Ubisoft Says Out Loud: We Want People to Get Used to Not Owning What They Bought

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/19/ubisoft-says-it-out-loud-we-want-people-to-get-used-to-not-owning-what-theyve-bought/

by rntn • 3 years ago

395 255 3 years ago

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elmerfud• 3 years ago

If buying is not owning then piracy is not stealing.

RichardHesketh• 3 years ago

There’s a popular view that piracy is not theft. But in UK law at least (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/crossheading/de...), although copyright infringement is a separate offence, it kind of is theft too, arguably. It would be interesting to know to what extent that’s been tested, here and elsewhere.

PicassoCTs• 3 years ago

Well, all the laws they could buy, that surely will stop a movement named after lawless ship thieves and brigands.

tourmalinetaco• 3 years ago

There is no evidence that it harms sales, as the EU found out after spending over €300,000. Actually, it leads more towards the idea that overpricing hurts legal consumption far more. And lost sales are not theft anyway, neither is copying a file.

https://torrentfreak.com/eu-piracy-report-suppression-raises...

blibble3• 3 years ago

by definition it isn't theft because you haven't deprived the owner of the original

It would be interesting to know to what extent that’s been tested, here and elsewhere.

it would never even get that far in the UK court

asylteltine3• 3 years ago

I agree ideologically but intellectually this isn’t true. A movie ticket is a license to watch the movie. If you sneak in, would anyone say that’s legal? Piracy is the same thing. Buying a video game these days is a contract for a license to use the game. I hate it, but that’s the legal aspect

sircastor• 3 years ago

For what it’s worth, theaters see it slightly differently. A movie ticket is rental of a seat in the theater.

dathinab3• 3 years ago

intellectually

intellectually piracy is still not stealing

it's causing hypothetical financial damages

I say hypothetical because they are actually only there if you would have bought the game/sub/etc. if you couldn't have pirated the game. But in many case that's not the case (and in many others it is). Most commonly the actual damages are much smaller then whatever companies get away with claiming they are. And there had been studies showing that for some games piracy actually increased their sells long term. Through definitely not all games.

Anyway causing financial damages != stealing, mainly on a per-case basis financial damages from actual stealing tend to hugely outweighs the ones from piracy.

morelisp• 3 years ago

Nobody has ever been sued for copyright infringement for failing to buy a ticket.

portaouflop2• 3 years ago

A movie ticket is a one-time permission to watch the movie in that particular place and time - it has nothing to do with licensing.

samch• 3 years ago

I would think the analogy is more akin to Netflix vs owning a copy of a movie. In many cases, consumers have a choice. They can spend a bit more and always have access to a copy of a movie that they own or they could hope that it’s available on one of their streaming services (the availability being beyond the control of the consumer and subject to arbitrary decisions). This is setting aside the fact that subscription-based access almost always requires an Internet connection and DRM protections which can be viewed as an invasion of privacy.

jmac01• 3 years ago

That would be trespassing, but is it actually illegal to experience license content or just to copy/share it? If I'm in a bar and they are playing illegal streams of movies are we all commiting crimes or just the bar owner?

hedora5• 3 years ago

I bought a Ubisoft game, and got to play zero times (it won't run). I can't get a refund.

Is it legal to sneak into the movie after buying the ticket and being refused admittance without cause? Probably not.

Would a jury convict? Probably not.

eastbound• 3 years ago

Piracy is only immoral if you consider the state should prevent people from reusing everyone’s copyable work, and protect the companies for it. It’s a ridiculously difficult task which is ridiculously costly to maintain, at the expense of taxpayers.

If you consider that the state shouldn’t intervene, or shouldn’t intervene in this way, then it’s not immoral. For example, the state could say “DRM and if anyone can break the DRM, they’re free to use the game” or it could say “Any software becomes open-source after 20 years” (which, at least, would have the benefit of being useful). Same goes for songs or other artistic work, it will be much less monetizable but maybe it will restore the “art” part in “art”.

k__• 3 years ago

Even if it was buying, piracy would be misappropriation at best.

sashank_1509• 3 years ago

No, I will have to strongly disagree. Years worth of effort for hundreds of people go into a AAA Game, just like a blockbuster movie. The agreement then is, you pay somehow for the right to consume their effort. You pay directly to the game, or you pay a subscription service that then distributes its pot to the game according to their agreement, but you have to pay. That’s the social agreement. If you don’t, then you’re breaking the social agreement and you’re stealing, there’s really no justification for it.

Let’s say you somehow find that you pirating does not matter in the grand scheme of things, or might indirectly increase sales. It still does not matter. You are a part of an agreement that you should honor, not break, they didn’t hire you to market the game or to improve their sales.

Personally when I was a teen, I used to pirate games because my parents did not buy me any. Then I became a software developer. Now I can only sympathize for piracy if it’s for educational resources that uplifts you, kind of like Sci-hub. For games/ movies you need to think, do you deserve to consume years worth of effort that they put into it? Do you deserve to be entertained by their effort? In my eyes you only do if they willingly give it to you, which only ever happens if you buy or subscribe to a game.

madsbuch4• 3 years ago

Then call it what it is: A lease or rent.

tuhriel• 3 years ago

While I also disagree with the 'memefied' version of the quote, the publishers where first to break the social contract, when they removed stuff from libraries which where 'bought'.

The wording in the stores is 'buy' not 'rent'.

yes they have some clauses in the 20 pages long AGBs, which makes it legally ok, but imho it's still a break of the (social) contract.

So, if I 'buy' product A on platform Z and it gets removed without any money returned and they expect me to 'buy' it again on platform Y, I wouldn't have any issues pirating product A

Or if I bought product B v 3.0 with an unlimited licence and they suddently stop the licence server tell me I can't use B 3.0 anymore but I can get B 5.0 as a subscripton, I'd be mad as hell.

I personally have issues where the publishers suddenly alters the deal afterwards. (and tell you that you should be happy they don't alter it further...)

tranceylc• 3 years ago

Those hundreds of people do not get commission.

WolfeReader5• 3 years ago

"Personally when I was a teen, I used to pirate games because my parents did not buy me any. Then I became a software developer."

