“Imagine paying for the internet twice.” -PC Gamers
Yes, World of Warcraft never existed.
It existed and was popular and then poof…it’s gone. That model is kind of dead unless you count battle passes, which are optional…unlike a wow subscription.
Technically speaking, it’s more of online gaming growing around it than it disappearing per-say. Although total subscriber count is always a speculation nowadays, there is prently of evidence of it still retaining 50-70% of peak subscriber count from 2010.
But online gaming became so accessible and widespread that WoW turned from a worldwide phenomenon to a somewhat niche game compared to mainstream MOBA and FPS games.
Yeah, with the Steam Deck being as good and cheap as it is, consoles hardly even have the “cheaper” justification anymore. Now it’s just the artificial exclusives.
Both Microsoft and Sony have started releasing their stuff on PC (DRM-free in Sony’s case.) Even the exclusives are becoming less of an issue now.
Truth. I’ve been enjoying those.
Just stop paying for it. After just a few weeks you’ll realize it was a silly addiction. There’s lots of great games that don’t require a subscription.
I did exactly this and now I’m addicted to two new games that have no fees!
Now I’m addicted to drugs and alcohol!
Now I’m addicted to staying away from such fees, it’s great!
Some people have friends they wanna play with. Or so I hear.
PC, steam deck
They aren’t your friends and it won’t bother you after a few weeks of detox.
There’s a lot of gamers in this thread too young to remember how overloaded and miserable the free console game servers were.
Microsoft was like “chuck us like ~$5 per month and we will put up enough servers so the games are actually playable”. At the time, it was the best deal available for console gaming.
Honestly an argument could be made it was the most economical way to play online, in general, at the time. The console cost was subsidized, and the online servers were arguably at-cost, and you really only needed to buy one copy of Halo to join the fun.
Yeah but they don’t run the servers anymore. So I don’t know what I’m paying for really.
Some (Nintendo) even like using P2P instead of dedicated servers. Which makes it even crazier to pay for online.
When I pay for a game access to the whole game should be included and it is on PC (don’t bring up DLCs and all that).
There are more costs than just servers. I’m just saying, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be part of the upfront price of the game, though, and I agree with you.
Access to a router somewhere, apparently.
Idk. I was always a PC gamer, and think the old, often modded, independently run servers were much more fun than the soul-less matchmaking I see on most modern games. It was fun to play UT2004, and join a server where the arena was someone’s bedroom and all the sound effects were ripped from The Simpsons; or to jump into a clan’s open server and shit-talk them while they dominate me, or to join a server run by Beyond Unreal’s community, where the mods used were voted on by the community beforehand, IIRC. Good times.
I was always a PC gamer, and think the old, often modded, independently run servers were much more fun than the soul-less matchmaking I see on most modern games.
Absolutely. If one was lucky enough to have a buddy with a server setup, that was by far the coolest option.
There’s still yet another side to it. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is still around today. Boot it up, and try joining a game. Five hours later, the mods finish loading, and you get a splash screen full of ads before you begin playing with bots.
At the time, it felt like there were a lot of hobbyists willing to shell out cash to run their servers, but ensuring you got a fair game low on mods was often more trouble than it was worth. I’m even a little bit grateful that Team Fortress 2 started hosting their own, even if they failed to fix the bot situations.
Very true. These things do still exist for a lot of games. It lost popularity a lot on CS due to the incessant need for “competitive” matchmaking, but they are still out there. Rust is a good game for heavily modded servers (if you like the game concept in the first place) and I think Arma (which a bit more niche) is basically all community servers, ranging from in depth military reality to role playing much more mundane stuff.
It’s not a matter of age. You can play for free on PC now and it’s a better experience in many regards. There are also older games (even on console) where you could connect directly to a user through IP address or phone number and those will work to this day. Consoles are the domain of companies that want to have their little walled garden so they can overcharge for things like this.
