ubisoft wants consumers to give them a chance, they should call up Netflix and Disney and Hulu and politely ask them to not demonstrate what the fuck happens if players put trust in the platforms that we’re assured will be reliable and consistent places to store games for years and years to come.
The problem really isn’t streaming games and cloud storage as a concept. The problem is that the people trying to implement it have demonstrated over and over and over how both untrustworthy and incompetent they are. That’s it. If the platforms had credibility and accountability, this probably wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal.
>Director of Subscriptions
“Ubisoft director of paying them money every month says gamers should pay them money every month”
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.
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.
Thing is that it has been shown that the cost doesn’t add up. Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are both games you only pay the cost of the box, no on going subscriptions and they are able to continue running the servers and infrastructure just fine. 15$/mo just doesn’t make sense.
It made sense in 2006 when the technology was new and the concept was novel, in 2023 where server upkeep costs are astronomically low if present at all and cloud technology is the norm, the only thing justifying it is “We’ve been doing it this way for years”
Honestly the only reason why consoles have subscription fees for online services is because Xbox Live Gold proved that people were dumb enough to full for this bullshit, so Sony and Nintendo just stooped down to Microsoft’s level for the free payday.
WoW is even worse than that.
When the player base on your server dies and there are no raiding guilds left there it costs like $20 to move your character. Per character.
It’s been years since I’ve played but that’s one of the reasons I stopped.
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.
Holy shit are you me?
Damn… You’re also commenting on a thread about shit going on in Georgia and separately about DRSing GME?
Maybe?!? 😂
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.
It’s not a fad, it’s just the tail-end of unregulated capitalism. They will sacrifice everything anybody cares about to squeeze just a little bit more profit out of everything. Blood from a stone…
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.
It seems they’ve explained exactly why they won’t (not can’t, but won’t) release the server code: They need you to not own your games in order to sell you subscriptions.
Having access to the source so you can maintain a thing is a much more profound kind of ownership than simply having access to a copy. If they let you have that, you might get ideas in your head about not giving them money forever, and they can’t have that.
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.
Lol. I started pirating again because of this shit. We don’t have to get used to anything. Give us the product we want or we will get it anyway but without the part where you get paid.
Honestly I love it. I don’t typically rewatch things often enough to justify the price they charge to purchase a copy, and I have a shitload of stuff at my fingertips with streaming services.
With music it’s a little different by because I do re-listen a lot, but streaming lets me just listen to music I might like instead of relying on reviews to guess what might be worth buying. I listen to way more different things than I would if I had to buy it all.
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.
Solution for greedy company
Money is all they can understand! To the high seas!
ubisoft should get comfortable with people just not buying their crap at all.
I’d rather remain comfortable not buying games from Ubisoft and EA.
I refuse to waste a single dollar on every game from both companies, since we were all bent over and continue to get bent over because they just don’t care about anything but making more money.
A good example from Ubisoft is the handling of the Driver series. They kept on releasing the games in the series in a near unplayable state before when most people had dial up.
A good example with EA was the failed DRM with Spore. They only let you install the game 3 times, which glitched out to the point where people had to turn to piracy (warez and crackz) to play a game they paid for.
We vote with every dollar spent, which gives me hope when people rally around good companies that do the right thing.