When you're in an unfair situation, you are willing to break the rules to your benefit. But when you have wealth, suddenly only the wealthy "deserve" to be entertained, and all the poors need to know their place and follow the rules which disadvantage them.

ndriscoll3• 3 years ago

The justification is that there is no social agreement. It's quite clear that the direction is moving away from even the possibility of ownership, and because of obscure reasons you don't care about, the original often becomes unavailable (e.g. music in a game or show being removed, or some aspect being censored, or the controlling entity loses interest in old material, or people lose track of who even holds rights). The law has been corrupted to last so long that if you wanted to share parts of your childhood with your descendants, you'd have to go through gatekeepers until your great great great grandchildren (i.e. never).

No one agreed to that any more than they agreed not to use marijuana. They were born into a world where others use violence to coerce them. As a software developer, I'd be quite happy if the law required all source to be put in escrow to receive copyright and then released into the public domain after 10-15 years, along with bans on technological measures to prevent people from modifying software. Likewise with putting masters in escrow for sound/video. Maybe even give them a full generation of protection (~25 years) since their work doesn't become obsolete and unusable like software. But the important thing is to receive a monopoly from society, you should need to give something as your part of the trade (e.g. source materials for the next generation to be able to use and add their own flavor to), and the goal should be to create cultural wealth for future generations, not to keep it from them. We can trade our rights to enable that, but not theirs; our children's rights are not ours to trade. Given that things are so one-sided, I can't imagine begrudging people at all for ignoring the "agreement".

pyridines• 3 years ago

Here's my two cents, not directed towards you, but to the discussion in general.

If someone wants to lease a product to you, and you would rather they sell it, that doesn't give you the right to pirate it. When the only way to buy a thing is to "buy" a misleading lease, piracy becomes more "permissible", as in people will blame you less for pirating it, but that doesn't make it morally good.

It's obviously a bad thing for the publisher to make it seem like you're buying something, then pull the rug out from under you. It's extremely misleading, maybe it should be illegal. It's definitely a bad thing, even if it's all technically there in the fine print that nobody reads. Pirating the thing in response to this is a situation where two wrongs don't make a right. It's debatable, sure, but it's morally gray at best.

No matter how you slice it, you're still depriving the creators/publishers/etc of the money they ask for in return for the thing you want. Maybe you don't like the publisher, maybe you think the platform is evil, but you are still taking what doesn't belong to you.

A big reason it's bad is the plain ol' categorical imperative. If everyone did it, there would be no more music, movies, games, etc, because the people making them wouldn't get paid. That's true regardless of how the thing is sold.

If you don't like how they're selling it, boycott it. That's fine. It's not like we're talking about essential goods like shelter or food. Most of the time, the discussion is around entertainment.

TL;DR Pirating is morally gray at best, but it is not 100% morally good, and I wish people would be honest about that.

Zambyte• 3 years ago

This is fun to say, but the problem with it is that unauthorized copying never was stealing.

hackerlight• 3 years ago

Depends on the definition of "stealing" and whether you consider intellectual property to be private property. Private property is a social construct and it seems you've subjectively decided to exclude intellectual property from your definition of private property. That's fine but realize that this decision is a subjective one. It is no more or less absurd that I can "own" a collection of atoms as it is that I can "own" an arrangement of bits. They are both absurd notions. But we subscribe to these ideas because they are useful.

s1artibartfast6• 3 years ago

Those are empty words and intentionally obtuse words. It obviously depends on what you are buying.

palata2• 3 years ago

And training LLMs on material one does not own is not stealing either, apparently :-).

sylware2• 3 years ago

Wonder when that will be clearly stated with a big flashy font next the price on all stores. You buy the right to play the game, not the game.

for the same reason, the hardware should be provided with the game...

codethief• 3 years ago

You buy the right to play the game for as long as the publisher likes, not the game.

FTFY

sylware2• 3 years ago

It should be clearly stated.

But a lot of scams can be setup with this "for as long as the publisher likes". Since this is a "Service", I guess it depends on the laws regulating the "services".

It looks like everything does favor the publisher, and the gamers get nearly only the right to shut up whatever happens. I wonder.

cinntaile• 3 years ago

Discussed a couple of days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39021958

gmerc2• 3 years ago

Not if Gabe has a word to say about it.

alephxyz• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, even when purchased on steam, Ubisoft games will launch through the Ubisoft app (forgot what it's called), where they're free to make you sign up to play and advertise their subscription services to you.

add-sub-mul-div• 3 years ago

Steam has done more to normalize digital "ownership" than any other org.

A whole generation of gamers has been brought up to think that they're buying "Steam" games when they're really buying PC games that artificially have a middleman now where one never had to be before.

hedora5• 3 years ago

Ignoring the DRM thing, Steam didn't really add a middleman. Instead, they replaced the old middleman.

Microsoft used games to prop up their windows monopoly, but provided a terrible user experience.

Steam provides an excellent, OS-agnostic user experience. Instead of using it to prop up an unrelated monopoly, they take a cut of sales.

It's not great (middlemen rarely are), but it is an improvement.

gmerc2• 3 years ago

Steam always treated games as collection items. They understood that gamers wanted to collect games and today most games bought are not even played, they are sold to be collected.

The ubisoft vision is not compatible with that.

marcus_holmes• 3 years ago

I've been boycotting Ubisoft for a decade now. Shower of wankers. Won't be missed when they go bankrupt.

sergiotapia• 3 years ago

When I was a teen, I wanted to grow up and become a game developer and one day perhaps work for Ubisoft. Prince of Persia (2003) was my favorite game as a kid.

Now, I cannot think of a more creatively bankrupt game studio. (Maybe Naughty Dog? They've been releasing the same games for like 12 years) I don't understand how they can fall so low and also remain in business. Who buys/plays their games?!

Watch this and remember the glory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOp_GM3ihrU

dartos3• 3 years ago

Same people who buy every call of duty.

They see Assasins Creed and that’s good enough

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

Never meet your heroes, as the old saying goes.

portaouflop2• 3 years ago

Same story with Blizzard - I used to be the biggest fanboy, spending thousands of hours with SC,WC3,WoW and Diablo. Ever since they got acquired by Activision it’s just been very disappointing. Now I don’t even check out their new releases anymore.

dijit• 3 years ago

EA is easily worse.

