On Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:57:06 -0600, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, rms
wrote:
It's gonna take a steeper discount than $4 off the old MSRP to get me to >>bite.
Subscription services can help the price-conscious on single-player
games, for sure: Pay $10-15 for a month sub, plenty of time to finish one of >these AAA games on Gamepass/EAPlus/UbiSoft etc
Yeah, I consider that a complete capitulation to "you don't own your
games," so I still buy them.
But it is the way everything is headed. I buy Microsoft Office through an Office 365 subscription rather than purchasing a boxed set like I used
to. I also pay a subscription for Photoshop. It isn't a horrible bargain
for productivity software.
Games are not the same as those products, though. I consider games to be cultural and artistic and therefore worthy of my cultural heritage.
Worthy of preservation as well. So going lowest common denominator with a subscription service is not a good bargain for my sensibilities. It's a
similar take as Spalls. Games disappear in this model.
Finally, consider that the sub price is artificially low because they are trying to achieve a specific market position, and once they have it as
the dominant way to game, they will gladly raise it to $30/mo, or they'll throttle play time. And we'll be stuck with that. I really do think that
is the end game. One of my bundled streaming services has already hit the
$30 point, up from $19.99/mo (Disney/Hulu/HBO). All these things are
bleeding red on the P&Ls in the hopes that they can sucker punch us, IMO.
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