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.
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
A quality game for a good price that provides hours of entertainment is a good start.
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.
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
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
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.
Remember kids, if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.
I like this guy!
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
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.
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.
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!
That’s funny. It’s been years since I gave Ubisoft any money and I’m perfectly comfortable.
Subscribe to my nuts Ubisoft
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.
Not really, Ubisoft.
Much like music, movies and TV, you just need to make sure your content is both available for purchase for people who don’t want a subscription and consistently available on a subscription service for those that do.
It’s when you start fucking around and taking them off again because somebody else is offering you more for exclusivity that we get pissed off and just pirate things. You can’t expect Assassin’s Creed Black Flag to still be making you a noticeable amount of money, but a subscriber can rightfully expect it to be on your service.
I’m of the opinion that if a game is on a subscription service, be it PSN or Game Pass, then it should stay there except in very extreme circumstances. A game can take weeks to play through, and it’s only going to take one large game going AWOL at 90% completion for me to sour on the whole idea.
Just downloaded the original Assassin’s Creed from JC141 and I’m having a blast.
It’s crazy how much ubisoft games have fallen.
MMO without the MM
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!
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There are games from EA and Ubisoft that I’m interested in playing, but I’ve had such a poor experience with their games on my Steamdeck that I’d rather just play something else.
Say what you will about Blizzard, but I appreciate them for not shoving an additional launcher inbetween Steam and their games.
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Diablo IV is the only one that I’ve tried – it’s verified for Steamdeck and runs quite well. I’m not sure if that scales well with bigger mobs, but I can confirm early on at least its performance is great.
I dont want to pay a subscription for a bunch of games I’m not interested in. I want to buy and own the specific games I want to play. Fuck off ubisoft
That’s okay, you just need to get comfortable with me pirating your games… Then again that’s Ubisoft, I don’t think I even want to pirate their stuff.
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.
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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.
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?!? 😂
Fuck Ubisoft executives.