I worked for Ubisoft for 6 years and theres a combination of:

* the business reality being harder than you think

* certain peoples ego. (notably Serge Hascoet, and his pressure to push games to be the same; towers to unlock the map etc)

* Good intentions being misconstrued (uplay is designed to give people cheaper games while staying within the letter of the law of valves distribution platform)

The majority of people are really doing their best for the players: even the people you think are doing stupid things.

I think AAA game development has to end to be honest, the risk is so high that most publishers play it so safe that in the end everything is milquetoast and overpriced

lstodd• 3 years ago

2003 eh..

Behold the Prince of Gosplan written in 1992 and inspired by the original Prince of Persia game published in 1989 by Broderbund. There was no Ubi back then and that the franchise is still being "owned" is an insult.

https://www.popuw.com/pocp.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Gosplan

kderbyma• 3 years ago

met someone who worked at Ubisoft once at a party....I realised why their games suck and they are more interested in taking all the money they can get....dude had a coke problem and was bragging about being a senior dev working on their latest title whilst throwing a 'bruh' out in every other sentence and stumbling around the party like he was king of the world because of Ubisoft.....bad culture. bad incentives, and when asked about development couldn't even explain anything other than buzz words and was more interested in how much money their micro payments would get them

anotherevan• 3 years ago

TIL what the collective noun for a group of wankers is.

29athrowaway• 3 years ago

We are entering a new age of cracking and piracy then.

pierat2• 3 years ago

It never stopped.

I'm working on a shim for multiple older consoles that will allow running your own servers... So when Nintendo kills multiplayer, We can reenable it.

superkuh• 3 years ago

Epic may not be saying it but they are doing it. Epic literally bought the company Psyonix, makers of Rocket League and then stole the game Rocket League from people who had bought it and been playing it for years. They literally unreleased the game for MacOS and Linux users. They tried to hide this theft by letting linux and mac users still start the game and look at the menu interface. But playing the game itself no longer works.

Epic is at the forefront of revoking ownership, not Ubisoft.

deberon• 3 years ago

Epic took away player to player trading in rocket league just to support a new game mode in Fortnite (rocket racing). Now the only way to get items is through the item shop using real money. Have a dozen copies of the same item because you’ve been playing since 2015 and want to gift it to somebody? Too bad, not possible. Rocket League is dying, but hey at least rocket racing in Fortnite has familiar assets!

63• 3 years ago

The ability to buy and sell used games is really nice. I can get a game that came out a year ago second hand for like $15-30 in some cases. Not being able to do that for digital exclusive games is really annoying and often means I just don't play them.

Does the cost of buying and reselling games for slightly less end up equaling out to the cost of a games subscription model? Maybe, but my concern is fragmentation. I definitely can't afford more than one game subscription so I don't like this trend.

3abiton• 3 years ago

You can always pirate old games if you know you will never buy them. I used to buy (10 years) old PC titles (AA) from my local 2nd hand market, but then I noticed most of them required connecting your account to activate the game. And that is only valid for 1 account, meaning my purchase was absolutely useless. Next thing I did was to download a pirated version, and it worked smoothly on my linux machine.

sahila• 3 years ago

You could also pirate new games too if that’s the route you want to go.

hedora5• 3 years ago

I've found that some old PC titles are available on Steam, DRM free (if you're willing to futz with the install directory -- they're running open source game engines and proprietary vintage assets; you can just copy the assets out).

Typing this reminds me: I should look into switching to GOG for such purchases.

stanac• 3 years ago

It is possible (at least for playstation) to buy single game accounts. Then change the password, play the game and sell the account once you are finished with the game.

mmsc• 3 years ago

I did my bachelors degree on this topic but have been interested in this problem since years before university. Specifically, the direction that we’re headed in terms of video game preservation [0].

I can still play most of the games that I grew up with, and nostalgia is well-known to be an important form of emotional wellbeing. Where will we be when the youth of tomorrow can’t experience that nostalgia? Sure there’s books (if they’re bought physically), but what else? Music isn’t guaranteed either and I won’t be surprised if in 30 years it is extremely difficult to _buy_ (legally) music.

[0] https://joshua.hu/files/GameLost.pdf spoiler: it’s not good

macspoofing• 3 years ago

and nostalgia is well-known to be an important form of emotional wellbeing ... Where will we be when the youth of tomorrow can’t experience that nostalgia?

Talk about overstating the case. Any problems that the youth will have in the future, will not be because they cannot re-play a live service game they are playing today.

s1artibartfast6• 3 years ago

I think you are missing the point (and think it is an interesting one).

I don't think they are overstating games as the single biggest factor, just part of a possible trend, which could be undesirable when considered in its totality.

More of a question if we are heading towards a future where "you'll own nothing and be happy", and the downsides of that on psychological wellbeing.

randomdata3• 3 years ago

I won’t be surprised if in 30 years it is extremely difficult to _buy_ (legally) music.

When was ever feasible to legally buy music? I mean for the average Joe, not a record company or Michael Jackson.

It certainly hasn't been in my lifetime, and I'm old by Internet standards. The only thing that has meaningfully changed is that the license period terms have become shorter and shorter.

beeboobaa2• 3 years ago

Too old to remember CDs?

mattdesl• 3 years ago

Vinyl? CDs? Cassette tapes?

s1artibartfast6• 3 years ago

fair but pedantic point.

Even with CDs, you were never buying the "music". You were buying a durable physical copy of it and rights to use it within some defined contexts.

Buying a CD never entitled you to reproduction for sale, or most commercial use like soundtrack to a box-office movie.

solardev5• 3 years ago

As a gamer, I think this is wonderful. Being able to subscribe for a month or two once a year means I can check out their latest titles released this year for less than the price of a single game. Many of their games don't have much replayability anyway and there's no point in "buying" it.

When Steam first came out, people made a big bruhaha about how digital licensing (no right of first sale, etc.) isn't the same as owning the game. True, but so what? Steam completely changed the PC games industry on that model and created an indie explosion. People like to complain about the lack of ownership rights, but the convenience is what really matters, especially coupled with a generous refund policy that we never had in the physical media days. A subscription service is a logical continuation of this model.

Now, a couple decades later, games have become super commoditized, and frankly it's hard to tell apart one title from another, much less remember them years later. For every Baldur's Gate 3, there's a hundred no-name RPGs that are entirely adequate but ultimately forgettable. They're not very different from an average show on Netflix or a song on Spotify. Subscription services are a lot cheaper for most people than renting or buying individual titles, and is the only sane way to explore a marketplace that has more content than you could reasonably consume in a lifetime.

