The 'GaaS or subscription service' squeeze in games | Hacker News Reader

The 'GaaS or subscription service' squeeze in games

gamediscoverability.substack.com

28 pointspolm2325 comments

Man, if there is one thing I hate about the tech industry is how everything becomes a subscription. A dollar here, two dollars elsewhere, and at the end of the day you own nothing and gave full control of your work to FAANG. Games, Adobe with their Creative Cloud (not even an option to buy their suite), password managers, etc. I just want to buy version X and use it for years, I don’t care if I don’t get the latest AI-infused update for it.

Exactly, and producers (of all stripes—it's just easiest in tech) hate customers like us, and try to position their hatred and sidelining of us as for our benefit. I just got an ad from a reputable publisher touting as an advantage the fact that their newest digital textbook would not be sold, and could only be rented.

It is at least a little mutual though. I cannot stand the X as a service business model, because I cannot stand recurring bills, and to the degree I can prevent it I want things I use to be difficult to revoke.

Would you rather the service not exist? Some business models just don’t work without a subscription.

Sure it is necessary for some business models but the parent comments example, Adobe, has successfully used the non-SaaS model for decades.

I don’t know if the previous model was actually that good foe users. Because the releases were static every time there was a breaking software or hardware change you would need to buy a new version of the software.

It also reduces accessibility for lower income people. Not everyone can force over $1000 for Photoshop software but paying $30 a month is a much easier pill to swallow.

> "It also reduces accessibility for lower income people. Not everyone can force over $1000 for Photoshop software but paying $30 a month is a much easier pill to swallow."

Companies didn't switch to SaaS out of the goodness of their hearts or out of concern for low income people. If the old pay-per-version model were making them more money, they would have stuck to it like a barnacle on a ship.

The SaaS model has always been more profitable than pay-per-version because it took control of when to do a version upgrade out of the hands of the end-user.

>It also reduces accessibility for lower income people. Not everyone can force over $1000 for Photoshop software but paying $30 a month is a much easier pill to swallow.

Hard disagree. Pirating was easier, but even legal avenues were cheaper. Whenever a new version rolled out, you could pick up a license for the old version dirt cheap. I bought Photoshop outright for the price of 2 months of subscription, and had full access to a very usable program for years.

I see the above justification a lot from the same companies pushing this obviously more profitable model.

I think you are undervaluing the global market. Photoshop was $500+ one time fee. In many countries that’s a monthly salary. Most of those countries pirated Adobe products.

By switching to subscription they made the barrier to entry lower and unlocked a greater market.

I was very happy with that switch, even though I have a subscription fatigue and general dislike of subscription model misapplication.

But we can’t run away from it. This model is here to stay and more and more businesses will switch if they can.

Best is to adapt your own processes, budgets than to fight or reject.

Yes.. because a need would exist for someone to tackle.

Services align motivations of the developer and the customer most closely.

Other business models would either work by addiction mechanics and whale chasing or by marketing blitz with a big sticker price to entice you to buy but not hold your interest.

Subscription games, to make money, require that you continue to want to pay monthly to continue to play. A developer that wants to hold my interest is one I'd like to invest my time in.

I'm disappointed that subscriptions have fallen out of favor for games. They're replaced by more predatory business models.

There are many games that would have been a much better purchase on a 15 dollars a month or even 5 dollars a week model. Most games don't last me more than an couple hours before I realize I have no interest in playing.

Aren't individual subscription games equally prone to "working by addiction mechanics"? There's a fine line between "hold my interest" and "maximize my 'engagement'", and the big subscription-based games (looter-shooters, MMOs) absolutely use "illegitimate" methods to retain their playerbase month after month, by creating endless progression treadmills and gating progression milestones behind daily/weekly limits. Are progression systems "legitimate" at all if they only change the numbers instead of the mechanics?

On the other hand, there are the non-subscription games that captivate players for months or years, like Civilization or Street Fighter. These are the Photoshops of gaming - they hold player interest over long spans in "legitimate" ways, yet they would face an enormous backlash if they were to move to the subscription model that they "deserve" for achieving such high longevity without sacrificing product integrity.