It’s totally a matter of age. Kids these days have no idea how good they have it, and don’t realize they need to get off my lawn. Shakes cain in the air /s
And this is why it was successful and still exists to this day.
excuse the fist shaking at the cloud
Kids these days literally want everything for free and don’t care that microtransactions and other monetization has pervaded every aspect of games.
Horse armour, man. Never forget the horse armour. Kids these days love horse armour.
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.
excuse some people make to justify paying for it
…
console users want to justify using a console
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
Hey old-head!! That doesn’t really answer the question of why we pay for the privilege of paying twice, the thread you’re responding to! did all that leaded gasoline go to your boomerbrain?
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
Yeah? Who pays for the servers that run your matches?
It may be unpopular to hear, but game prices don’t completely cover the cost of development and definitely don’t cover server operation costs every month.
And if devs raised prices, you’d be complaining about that too.
PC games do just fine without a subscription model (for the most part).
Not always. It feels like it’s pretty often I hear about an indie MP game concept I like, but due to low popularity, the servers were taken offline.
Granted, that’d be an issue anytime it’s unpopular, but at least a game with 2-digit playership can still just have some friends in the last remaining server.
You don’t need dedicated servers for online multiplayer. Locally hosting games used to be the norm.
You don’t need them, but it’s much more desirable. A lot of PC multiplayer games run dedicated servers which someone pays for.
You don’t need to pay for your own dedicated server on PC either. You can do that for free, on your own computer, in your own house. Somehow game companies managed to convince people that all this has to be paid for. It’s just rent seeking behavior.
I don’t think it was the games companies that convinced people. There’s always been a demand. There’s a hell of a lot of games server hosting companies out there making money.
Yeah, you can host a game of CS for your friends, but do you really want to host a 200 player Rust server that needs 24/7 uptime on your home PC?
Would you rather have an unstable dedicated server running on someone’s home PC, or a stable paid for server that is up 24/7? It’s always been possible to run your own dedicated servers, but 3rd party hosting has always been there too, for good reason.
game prices don’t completely cover the cost of development and definitely don’t cover server operation costs every month.
Nope. while it might be true for small independent game developers it’s totally false for big company, like MS just a fifth of the profit they paid to shareholders is enough to run good server for like five years
Games from big companies, except the games that went flop, or F2P games, or the game that purposefully sell at low price in order to sell other forms of microtransactions, then most games are profitable
they don’t have to rely on monthly subscription to be profitable but the problem for them is “the profit is not high enough” and that’s why they do this
just a fifth of the profit they paid to shareholders is enough to run good server for like five years
Xbox doesn’t make nearly that much profit compared to MS as a whole. And the cost of building and running a low latency, graphically powerfull data centre in every major region is actually massive.
Then consider that the subscription not only pays for the data centre but also pays the game devs themselves, then you’ll see they’re not actually money grubbing super villains for this.
The cost is minimal. There’s a reason why it’s still free on PC. Additionally, you could offer a free option by letting users host their own servers, but that would go against the walled garden bullshit that lets them charge so much for such a cheap service. In fact, I don’t know if it’s changed since the earlier days, but many console games had games hosted on user consoles anyway, it’s just the initial matchmaking which uses the company’s servers.
What if the game is P2P?
I believe most of the games in the early days of Online, for consoles, were P2P (flashbacks of people shouting “host advantage!”)
lost connection to local host memories from black ops 2
Insecure (you get everyone’s IP addresses, if you find a vulnerability you may be able to execute code on user’s computers instead of just a server)
Prone to significant lag (one person’s bad internet can affect everyone).
I’m sure there’s quite a bit more reasons that I can’t think of now though
While this is true, the chances of it happening is pretty rare. Just because you have my IP doesn’t mean much. Sure you can scan for stuff like open ports and you can easily ddos in a lot of cases, but running a program on another players computer takes a lot more work.
Search news articles for “upnp”.
I don’t think the plethora of tweens and overworked parents are staying on top of issues like these.
What year is it for you dude
They do cover it - The only thing you’re defending her are “shareholder profits”.
Normalize LESS of a win for the endless growth fucks. They’ll still win plenty.