If Steam offered a subscription service I'd give up my whole library (hundreds of games, mostly bought on sale) overnight. It's not just Ubi, EA, Microsoft, Playstation all do it, along with Google and Apple on mobile, and it's wonderful. Now for $30 a month split between GeForce Now and PC Games Pass, you can play hundred of games on a 4080 on a Chromebook. Games have never been as affordable or accessible. This is a good thing for gamers, enabling fixed-cost gaming that's easy to budget for and much cheaper a month than games used to be. Even if you have two or three subscriptions from different companies (which can vary month to month).

There are more games coming out every day than a person can consume. It's not the 90s anymore, no reason to clutch on to treasured old titles when a similar game will be out in a few months anyway.

asylteltine3• 3 years ago

I agree but on the other hand what happens when you want to play the game in 6 years and they removed it? Or they removed it for political reasons? I have used Ubisoft+ in the past especially for assassins creed so it’s good but it has drawbacks. I would hate to stop owning most of my games. I mean it doesn’t help that Ubisoft games after 2010 are just throwaways anyway. Remember when Ubisoft was the king?

dageshi• 3 years ago

Well here's the thing, the people who think they might want to go back to play a six year old game are probably buying it, the people who play most games once and never go back are just going to get a better deal with this kind of subscription.

So long as there's always a choice to "buy" the game then I really don't see it as a problem. That's certainly Microsoft's approach with gamepass, I assume they and ubisoft both will happily let people give them $70 for a game if that's what the customer prefers.

up2isomorphism• 3 years ago

What you are saying is “I don’t need now”, which is very hard to be interpreted as” it is very nice”.

solardev5• 3 years ago

I don't need what now, sorry?

thfuran• 3 years ago

People like to complain about the lack of ownership rights, but the convenience is what really matters

Yes, and ownership provides many conveniences that limited and revocable licenses do not.

fennecbutt7• 3 years ago

There are many types of gamers tho, some move on to something new and exciting every week or month, some fall in love with a game and are slow to change.

This isn't about the type of gamer we are, this is about corporations trying to make more $$$, still stop. It's not about the games themselves, making the games and services better for us, the consumers. It's about money. I'll clutch on to old titles because all new games coming out are shit shows, and because if I paid for a game 10 years ago and I want to play it again then I'm going to do so, as I please and without a fucking cloud subscription or online services.

They can allow people to own games, but then they'd make less money.

account425• 2 years ago

Subscription services are a lot cheaper for most people than renting or buying individual titles
It's not just Ubi, EA, Microsoft, Playstation all do it, along with Google and Apple on mobile

These two sentences are not compatible. Companies do not choose to push business models that make them less money from the average customer.

There are more games coming out every day than a person can consume. It's not the 90s anymore, no reason to clutch on to treasured old titles when a similar game will be out in a few months anyway.

Whith all due respect, go fuck yourself. Games like kinds of art are not fungible.

solardev5• 2 years ago

Companies do not choose to push business models that make them less money from the average customer.

Sure, if they can make it up in volume. A million people paying $10 a month is more money than them buying a $50 game twice a year.

Whith all due respect, go fuck yourself. Games like kinds of art are not fungible.

Heh, okay then. You're entitled to your opinion.

caiomassan• 3 years ago

they are also becoming a node validator in the wemix blockchain.

fidotron• 3 years ago

It's worth going to the source here because this is being widely misinterpreted: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-ga...

"If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game."

He could just as well be telling the rest of Ubisoft (and the games industry) that in order for customers to be comfortable you need to not delete things and allow people to keep what they invested in the game, and that if you take things away from them then people won't be comfortable.

Volundr• 3 years ago

As much as I hate to defend Ubisoft on basically anything... Yeah reading that article it's very clear he's discussing this in the context of their subscription service. It's no crazier than someone wouldn't own their games through acquired via Ubisoft subscription than movies via Netflix or music via Spotify.

Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing? I don't think so. And yet I also begrudgingly admit that I listen to a much wider variety of music via streaming than was ever available in my cd/mp3 collection...

devjab• 3 years ago

I don’t mind steam, but it’s not like you really “own” your library even on that platform. So it has probably been a while since most of us actually owned a video game the way it was 30 years ago.

Sure, the subscription services are taking it even further, but as long as you’re not in total control of the stuff you own, it’s not really yours. At least in my opinion.

RajT88• 3 years ago

Streaming does let you discover lots of new music which I like.

But musically for my "daily driver" playlist I want to go way down a particular rabbit hole and find new stuff. It is less good for that. I am happy streaming exists.

On PC I am totally digital download. Consoles, I am more of a collector, so I prefer physical games which I actually own. Eventually having a disc will be the only legal way to play those games if you did not download them. (Some not even then like Destiny)

jstummbillig2• 3 years ago

Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing?

I would argue, on average, it actually is. Because it's not that we are getting nothing in return: We are getting stewardship.

Let us at least acknowledge this part of the equation: Hosting things securely and reliably is only naively easy and cheap, and on top only like drawing a picture is easy, if you are Picasso. Sure, you can put those years of professional devops experience to use to maintain a private data haven – but that's not something that will work for most people and it is fairly obvious that, on average, our collective data would be a lot less safe if rolling hosting became everyones favorite passion project.

palata2• 3 years ago

It's no crazier than someone wouldn't own their games through acquired via Ubisoft subscription than movies via Netflix or music via Spotify.

Which doesn't say it is not crazy :-).

Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing?

At least with movie/audio it's easy to download. I tend to be okay paying their subscription if I can download it on BitTorrent later. For games it may be a bit harder? Not sure.

ufocia7• 3 years ago

It's not a non-ownership tend. There never was ownership of the content. It was a dillusion. Content was licensed. The thing that's changing is the licensing model, from, arguably, perpetual to a short term with indefinite options for renewal.

georgeecollins• 3 years ago

If streaming were a better deal for consumers than ownership do you think streamers would push it so hard? Every time I try to buy an MP3 I hit a bunch of anti-patterns trying to get me to click on get this with a subscription.

People think of it as the price of a subscription today vs the price of ownership today. The problem is that every service model business has learned to boil the frog slowly.

rdedev• 3 years ago

"One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.