It seems services like Games Pass discussed in the article best address your gripes over individually purchasing short-lived games better, though it also introduces the issue of games having to compete for limited spots in the subscription service's roster. Games with shorter lifespans can offer a wider pallet of experiences than those designed with longevity in mind, and it would be a shame to abandon them.

> There are many games that would have been a much better purchase on a 15 dollars a month or even 5 dollars a week model. Most games don't last me more than an couple hours before I realize I have no interest in playing.

Are you sure? I'd say there is a very limited number of games that works on subscription, with the vast majority of games easily under the buy model instead.

Personally, I would prefer subscriptions for constantly patched and upgraded games (Hello EU4/Paradox games) but for games that aren't updated that often (AoE series) I would run away from a subscription unless they can show a history of constant free updates first.

One area where this is good for the consumer (IMO) is music. Before Spotify et al it was extremely expensive for me to discover music. Now I listen to new artists nearly every day

This is, of course, at the costs of the artists, who make close to nothing on streaming, if they're not in the very top. The last year has pretty much killed the viability of independent musicians being able to survive off their passion.

I'm sure that (read: I'm very hopeful that) that will change once pandemic restrictions lift because there will be a surge of demand for live music, public entertainment, and so on -- a pretty extreme sort of rubber band effect.

In most cases a consumer of live music first needs to be aware of the artist before paying money to see them live. That is/was one of the benefits of making and marketing music - building awareness that then drives ticket sales, merch, etc.

> who make close to nothing on streaming, if they're not in the very top.

if they are a small artist, i think they would prefer that they get some listen time and discovery, even if they're not paid much from it. It's better than zero discovery and noone knowing about them.

They would get an opportunity to play live gigs if they get an audience from streaming music.

That is something that bothers me about Spotify, realizing that a small artist is making pennies off of me.

Genuinely asking- is there a better business model for them? I would imagine that (pandemic aside) discovery via streams leads to merch / tours / album sales they wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

I would like to be given both choices: rent or buy.

E.g. I would not mind renting TV, because I like getting fresh stuff every month.

But I would like to buy Photoshop, since it's not a core piece of my life, and I'd be content with the same version for the next 5 years because all I need is the basic functionality that's been around since the nineties (Aldus Photostyler, anyone?)

I just want to point out the strange irony of GaaS in Fallout 76. It's set in a dystopian future of rural West Virginia. Relics of the past are everywhere, and special attention is paid to dangerous "Mole Miners" resembling the old "Mole-People" of lore, who you you must battle from time to time. The Mole Miners are an echo of the real life West Virginian miners who historically struggled under exploitative mining companies. One of the exploitative measures taken by mining companies was the decision to pay miners with "scrip" instead of real money. The reason they'd give was that remote mining locations did not have banks, so they relied on a company money for a company store for goods and services. This scrip economy was often stacked against miners, who would often find themselves in debt, and eventually revolt with massive strikes. Given that context, compare it with one of the main goals of the game, which is to fight as many "legendary enemies" as possible to gain "legendary items" that can be exchanged for scrip so that the player can acquire more "legendary items." The machine that exchanges these items for scrip looks like it was pulled out of a casino. Every time a player pays Bethesda $15 per month, they are literally gambling that the aforementioned casino machine will make them scrip-rich. They are gambling on getting ahead in a game that is very much stacked against them. I wonder if the game designers realize that the plight of their game's Mole Miners is a metaphor for the average player's experience.

It's not the only form of scrip in Fallout76 either. Gold Bullion is scrip since you can only acquire it from and spend it at the faction camps. You just about need an accountant with all the different currencies F76 has. Atom is a scrip, SCORE is a scrip, etc!

But for what it's worth, the game is completely playable without giving them any money but the cost of the initial game, so props to them for that.

Whenever I read about this sort of thing, I just think - hey, guess I became old (I'm not even middle aged).

I've been playing emulated retro games for the last ten years, there's enough of them to last a lifetime.

Was EverQuest (1999) the first GaaS game? The wiki says that the concept started with WoW, which is obviously wrong since EQ preceded it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service

There were text based muds that you payed by the minute to play. That was a decade or so before.

Ultima Online was the first modernish MMO to use the monthly model that I know of but I bet their were others before.

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