I love paying for nintendo online so I can play splatoon 3 which runs on fucking p2p
Nintendo really did decide to jump on the Xbox Live band- wagon without really implementing any of the perks.
I’m all for free online console gaming, but servers and maintenance needs to get paid.
How do you think it works for PC games?
The annoying thing about that is Xbox games on PC are free to play online but I have to pay to play the exact same game online on my £450 Series X.
I’ve often wondered how the PC community would react if Steam started charging for online gaming. That would be fun to watch.
Hits a buzzer
We’d set up unofficial servers by modding the game.
That’s what happens for old games that lose dev hosted servers and matchmaking. If online playing was locked behind a subscription, it would be treated as if it was no longer available.
However, it would be a lot harder for me to get my friend group to try new games if it took any modding.
The annoying thing about that is Xbox games on PC are free to play online but I have to pay to play the exact same game online on my £450 Series X.
That’s not true though, at least for over a year now.
F2P games do not require Xbox live to play anymore.
Games that aren’t free do though. Forza Horizon 5 and Sea and Thieves for example need Xbox Live on console to play online yet on PC online is free despite them using the exact same servers.
Traditionally, we the players paid for the servers. If it was a server browser game like counter strike, the various clans would pay for their own servers. Companies that sold gaming servers would also host some as an advertisement of how good their servers were
Peer to peer?
P2P if it’s free and expected to last.
If it’s a separate server, I don’t see that as infinitely sustainable for most companies.
Hahaha…
GTA5 is P2P with a central component.
So if R* kills the servers, your game is done for without modding.You need some entry point into a peer-to-peer network in order to make connections with peers. This often takes the form of a central server. In theory you can do have it be a bit more decentralized and have an initial list of peers to try to connect to who can then communicate about other peers, but you still need this initial entry point which is a potential point of failure long term, and I don’t think any games actually do this?
So… Technically speaking, in order to reliably connect peers most games are going to rely on a central server, which does technically cost some money to run, though it should be much cheaper to host than a proper game server which will actually be running the game and physics and stuff server side. With older games like quake you could easily connect to a server even without the master server (though you wouldn’t be able to use the server browser) and it was not terribly difficult to replace the master server with an alternative one.
This is true but games that use P2P matchmaking shouldn’t require a subscription as no servers are needed. P2P also better because all the time there are people playing them they will always work.
As for games that use servers and/or are always online that will one day go away should never be full price.
Take Gran Turismo Sport as an example. That was sold as a full price game and when the servers are switched off this month 98% of the game will become unplayable.
Even in P2P you’ll still need someone to go tell you what other IP addresses are in the group that you’re trying to join. And you have to know the IP address of that someone. You’re not going to scan the entire Internet to figure out who all else is attempting to play the exact same game as you, that would take literal days every time (assuming you rule out anyone IPv6, if you include them that suddenly becomes millions of years).
Even in P2P you will need to hit a commonly known and trusted resource to tell you what other IP addresses you need to go talk to.
Yeah, P2P is not free because you need an entry point to the network… It is vastly cheaper to host a peer discovery server than a game server, so it’s not completely unreasonable to expect it to be covered by the cost of the game… But it is technically unsustainable in the long run as it is an ongoing cost. Per user, especially across a platforms like Xbox live and PSN I suspect it’s like… ridiculously cheap to run per year?
Such a lame argument. 1) so you’re suggesting they don’t make money by selling the game? 2) you don’t think gamers wouldn’t prefer to host servers themselves if they had the option?
Let the users run servers. Then, all you really need to run is a simple connection server that lets people search for game servers.
We specifically moved away from this in the late 90s because it sucked ass.
No it didn’t, and we still have user servers for some games. Such games typically have a few official servers run by the developer, with tons of community servers with a wide variety of gameplay.
The reason we don’t have them as much anymore is purely corporate greed. It’s the same reason most games don’t have mods, even though they stole their most popular gameplay modes from them.
