Are subscription gaming services the bane of the industry? – 01/24/2024 – Tech

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Philippe Tremblay, director of subscriptions at Ubisoft, was summarily condemned by the merciless court of social media when he stated that consumers need to get used to not owning their own games for game subscription services to thrive in the industry.

The executive’s clumsy statement to the GamesIndustry.biz website, however, also started an interesting debate about what the role of these services will be in the future of the virtual games industry.

What did he say: “Gamers are used, a bit like DVD, to having and owning their games. That’s the change in consumers that needs to happen. That’s a transformation that has been a little slower [nos jogos]. […] It’s about being comfortable with not owning your game.”

How we are today: There are more than a dozen game subscription services on the market, available for all major platforms, with the most diverse prices and catalogues.

• The owners of these services make a selection of their games available to subscribers. Furthermore, they can close agreements with other developers to, for a pre-agreed amount, make their titles available for a certain period.

This is how Xbox Game Pass, the main game subscription service on the market, works. Available for PC and Xbox console users, the Microsoft service has more than 25 million subscribers (data from January 2022).

Other brands offer their own game subscription services, such as Nintendo (Nintendo Switch Online) and Sony (PlayStation Plus); technology giants such as Apple (Apple Arcade), Google (Google Play Pass) and Amazon (Luna+); and large publishers, such as Eletronic Arts (EA Play) and Ubisoft itself (Ubisoft+), to remain among the main ones.

The controversy

The multiplication of these services raises questions from independent developers, such as Swen Vincke.

The founder and CEO of Larian Games –developer of “Baldur’s Gate 3”, one of the biggest critical and public successes of 2023– is a harsh critic of these subscription services and has already stated that he will never make “Baldur’s Gate 3” available on one of them.

To the comment on X Following Tremblay’s statement, he made a pessimistic analysis of a hypothetical future of the industry in which these products dominated game distribution.

• “Whatever the future of gaming holds, content will always be king. But it will be much harder to get good content if subscriptions become the dominant model and a select group decides what goes to market and what doesn’t” .

• “Subscription services will always end up being exercises in cost/benefit analysis aimed at maximizing profit. We cannot have a monopoly on subscription services. […] In such a world, by definition, they will determine what games are made.”

In the not so distant past…

The dystopian future predicted by Vincke actually existed. In a pre-Steam era, in which games were distributed in physical form (on cartridges or CDs), the games market was dominated by large publishers and developers, who functioned as “gatekeepers” and defined which games would or would not reach the public. .

It was only in the mid-2000s, with the popularization of the internet and digital game distribution platforms, that independent developers found a quick and cheap way to distribute their games. It was from then on that the games market expanded to different genres and themes, increasing its diversity and reaching an increasingly larger audience.

Hero or villain?

Despite the growth seen in recent years, subscription gaming services are far from becoming predominant in the market. And that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.

“Subscription growth has stagnated, and subscription services on console and PC platforms represent just 10% of total gaming content spending in the US. The idea that subscriptions will become mainstream is not supported by the data,” stated in X Mat Piscatella, executive director and games industry analyst at Circana, in a veiled criticism of Vincke’s seizure.

“Subscription services have been more additive than cannibalistic and offer gamers, developers and publishers more options for how to play or how to enter the market,” he added.

In fact, some mid-range games launched in recent years, which could very well go unnoticed in a saturated market, have gained relevance and prominence thanks to their presence on subscription services.

These are the cases of “Hi-Fi Rush”, by Tango Gameworks; “Pentiment” by Obsidian; and “Stray” (better known as the kitten game), by BlueTwelve Studio. All available since launch on subscription services.

Same thing with “Starfield”, one of the only top-tier games released at the same time on a subscription service and for conventional sale. Available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers, the game achieved considerable success in sales on Steam, showing that, at least apparently, one platform did not cannibalize the other.

Vincke’s fears, then, seem unfounded. The technological evolution that enabled the growth in the number of indie studios and developers will not cease to exist, and the bet by some executives on subscription services has proven to be somewhat exaggerated. The way they work today, these services seem to do more good than harm to the gaming market.

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Play

game tip, new or old, for you to try

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

(PC, PS 4/5, Xbox One/X/S, Switch)

Launched on the 18th, this new “metroidvania” –a mix of platform, action and exploration in a 2D scenario– has been catching the attention of many people. And it’s not by chance. To renew the traditional “Prince of Persia” series, Ubisoft took inspiration from recent great games in the genre (such as “Hollow Knight”, “Ori and the Blind Forest” and “Metroid Dread”) and created a unique adventure, with precise controls , frantic combat and engaging story. The downside is the bugs, which are common at least in the Switch version that I tested last week. I hope that the next updates resolve the problem so that this great game can be enjoyed properly.

The journalist received an early access copy of the game for test.

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Update

news, launches, business and what matters most

• GDC’s annual survey of the games industry found that 35% of game developers were affected in some way by layoffs in the last year. According to the survey, which interviewed more than 3,000 professionals from around the world, 7% of those interviewed said they had been fired, 17% said their colleagues had been laid off and 11% reported cuts in other departments of their companies.

• The same survey showed that 49% of developers already use some type of AI tool in their work. Technology, however, is more used in secondary areas, such as finance (44%), communication (41%) and management (33%), and less in creation, such as writing/screenwriting (13%), visual arts (16% ) and audio (14%).

• Still on the GDC survey, 8% of developers stated that they are working on games for the Switch’s successor, despite Nintendo so far not confirming plans to launch a new console.

• Thunderful Group, a Swedish conglomerate that publishes games such as “Planet of Lana” and the “Steamworld” series, announced that it will reduce 20% of its staff to “strengthen its position in the long term”. According to the company, the layoffs are the result of an “exaggerated investment” made in recent years.

• Square Enix confirmed to the VGC website that it used generative AI in its new multiplayer game “Foamstars”. Producer Kosuke Okatani told the publication that most of the content was handmade by human artists, but that some icons in the game were made in Midjourney, a popular AI image creation tool.

• The US Supreme Court refused requests in the lawsuit that Epic Games filed against Apple for charging a 30% commission on all sales made on its devices, ending the legal battle. Although Apple had to make some concessions, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney considered the fight lost.

• The game “Hogwarts Legacy”, inspired by the Harry Potter universe, overtook “Call of Duty” and came in first place in sales in the USA in 2023, according to consultancy Circana. The company does not count digital sales from some publishers, such as Nintendo. Still, “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” came in fifth place (the full list is here).

• The early access version of “Palworld”, which became known on social media for being a type of “Pokémon with guns” and for the fifth grade jokes with its name, reached 1.5 million simultaneous players on Steam, surpassing titles such as “Elden Ring”, “Cyberpunk 2077” and “Hogwarts Legacy”. According to the developers, more than 5 million copies of the game were sold.

• At a virtual Xbox event, the MachineGames studio revealed details of the new Indiana Jones game, in development for PCs and Microsoft consoles. “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” will be a first-person action/adventure game scheduled for release this year.

• Sony launched the slim version of the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition last week. The new version of the console arrives in the main retail stores for R$3,799.90, a discounted value of R$200 compared to the suggested price for the initial version of the console.

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