Ubisoft seems like one of the shittiest game companies. They were one of the earliest companies that implemented Always-on DRM, requiring an app to open chests, trying to put ads when you paused the game, refusing to put games on Steam because they want more money, sexual assault/harassment allegations etc.
It was some special kind of exclusive bonus chest thingy, it wasn’t as bad as he points it, it was like a bonus thingy you could ignore them. I honestly didn’t care for it at all.
I think it was similar to the mini game ships thing on Black Flag, but on your phone and sending assassins instead of ships and maybe solving some puzzles, can’t remember.
It made more sense as a phone app, because it was like on Black Flag you sent stuff and that would take x time and then you would get the results, so in a phone you would easily check the progress and maybe get a notification, instead of having to enter the game to check just that.
EDIT: It seems Black Flag also used an app, I played later and now it’s a thing in-game I guessed that was the original version honestly.
Eh, not really. Always Online DRM is going to be even more of a thing in the future than it is now. It’ll be so baked into the application that any attempt at patching it will take so long that it’ll exceed the normal lifetime of the game itself.
But it sucks they cut the quote to make it sound like Ubisoft is telling people to stop wanting to own games (which gamers are, look at Steam’s and gamepass’s popularity)
The quote should say subscriptions like EA Play, Ubisoft +, and Gamepass will only be successful if people are comfortable not owning games
Ubisoft should get comfortable with the idea of going out of business. I refuse to buy anything of theirs or interact with their shit launcher. Bad practices and bad products combined mean bankruptcy and i hope it happens soon so decent companies can get ahold of their IPs and make some good games out of them because Ubisoft is clearly not interested in doing so
It doesn’t make a difference. He still wants you to get comfortable with that. It doesn’t matter how he dresses up his sentences his thought process is the same, thats how he got to CEO.
The point of the dishonest article is to make you believe the CEO feels entitled to gamers becoming OK with subscription models. What he actually feels is a hope that subscription models will take off. It’s rage-bait. Did it work?
…you believe the CEO feels entitled to gamers becoming OK with subscription models. What he actually feels is a hope that subscription models will take off
That sounds like a distinction without a difference to me.
People keep pointing this out like it’s some kind of misinformation.
The Ubisoft executive is saying gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games before subscription services will take off.
The Ubisoft executive would also very much like subscription services to take off.
QED the Ubisoft executive is saying “I’d really like gamers to get used to idea of not owning their games so our subscription service can take off”.
It comes back to the same thing: Ubisoft is saying aloud what they want the future of gaming to be.
And please don’t tell me you’re giving them the benefit of the doubt, here.
The problem is people apparently haven’t figured out yet how to read what the CEO of a for-profit company means when they say shit publicly about their services. Learn to read between the lines.
There’s a mile of difference between saying “consumers need to get comfortable not owning their games” and “we want consumers to get comfortable not owning their games (but using subscription services instead)”.
The former statement is extremely arrogant. The latter is just obvious. And it’s reasonable even if you or I personally don’t want to get our games on a subscription model - millions of people get their music through Spotify and it suits them just fine even though other people don’t want that. So it’s a way of straw-manning the people pushing subscriptions so you can hate them.
The saying comes from an opinion piece that was sponsored by the WEF. You can read more about it on the Wikipedia page. The article presented a future where the climate problem was fixed because the entire economy was based on services instead of the production of goods. It certainly has some elements that could work, but also has relied heavily on the neoliberal “the market will fix it” mentality.
Are streaming services that different from cable TV? You’re paying for access to new content. If you want specific content to own, don’t they all let you buy them? I know I was able to buy GoT discs when I wasn’t willing to pay for an HBO subscription. Has that changed?
Difference is that most games made anymore are online access dependent even if they aren’t dedicated multiplayer only games. What happens when subscriptions get so low that upkeep is unprofitable? You lose access to a game that you’ve paid a lot of money for, for no good reason as online isn’t necessary but the studios rarely patch it out at game sunset
yup, the very popular stuff you can usually (but not always) buy on disk. the less popular stuff you can sometimes (but not often) buy on disk if the creator really pushes for it
He said that for subscriptions to be more popular, people need to be “more comfortable with not owning their games”. People always forget the first part, if you take the whole quote, he’s right.
He didn’t say he wanted that to happen. But he probably do, so fuck Ubisoft and him.
I just don’t like how the whole internet built a narrative around an out of context quote.
You’re paying for the content in the case of the newspapers. It is a similar cost to print on newsprint as to run a website. It saves them no money. Most of what you are paying for is for the journalism, writing, editing, etc. Content costs money.
Exactly. The reason I cancel my subscriptions is because there’s been a nosedive in content that I enjoy, which has tipped the scales to it costing more than it’s worth to me.
I’ve moved to a Plex setup, but even then I don’t watch many shows at all. The ones I do watch are all on different platforms though, so it would be X many subscriptions just to watch the few shows I like.
Many people have no idea of the infrastructure and costs needed to run many of these servers that provide services to people.
I disagree with things like Adobe basically using it for DRM but have no issue for services that are literally serving millions of people and providing something worthwhile that the majority of the population would otherwise not know how to do on their own.
There is some nuance to it, like offering a service and then slowly creeping costs up or adding an advertisement tier and dropping everyone to that etc is crap. But in general, if they are providing a decent service then I don’t really have a problem with it.
I agree that ongoing infrastructure costs money, but several years of that should be included in the original estimate and pricing for the sale of the product. Plan for the sale price being cost to make+5 years of estimated maintenance for base product+profit margin. Then extend maintenance with each DLC if any. If no dlc then offer subscription to pay for servers and other infrastructure, if subscriptions fail to cover that then sunset the product but open source the server infrastructure so the community can pay to run it if desired.
I expect to use the product or functionality provided by x on a regular basis
The use of x has no added utility
The functionality and/or feature set (e.g. content) of x may degrade significantly without warning and/or recourse
Unavailability of x is likely to render it completely useless
If most of these conditions can be regularly sufficiently true, then searching an alternative that incorporates proper ownership is a good course of action.
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