No it didn’t
We did, indeed. This is the entire reason for centralized servers existing. It turns out that trying to find the right server for a death match in Doom on a third party site wasn’t as fun as it sounds.
Sorry but what did “we” specifically move away from? Because user hosted servers are very much still a thing for a lot of games and none of the problems you mentioned are really inherent to the concept. Web technology and integration was just a lot… less mature in the nineties.
People who were alive at the time and flocked to centralized servers. Markets respond to demand.
Like I said I don’t really share that experience. To my knowledge user hosted servers are still a thing. Your claim lacks supporting evidence. Or even an argument beyond “old games old” really, because user hosted servers don’t equate having to use third-party websites anymore for most games.
Back in the 90s, no one could afford a good computer that could run a game and serve it’s users.
It’s 30 years later and today, most people have a phone that’s hundreds of times more powerful. Not only that, many people now have dedicated Internet that is, again, hundreds of times faster than what most people who had computers in the 90s.
It’s even easier than ever to stand up a server with docker containers, which was not even possible back then. Virtual systems was still a niche development and was at least a few years away from regular use.
You are right that back then, it sucked ass. But today, it’s more possible than ever.
You are right that back then, it sucked ass. But today, it’s more possible than ever.
Right but this means that it was not, in fact, random acts of greed but rather offering services people want that made the switch happen, which is the topic of discussion here
No, that isn’t what happened. User run servers, particularly dedicated servers hosted by proper hosting companies, got good before they were taken away. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Counterstrike 1.6, then all the Source games, hell even early EA’s Battlefield and Call of Duty had user servers. Communities formed on these servers along with innovative gameplay modes - I know this first hand running Counterstrike surf servers in the 00’s.
They also had mods. Valve hired the developers of the Counterstrike mod to help make source, and EA hired the developers of the BF1942 mod Desert Combat to make Battlefield 2. Then Activision stole the zombie mod from COD modders and then locked away modding so they could sell maps (which modders had been making for free, with better quality). EA followed suit not long after.
It was around this time that user servers started to be prohibited in new games. It was part of the same greed, with servers it gives the publisher more control - you’ll have to buy the new game to keep playing if they switch the servers off.
User servers being taken away was a business decision, it did not happen because the concept was flawed.
CoD 4 didn’t come out in the late 90’s. We didn’t move away from dedicated servers, the dev’s disabled that option going forward and not because it sucked ass, but because people who did not pay for the game could connect to private servers.
CoD didn’t but Team Fortress Classic did, and helped popularize the dedicated server trend
Devs disabled it in modern games for a variety of reasons, and fighting piracy was indeed one of them.
If your problem is that you want to be able to pirate games, though, you should know that’s not a winning argument and will never happen. No company is going to voluntarily support you pirating their software
See if a very popular game came in the late 00’s had user ran servers we didn’t actually move away from them in the late 90s even if there were games in the late 90s that did not have user servers.
With no user ran servers it’s not only pirates who cannot play multiplayer games but even paying customers when the developer decides it’s not worth it anymore.
See if a very popular game came in the late 00’s had user ran servers we didn’t actually move away from them in the late 90s even if there were games in the late 90s that did not have user servers.
We did if it isn’t common. “Moving away” very specifically is a term used when something isn’t abandoned outright but is much less common than before
With no user ran servers it’s not only pirates who cannot play multiplayer games but even paying customers when the developer decides it’s not worth it anymore.
Yeah I’m not wholly in support of this, I’m just explaining how we got here. That seems to upset people quite a bit for reasons I cannot understand.
Big mistake. Seriously, Lemmy has this weird thing about not paying for anything. From music, movies to games. From being a massive open source community you’d expect them to understand things are not free.
Imagine buying a game, then buying a subscription to play it online, only for the company to drop support for the game and because they never released the server software, you just own dead software now. I’m fine with buying software to support the devs, but it sucks that you can’t play disconnected games because some suit wanted to maximize profits.