"I still have two boxes of DVDs. I definitely understand the gamers perspective with that. But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you'll be able to access them when you feel like. That's reassuring"

This is the longer context. I understand where he is coming from but people like to own things so that they can enjoy them later without getting the company involved again. Sure the save files are there but if the company changes their terms and services it just straight up stop offering them in their subscriptions what good are they? The guy claims that they support multiple mediums now but at the end of the day that's a business decision and they could decide to not sell DVDs or things like that anymore.

zdw2• 3 years ago

The difference here is that Game makers they want the video model - entirely DRM encumbered on DVD or BluRay (trivially broken, but still...) or streamed with an ongoing cost, as opposed to the audio model where you have the option of downloading DRM-free content from multiple sources (Bandcamp, Bleep, Qobuz, etc.) or buying it without DRM on CD.

There are some DRM-free gaming - GoG for example, and while Valve still has DRM, Steam hasn't been caught up in forcing people to go to perpetual streaming models.

From a preservationist standpoint, I really want media available in ways that will last through corporate shenanigans, and platform DRM limited or streaming-only isn't it.

cortesoft• 3 years ago

There is also a difference between games and movies/tv shows… if a streaming service removes a movie I like, I can either buy it or get it from a different streamer and I have lost nothing.

If a gaming service removes a game, will I be able to keep my save history when I buy it from somewhere else?

ethbr12• 3 years ago

The implied length of the service, and rights that ownership confers after it's terminated, could be a lot less murky.

"How long do you expect to run the necessary online components for me to be able to use this?"

"What will you do when you turn off the online components required for me to be able to use this?"

Are important questions that most services haven't provided clear answers to.

Getting a global right-to-jailbreak after service is terminated by the owner would go a long way towards making me comfortable.

cbm-vic-20• 3 years ago

They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection

GenXer here: I'm not comfortable not owning my CD collection. I still either buy CDs, or at least high quality DRM-free digital files that I can archive. Unfortunately, some bands that I really like don't issue CDs in thr US anymore, or sell good quality files, so I've had to buy CDs from outside the US and have them shipped here.

yndoendo• 3 years ago

Current consumer protection laws are lacking in the digital world. Purchase should mean ownership. Rent and lease should mean non-ownership.

We still don't have a quality definition of ownership. Example would be that the ability to edit the OS "hosts" file to prevent a device from accessing say "twitter.com" should be a requirement in ownership.

Owned / purchased content should not be able to be revoked. Such as Ubisoft locking your account and preventing you from playing the games you purchased. Rental and leased content would fall into the account locking ability by Ubisoft.

dangus2• 3 years ago

What’s weird about this statement is that gamers on platforms like Steam and PS Store already have that confidence. No Steam customer is worried about losing their library. PlayStation gamers see a PS3 store that is still functional and have confidence in buying PS5 games digitally. (Granted, Sony almost disabled purchases on the PS3 store, but came to a good compromise by moving payment processing off of the platform).

It’s only shitty, badly run stores like UPlay and Nintendo’s always-shutting down console-specific stores that make customers lack confidence.

hamandcheese• 3 years ago

"They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection."

This isn't what happened at all.

People got used to streaming services which is a different product entirely.

Many people stopped buying movies and music altogether, and those that still do are rightfully outraged when, say, Sony deletes a movie from their library.

optymizer• 3 years ago

"The service will exist"

Bull.shit. I call bullshit. Will it exist after the company goes bankrupt?

What an idiotic thing to say to people. It's one thing to have a company do this, but to argue that an entire industry will make sure that their services will exist in perpetuity is madness.

You know what can exist for a long time though?

A disc with a game that you own.

_the_inflator• 3 years ago

I see your point. On the other hand, modern games usually max out any DVD or even Blu-ray.

While I cannot image C64 games in the cloud, I also cannot imagine modern games on a DVD.

Even with physical access to a device, there are hurdles. Who still owns a C64? A 386 with floppy drive?

It is tricky.

ryandrake• 3 years ago

One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games].

"Needs to happen" is a pretty strong statement. Why does it "need" to happen? Are current customer behaviors/preferences some kind of existential threat to humanity? Nothing needs to happen. The company might want it to happen, but that's different. Companies talking about a mass [and profitable] shaping of population behavior as being "necessary" should alert our antennas a little.

nazgulsenpai• 3 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out. I had only heard about this in passing and assumed there had to be more to it. It's always good to do your own research on these things, because sometimes you realize its not as bad as an out-of-context clip makes it sound. But then on the flip side, sometimes its Unity's Runtime Fee and it is as bad as it sounds.

chrisan• 3 years ago

Isn't the fear that the game will go away and unable to be played?

I'm not super interested in if a game is rented or not, but the argument I've always heard was "online services shut down and unable to play - or requires internet connection" never whether or not the save progress would still be there

magicalhippo• 3 years ago

That would be my fear. My Steam library has over a dozen titles which can no longer be bought.

Thankfully Steam still provides them for those who have purchased it before they were pulled from the store. Though IIRC some have been fully removed (with refund).

Glant• 3 years ago

Yes, such as the Ubisoft game "The Crew" which will have its servers deleted on March 31st and can never be played again.

bobmaxup2• 3 years ago

this is being widely misinterpreted

It sounds like Ubisoft wants their streaming and subscription services to grow, but reality doesn't line up with their vision.

They are purchasing long term streaming rights from other companies like Activision Blizzard.

"Ubisoft recently announced the completion of the transaction with Activision Blizzard giving Ubisoft the perpetual cloud streaming rights for Call of Duty and all other existing Activision Blizzard Console and PC titles as well as those releasing over the next 15 years. These rights will further strengthen Ubisoft’s content offering through its subscription service Ubisoft+ as well as allowing Ubisoft to license them to third parties."

It seems they are betting on a speculative market. They assume people will treat owning games like owning DVDs in the past.

From what is said in the article, it sounds like they are probably worried about losing a lot of money on this bet.

They reported a net loss of nearly half a billion euros last year.

beeboobaa2• 3 years ago

I invested my money in ownership of the game.

ptx• 3 years ago

Users will lose what they non-bought eventually if they don't own it. It's just a matter of time.

