the game goes on sale so often that if you were playing stellaris enough to want all the DLC it’s a ripoff after a few months. people already dont own most of their games, so i think playing into this rental bs is a bad precedent
also people should pirate games instead of buying them anyway at this point honestly. gog games is so easy and practically endorsed by the people who actually run gog, and publishers putting their games on a drm-free platform means they’re already accepting that people are gonna get them for free so might as well take advantage of that
Yeah, it would be even worse if people forget to play or cancel the subscriptions. And more publishers will reduce the content included in the DLC based on profits or invent subscriber only content for make real fans paid more.
Other reason I’m not fully mad about this is that many video wargame developers often release their scenario packs through DLCs and the niche market will raised the price.
The subscription business model may help them grab additional funding for support development (or paid for their inflation issues faced in retirement) from players who wanna play few scenarios in each pack or encourage more developers to digitize their games instead of abandon if they don’t get what they wants (eg. Lock n’ Load).
Also It’s not a new model for me, I’m already a Gold Club member of Avalanche Press (Mike Bennighof is much worse on business even than the EA or Epic or something, but unfortunately only he can create the bucket o’dice games and tell a good moving war story that I like).
In fact, if it weren’t for the re-releases with cut content and the subscription model, I think Avalanche Press would have been out of business long ago. This might be why I’m not mad about the Harpoon re-releases roll-back situation (Mike still hasn’t sent me an pre-order from 2019 and he guarantee as long as he is alive, it will release. We will see..).
But I may be too focused on my current hobby on this topic. Only care about retro games and war games which made me overlook the impact of subscription on the more mainstream video gaming industry. I agree with the current poor video game player will be further harmed.
god this made me so annoyed lol digital lock n’ load was actually quite a good ASL type game and I had planned on supporting them eventually by buying a few packs for it but they just. you know. ceased development with minimal communication until people complained enough on Steam and they finally explained it. so I’m kinda glad I ended up not doing it…
I also think supporting an Avalanche Press is a lot different than supporting a Paradox but yeah idk I mean people can do whatever they want. It’s your damn hobbies you know. I don’t have to like it but it’s not something that affects me either because I don’t really spend a ton of money on this shit anyway.
(disclosure: I sit behind the people who work on this game every day, but I thought this looked cool before I joined the company, and now there’s gameplay)
Teruyuki Kagawa has the kind of filmography most actors can only dream of, absolutely amazing at playing threatening losers and creeps, but he’s such a threatening creep IRL he had a 2022 sexual harassment case so bad Toyota had to drop him as their rep. Glad RGG Studio decided that Pierre Taki doing one line of cocaine is enough to give him a thorough Stalin Photoshop treatment but assaulting a hostess is not that much of a big deal, will keep that in mind the next time Ichiban Kasuga starts spouting his #nicecore platitudes