Yep. I’ve noticed a lot of people on this site find the tiniest reason to try and justify their pirating and why they’re totally not stealing (or, if they are, it’s always morally justified, somehow). Not saying there aren’t times where piracy is justified (DRM, anyone?), but it’s certainly a lot less than this site would have you believe.
Then let us run private servers. It use to be that I could buy a copy of Unreal Tournament or Quake and the server hosting software would either come with the game or could be downloaded elsewhere for free. I could then run the server on my own computer and internet connect or buy server space from a third party.
Unless you pay them for internet bandwidth, there’s no servers needed for internet access on the side of Microsoft
I know you’re getting down voted into oblivion (or at least as much as one can on Lemmy), but you’re 100% correct. For a social media platform dominated by nerds who worship Linux, there are a lot of people here who seemingly don’t understand how networking and servers actually work.
I feel bad for the people running the instances
For someone so confident, you don’t seem to know how business works. They aren’t charging a subscription to pay for servers exactly, that’s just an excuse. They charge because it’s the most profitable option. They take a cut of game sales, which more than makes up for server costs.
Game companies have to pay to host the servers for their games and they usually don’t charge a subscription. If they did people would avoid their games. Console developers can because (they think) you don’t have a choice. If the subscription cost them customers, they’d stop doing it.
Steam has to host the same servers they do. Steam doesn’t have a subscription though. They just take a portion of sales, like console manufacturers also do, to pay for it. If that’s possible, clearly a subscription isn’t required.
Just recently Microsoft lifted the need to have a subscription to play free games though, it was always just a block.
Yes, World of Warcraft certainly had nothing to do with it.
The gaming phenomena that made billions from their subscription model had absolutely no influence, whatsoever.
How could Microsoft do this?
World of Warcraft ushered in the “games as a service” model, not the “pay to access online features” model. Warcraft doesn’t charge you for accessing the internet on your computer.
If WOW was available on console, you’d be paying Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo as well as Blizzard. That’s the difference. They are similar, but WOW didn’t cause consoles to go pay only for online games.
Subscription based games existed well before WoW was a thing. Ultima Online and EverQuest were well established to name the two biggest of the time. There’s also a massive difference between a handful of players on a short lived instance of a game and the requirements for an MMORPG.
Xbox live subscription, existed before WoW. All it really did (Xbox Live) gave you the ability to use your console to play with other people online. Halo was still P2P hosted by other players. You posted a subscription to do what Steam and Battle.Net already did, for free.
But you seem to have a real hatred for WoW for some reason. You’ve made 2 posts defending Microsoft by eluding towards WoW… Can I guess your an Xbox gamer in your mid-late 20s?
Hatred is a strong assumption based on what I’ve said, especially because I’m simply using them as an example.
Acting like xbox live is the only reason online gaming costs money is silly.
Bethesda brought microtransactions with horse armor.
Microsoft did online subscriptions for online functionality on consoles. I don’t know why you think it’s silly, they were the first to do it. If things had gone different, it could have been Sega.
No what I think is silly is the suggestion that somehow being first to the punch makes them responsible… It’s not like the other console makers went “Well, that’s just silly, we don’t need the infinite cash flow that this brings in! That’s nonsense.”
What you hate is capitalism, Microsoft is just a name.
I didn’t mind paying for a subscription for wow back in the day when they constantly added patches and content for no added cost. I don’t know if Microsoft continually added more value for your subscription.
Don’t they literally add games every week?
WoW actually runs servers that cost money and that’s a core part of how the game works. While I’m sure XBL does in some small fashion as well, it doesn’t seem to be wholly necessary to the experience, hence I can play online games from my PC for free just fine. There is no reason why merely to use any game online, I should have to pay.
Stop preordering, support Indi games.
This isn’t hard guys.
And raise the flag ⚓
How are the high seas for gaming nowadays? I know it used to be pretty hit and miss before since many titles didn’t work properly, crashed and had no support for updates without downloading a new copy.
Updates are still not worked out but most games work fine if you get a nice repack like dodi or fitgirl. Never had issues with those
I’ve never seen piracy as doing a lot to support indie games.