Even if the company earnestly believes, at this time, that they will continue to provide access forever, circumstances will inevitably change in the future and might cause a change of plans. Or the company might be acquired by another with different ideas, or bring in new management that decides to refocus on different business opportunities. Or the technology they use to lock down the product will fall out of support. Or they just go out of business. Something will inevitably happen, and users will lose access.

xg152• 3 years ago

Or it could be the usual self delusion inherent in corpospeak where he tries to frame the issue as one simply about progress files and not about control or ownership.

Even this framing makes no sense: You don't lose what you've built as long as the game is still available to you. Should you end the subscription or should Ubisoft at any moment decide to discontinue your game then your savegame file will help you exactly nothing.

jumpman500• 3 years ago

I think the games industry is just to competitive for subscriptions to work. Indie games are more often than not are some of the best games in the year and usually cost half as much as AAA games. Subscriptions could work but there are few publishers that have produced consistent quality games to justify it.

juunpp• 3 years ago

That's a very polite way of saying that may AAA developers/publishers can't put together a quality game for shit these days even if they tried, especially since the AAA industry has pivoted towards "monetization" and "engagement" and not actually producing anything of value. That a game is produced is more of a tangential side effect of their business at this point.

charcircuit• 3 years ago

It's about volume * unit price. Just because AAA games and indie games do not have an order of magnitude difference in unit price, they definitely have several orders of magnitude difference in volume.

Poudlardo• 3 years ago

Instead of creating extra value for an extra price, they want to take away the normal benefits of a transaction. Wrong way of doing business. They are enemies of the gaming community

bowsamic• 3 years ago

I feel like most consumers already have an intuitive notion of this by now

slowhadoken3• 3 years ago

It’s hot air. Ubisoft has no leverage. Streaming and digital services are a product of torrenting. If you try to prevent players from owning games they buy they’ll find a way to do it. I mean warehousing and backups have been a thing for 30 years.

db48x3• 3 years ago

Of course they have leverage; backing up an online–only game doesn’t give you the ability to play it once the servers are shut down. For a recent example, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

slowhadoken3• 3 years ago

I used to play a defunct Japanese online only pvp and pve mech game on a pirate Taiwanese server. With a big enough fan base anything is possible. I’ve personally never heard of The Crew but there are some old flash games I’ll never get to play again because they were served on an encrypted site but I think they’re obscure.

WhereIsTheTruth2• 3 years ago

People already do not own their Steam games

Is this really what "Ubisoft" said out loud? or are they using Ubisoft as a decoy?

Gamepass is exactly this, and it's Microsoft's strategy, not Ubisoft's

I can see the narrative being crafted, why am i alone?

WhereIsTheTruth2• 3 years ago

I should perhaps do something useful with this super power, stay tuned!

treprinum• 3 years ago

People: We Want Ubisoft to go bankrupt and not think they can get away with murder.

hedora5• 3 years ago

I've had one experience with Ubisoft in the last decade. Their demo works on my switch, but the paid game can't log into their cloud and is unplayable (my ISP uses a CGNAT, and the IP address was banned).

Of course, I bought it from the Nintendo Store, which means no refund (a charge back would get me banned from the Nintendo Store, nuking unrelated purchases).

They've definitely trained me to not buy their games. I'm strongly considering setting up a Switch emulator so I can play the title in question.

WolfeReader5• 3 years ago

There's three parties at fault here:

1. Your ISP, for blocking access to a game server 2. Ubisoft, for requiring a cloud connection to play a game 3. Nintendo, for not allowing refunds for digital goods.

Seems odd to focus your blame on just one of the three.

(Instead of blaming anyone, you should get your Switch to talk to a VPN and then enjoy your game.)

hedora5• 3 years ago

The ISP didn't block the game server. Ubisoft blocked the entire ISP, so there are only two parties at fault. Presumably, they also block VPNs. Either way, switching to emulation is cheaper / easier.

I'm guessing Nintendo is more worried about Switch emulators than Ubisoft, so I think my rage is directed appropriately. :-)

trealira3• 3 years ago

I've called Nintendo support and asked for a refund before. They said they don't allow refunds, but as a one-time exception they would refund my game. Others online have had this happen too. I think this must be an internal script they must have. You can refund a digital game, but only once ever.

You could try doing that for your Ubisoft game and see if it works.

Although, the refund came in the form of store money; my card didn't get anything back.

voakbasda• 3 years ago

That seems very shortsighted. I would stop buying titles if I only ever got one return. Particularly in this case where the thing doesn’t even work out of the box. In fact I’d say it’s a good reason to avoid the platform entirely.

Fartmancer• 3 years ago

I've contacted Nintendo on the phone three times in the past and have received three full refunds for digital purchases and every time they said it was a one time thing, so that part is just a script the phone agent is required to say. They don't actually track or enforce it as the second and third times there was no mention of my previous refunds.

wredue• 3 years ago

Ubisoft connect is a horrific, bug ridden piece of shit on windows, too. Every once in a while I accidentally buy a Ubisoft game and every single time I spend 15 minutes fighting with the game/launcher then give up. It’s not that I couldn’t eventually get in, but it’s just… why bother? This shit should be seamless and transparent.

ProllyInfamous3• 3 years ago

How I voted [with my wallet]:

Recently purchased an N64, Ocarina/Mask, Mario64 (&Kart), Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong, SmashBros, Conkers

This was hundreds of dollars that I won't be spending on your online platform, and it's all because you disabled Steam on Windows7. Happy 2024!

david_allison• 3 years ago

How much money did Nintendo get from this vote?

It's a vote against Ubisoft, but you might as well have pirated the games, it doesn't support the publisher/developer.

toenail• 3 years ago

it doesn't support the publisher/developer.

Huh, resale value supports higher sales prices. Nintendo was paid on the original sale.

whateveracct2• 3 years ago

Buy a single Everdrive and load every N64 game ever [1] onto an SD card.

[1] And more! There's translated Master Quest, fan-translated Sin & Punishment, and a bunch of fangames based on OoT, Goldeneye, etc.

ProllyInfamous3• 3 years ago

It's on the list, to buy an Everdrive -- cannot wait for Part 1 of Portal64 (RIP Part 2).

fennecbutt7• 3 years ago

Everdrive is amazing, well worth the money. I've got gb/gbc and gba EDs, they're so good.

Plus the creator is Ukrainian and has supported and updated them for a long time, it's 100% better to pay a little more so he gets paid than to buy a Chinese clone that rips off his hard work.

