this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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I'ma be the devil's advocate - even if they were free, eventually someone would have made it a subscription-based model since PSN servers cost money. Sure, it's not a lot of money, but it's money.
I'm not so sure. Steam servers also cost money. They make way more money from their cut of sales. On console the same thing happens. If not requiring the subscription gets more users, then you make more money by not having it.
They aren't charging because it costs money to run. They're charging because it's more profitable.
I agree, and I think we're actually just saying the same thing - the managers and stuff at (insert big name console manufacturer here) saw the loss by server money (which is, yes, very little money in the grand scheme) and then decided "let's purge that cost too and get 500000% profit on that section as well". Hence, the current state of affairs.
I really don't think the cost of running it was even considered. It's just an excuse some people make to justify paying for it. I've never seen anything from MS or Sony saying it. It has nothing to do with it. It's just an extra thing they can charge for. The fact some people do try to justify it with "server costs" is sad. Every multiplayer game should be a subscription if that were the case, since they need to pay for their servers, but people wouldn't make an excuse for them. The fact the console users want to justify using a console sucks.
...
Well that escalated quickly.
I should clarify: console users want to justify paying for a service that shouldn't be required to pay for (a second time). It's just that using a console requires it (unless you play single-player only), so it ruins the whole console, in my opinion.
I think it's simply a side-effect of the current state of gaming, which sucks more than people generally consider. We've been getting nudged here slowly over a generation, so it doesnt feel hot to most of us. I'm bitter though and i hold grudges. im old too, so listen to me while i shake my cane!
Everything the game companies currently do with their IPs (locking games to their own servers and charging us for the privilege for example) is all about maintaining complete control of their IP. Remember that fucking lawyer-ese we all have to check-off so we can play the game we paid for? the part where they call what we're getting a 'licence'? Yeah, this is what it looks like when we don't own the things we buy.
If the subscription costs were truly about the cost of running the servers then another option for companies would be to allow for us to make and host our own servers. The fact that a precious few game companies even allow us to host servers long after a game's natural lifetime is over means that they prefer this outcome. When they have control over the servers they get to control the game's lifetime.
Could them cats running Modern Warfare 29 or whatever we're on now keep releasing the same fucking game every year if players were allowed to host their own private servers for the games they bought? No way, right? That's the reason they do private servers, it is more profitable for them to do so.
Now if you made it this far, you're thinking
first of all kiddo the newspaper that i still read says i'm a xennial or some bullshit so get off the lawn i'll never own and second is i actually don't know. I suspect we pay for it because we can get fucked. The fact we pay is ancillary to the whole control thing. they just do it because now that we're locked in, they can and thats all there is to it