Love ya Krikzz! Keep doin those rad things!

antifa• 3 years ago

I think you would have been better off with an emulator connected to your TV (or an android tablet if you wanted mobile) and a modern style PC/android USB or BT controller. I don't think the original hardware is a good investment. I did this recently and had a great experience. The emulator can render at higher resolutions.

fennecbutt7• 3 years ago

There's nothing like the feeling of sliding a game boy cartridge into a game boy and lying on the couch playing pokemon yellow.

Emulators aren't perfect, either, but each to their own yknow. Copies of older games are getting $$$ now.

ProllyInfamous3• 2 years ago

I have a RaspPi400 set up as a PS1 emulator (FFVII), and it'll obviously emulate any legacy hardware... but the actual N64 console is prominently displayed on my gamer cabinet, and frequently spawns a late night SmashBro and/or Goldeneye match.

This conversation has led me to sell some of the less-social titles [e.g. Conkers] & then invest in an EverDrive64; I'm super-excited to play optimized Mario64 at 41fps [vs OEM 20].

LeoNatan25• 3 years ago

That’s why I’m back to pirating almost all content these days.

pclmulqdq• 3 years ago

If buying a download isn't owning, pirating a download isn't stealing.

adr1an• 3 years ago

Finally, Ubisoft agrees that piracy is not a crime! /s

blibble3• 3 years ago

as long as you don't care about the latest and shittiest version of Far Cry then a couple of hundred bucks on gog will result in enough games to last more than a lifetime

madsbuch4• 3 years ago

i would love to see companies overloading the meaning of "buy" and "owning" to be the same as "lease" and "rent" to be sued into oblivion.

db48x3• 3 years ago

You’re not the only one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

tobrien6• 3 years ago

I'd be ok with this if paying for the game meant that I get access on all platforms the game is on.

newsclues• 3 years ago

I want to buy and own single player games.

I am fine with renting multi player game server access. But I want to ensure that if I invest time and money in a game, the servers have an open source DIY end state when the company decides it doesn’t want to host the game anymore.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

Louis Rossmann has the best take on this: "Imagine Owning Something"

https://youtu.be/EuYME93DUMU

The computer industry is rapidly approaching a performance plateau, i.e. next year's model will soon not be a significant improvement over last year's model, and the planned obsolescence turnover will slow down - such that device lifetimes will become more like automobile lifetimes.

The industry is trying to fight this by making devices difficult or impossible to repair and moving software to a subscription model - because they don't want people spending their time with ten-year-old games running on ten-year-old consoles.

account425• 2 years ago

It's not just the hardware speed improvements that are slowing down but also innovation in the games industry itself. Really early games can be a bit hard to get into because conventions and features that are taken for granted today weren't established yet. But that is already much less of a problem for a decade or even two decade old game. Games made in a decade will probably be even less different from games made today. That means that future gamers will have much more existing games to choose from that they can easily get into. Games which all compete with new releases.

Essentially the games industry is no longer the fast moving new thing and now has to deal with it becoming harder and harder to top its own classics.

cat_plus_plus• 3 years ago

Ok, but then I want companies to get used to not getting paid what they used to be paid. A game I can resell or revisit with my kids 20 years later is worth $60. The one I am not sure I can still play a year later is worth $10. Honestly will save me money, but I will still look for an alternative source for things I really want to invest in. GoG seems to be pretty good.

onyxringer• 3 years ago

When I stopped owning movie DVDs I started paying $10/mo for watching a whole catalog of movies. When I stopped owning music CDs I started listening any song I want on demand for $10/mo. For $10/mo I'd be fine not owning games and playing any game I want from a large catalog on demand.

fullstop• 3 years ago

That's pretty much what Gamepass is.

jsemrau• 3 years ago

Not to sound snarky, but try to find an older movie like "Lost Boys (1987)" on one of the many streaming services. This is not an infinite library but they pre-select what we can and more importantly can't watch.

lolinder2• 3 years ago

But then that $10/month for a whole catalog of movies became $60/month as the whole streaming ecosystem fractured and every studio decided it needed its own platform. Now you scroll through Disney+ and think you're seeing a whole bunch of options, but if you look closely you realize that the same movie is showing up in 4-5 different categories to pad out the home page.

That's the direction games are headed—it's not going to be a subscription for a whole bunch of titles, it's going to be a subscription for a single studio's titles, with a different subscription needed for each studio.

sorokod• 3 years ago

The ability for you to determine your monthly payment is not on offer here.

The ability to enjoy films/games you have in the past is not guaranteed.

Tha ability to gift your films/games to someone else is not on offer here.

Spying on you is pretty much guaranteed

hirako2000• 3 years ago

Yes but they want your $60, not just the $10, while making you accept to basically get less.

They are in the money making business, not in the make people happy and still able to play great memories with their kids 20y down the road, occupation.

They want to get used to getting paid more overall. It's about the same lately with most products at the grocery store. Big brands know they wouldn't be able to charge more for the same thing, so they charge about the same for less of the same thing. Your 180g 2 bucks chocolate biscuits box is now a 150g. Sometimes they push the envelopes and up the price just a bit. Because they feel they can. And they do.

I highly doubt their tactics will work much longer, people learn and are starting to see, and angered by the squeeze. Brands would have to invest even more effort to find new ways to successfully trickery, diminishing even further value put in the product itself.

Good on GoG. Games are loved when they are fun, AAA aren't all that fun anyway. GoG's great choice for your wallet.

Back to being able to play good old games with kids decades later, imo emulators will support, at least much more likely so that a console to still be found and boot so long later.

wnevets• 3 years ago

Fortunately they don't have any games worth playing.

paulgerhardt• 3 years ago

I lost my games library and progress when Stadia shuttered.

Likewise before that when Ouya went under.

Even this month I’ve lost access to content on Audible (bookmarks, marginalia, etc) that I previously paid before because that particular book was optioned.

I understand the rationale for these companies to push for subscription models to pump their PE ratio and get that predictable revenue bump. Adobe famously went from a $15 billion to $400 billion market cap by switching to subscription/“own nothing be happy” services rather than selling CS licenses.

But as a counter-party? No thank you.

Two decades on (and particularly seeing this as a docent at the Media Archeology Lab in Boulder working with 50+ year old media) I think it’s rational to push for digital ownership enforced by a community and not a corporation because otherwise the outcome is predictable. I’m happy to see recent developments enabling ownership, despite the (surprising to me) HN criticism of those vehicles.

mschuster91• 3 years ago

I understand the rationale for these companies to push for subscription models to pump their PE ratio and get that predictable revenue bump. Adobe famously went from $15 billion to $400 billion by switching to subscription services rather than selling CS licenses.

For Adobe it makes sense. Like, the full CS suite is 50-60€ a month... that was probably 10k worth of purchases before. Even as a student, you can usually afford a CS subscription, whereas you all but had to pirate it under the old model.

Personally I would prefer something like the IntelliJ license model - subscribe for 12 months, and you get the last version you had permanently if you cancel the subscription.

For games though? For the calculation to make sense even remotely, the monthly subscription game would need to be in the cents, maybe a dollar a month. Everything else is just a ripoff.

DaiPlusPlus• 3 years ago

For Adobe it makes sense. Like, the full CS suite is 50-60€ a month... that was probably 10k worth of purchases before

Nah - the big-box Creative Suite Master Collection was $2300 in 2012 (link below) and it's a perpetual license, and (as far as I've personally tested it) Adobe's main titles (Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat) dating back to version 7.0 (circa 2001) work perfectly fine on Windows 10 (obviously things like high-DPI support is lacking).

...wherewas my Creative Cloud sub is costing me $65/mo now ($780/yr), and I've been a paying subscriber for 10 years now, so Adobe has gotten at-least $6,000 USD from me, even though I only use the base functionality we've had since the late-1990s - so I'd be $3000+ better-off right-now if I had the foresight to buy a big-box of Master Collection right-before Adobe discontinued it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120112103643/http://www.amazon...

EasyMark• 3 years ago

I think I'm just getting older and the more they try to push stuff on me as "we own it, and you pay us to borrow it" the less I'm interested in participating. Apple store/hardware is kind of my last hold out on this front. I still use it as my daily driver but use linux more and more than just getting work done. I generally play old consoles/pc games, have an older car I can work on easily (thanks dad/mom) even though I could afford something newer, use FOSS software whenever I can practically, buy dumb appliances, etc. It's as if we quit valuing simplicity and ownership as a society or manufacturers are just slipping it in more and more like a slow boil? We seem to be adding complexity and extra steps without any pragmatic advantage other than more money for corps. I'm not sure.

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

[dupe]

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39021958

lolinder2• 3 years ago

At this point, that one is the dupe even though it came first.

marcus0x62• 3 years ago

Their terms are acceptable. I'll get very used to not owning the things that I will neither rent nor buy from Ubisoft.

hyperific• 3 years ago

Sounds like Ubisoft should get used to people not playing their games.

jrockway• 3 years ago

I'm not really sure that Ubisoft is to blame here. Blizzard pioneered this with World of Warcraft. You never "own" the game because all the value comes from the server, and if you don't pay you can't connect to the server. If you write your own server, then you are nuked from orbit by the legal department.

Speaking of which, someone should revive that project now that Blizzard is owned by Microsoft. Watching the new "we love open source <3" Microsoft stumble around the IP issues would be mildly hilarious.

deadbabe• 3 years ago

A lot of people are comfortable barely even playing games they bought. I think this shift isn’t too far off. Some even have growing backlogs of games they haven’t played and may never even play.

trinsic2• 3 years ago

This is a ideological divide that people are going to have to come to terms with. Corporations want people to be slaves to external will. It seems like a minor issue, like with the example of paying for a subscription to Xbox’s Game Pass, but what this really says about ownership in the ultimate sense is that you have chosen to believe that you don't own anything.

That has a big negative impact on society because it moves us further and further way from whats good for the public when it comes to private ownership for individuals.

It's an ideological position that doesn't benefit you, but only benefits organizations that are hijacking free will and ownership. Anyone that considers this for a moment could understand that your decisions have an impact on the world. And I guess it comes down to the idea that maybe there are import things to consider outside of your own personal need for convenience.

northernexposur• 3 years ago

Ugly as it is, I prefer Nintendo’s way of doing this (for physical media): you own it and can play it “forever.” Remakes make us money on the same IP.

shortsunblack• 3 years ago

If buying is not owning, pirating is not stealing.

Karellen• 3 years ago

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kf...

Commentary: https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/

infinitezest• 3 years ago

Concerns about company bankruptcy aside my thing is this: I don't want to have an ongoing relationship with a company. My entire adult life I've watched company after company succumb to enshittification. I have no choice but to assume that the company I buy from today will soon become a company I no longer want to do business with. And yes, of course I always can technically decide to cancel a subscription but then I no longer have the thing I paid for. I'm old enough to remember when I didnt have to worry about this and I definitely prefer owning my stuff.

hunterhod• 3 years ago

When You Capitalize Each Word of a Title it is Very Hard to Read

WolfeReader5• 3 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case

gentlebuffalo• 3 years ago

It’s time for Ubisoft to get used to not making money.

blitz_skull• 3 years ago

The idea that somehow one of the worst game developers in the world is going to usher this new age in is extremely laughable. Sounds like Ubisoft needs to recognize what a joke their studio is.

fennecbutt7• 3 years ago

This is why I've gotten into "retro" games. Modern games are crap, I haven't been excited for a release and not let down since like 2012.

Now I'm collecting and playing og Xbox, ps1, Wii, xb360, psp, ds/3ds, gb/gbc/gba and I'm loving it.

I don't need you, Ubisoft. I don't need you Blizzard, Bethesda, Nintendo, Sony, etc.

TESVI is going to be a flop. GTA VI is gonna suck. Calling it, now. After Cyberpunk, Starfield, 76, new cods and bfs all sucking hard, I've completely lost faith.

Nintendo can't even talk either bc they Apple it up, nostalgia bait, no new IP, franchise only gets a new game once every 6~ years, long wait for new hardware; compare snes/gb era Nintendo, look how many fun and interesting games are on gb/gbc, so many wild franchises that might have never got a sequel but were fun nonetheless. Now Nintendo only goes for the big hitters bc like all other games companies now it's just purely about the $$$. So lame.

Ubisoft Says Out Loud: We Want People to Get Used to Not Owning What They Bought

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