Generally, your principles should be more about who you’d like to build up than tear down.
Generally, your principles should be more about who you’d like to build up than tear down.
Why not both? Also, piracy isn’t really so much about tearing down, it’s more about the freedom to share.
I’m not sure what Xbox Live has to do with pre-ordering. These days if you have Game Pass you’re technically supporting a whole host of indies.
Problem is many indi games just don’t have the same appeal as AAA games. There are a few gems but I need to be in the mood.
personally AAA games don’t appeal to me most of the time. Spare for a few titles that are on my wishlist like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring (for the reasons explained below) I don’t plan on buying any in the foreseeable future.
Most AAA games are plagued by the money curse - devs don’t get the freedom to do what they want to do, they are made to create what will make money. Innovation is a risk and will be shut down by the money men unless your name is big enough to sell copies on its own. Sure not all triple A will turn out to be bad or meh, but they are pricey and often so, so, bloated. I was on the fence with Starfield, DIYed myself a demo and that thing was like 95GB with nothing to show for it.
I feel like it’s two separate markets that are forced to share the same big tent known as “gaming”.
I never play AAA games. I’m not on some moral crusade, they just don’t appeal. I do not have the twitch reflexes for FPS, but smaller devs tend to make the sort of gameplay I like.
Right now the only indy game I can think of that’s truly competitive is Battlebit, and that’s only because everyone hates what became of Battlefield. Otherwise it’s just me and what feels like a half dozen other weirdos out here trying to build a bakery so we can feed pie to harpies, while 90% of the world is playing COD like it’s their job. It’s two vastly different people who do not have the same needs, is what I’m saying.
So maybe people need to deal with that and stop honking the “play indy” horn so much. If that was the solution, people would already be on it.
Yea I don’t play FPS games either. I enjoy the narrative story experiences like Horizon Dawn, The Last Of Us, Alan Wake, etc.
Laughs in PC gaming
Yeah, well this is partly why PCs don’t get all the games. Uniform hardware of the consoles and subscriptions to access online play makes them a lot more attractive. Less dev cost, more $. E: plus consoles cost less than a good gaming PC, so that means more players to buy more games.
The publishers/Developers never see that online subscription money. They have to host their own servers anyways.
Yeah, well this is partly why PCs don’t get all the AAA games
Ftfy.
PC gets a fuckton more games than consoles, very few games are actually console exclusive and especially exclusive to all consoles but not PC.
I don’t remember the last AAA I played. They’re just not good anymore
They’re just rehashed and reskinned SOSDD. Same franchises been around forever, it’s too much of a gamble to risk big on something new. Starfield, for example, is proof enough.
I think this is getting less true, and especially with Game Pass and now Sony putting a lot of first party titles on PC, I’m hard pressed to think of a AAA game that isn’t available, or won’t be if I don’t mind waiting a 6 months.
Makes sense, they need a carrot to lure people into their walled garden.
Marketplaces are always a game of chicken. If a company thinks they can charge more for less they will; they just need another company to do it first
So glad I bought a Steam Deck. Playing games on the couch with friends who each brought their own controller, easily connecting and combining PS4, PS5, Xbox and Nintendo controllers to play together feels surreal and like living in the future of gaming. Never buying another console or their subscriptions ever again.
I’d always been a PC gamer and didn’t really get into console multiplayer games ever. It wasn’t until my young son started growing up and getting into gaming that we started looking at doing multiplayer games on consoles. I was appalled by this whole dumb subscription model for playing multiplayer on games that you already bought over the internet (which you’ve also already paid money to your ISP for). Having played years of online gaming for free, the idea of having to pay to play is just mind-boggling to me (though I’ll allow for MMORPGs and some other types of games, that’s understandable).
The worst offender is/was Gears of War, which requires you to sign up for the Xbox game pass in order to play Horde mode, which is just a goddamn couch co-op mode where you play against waves of cpu opponents. It was fucking free in GoW2, literally no internet required, but then suddenly these bastards required you to subscribe to their dumb fucking gaming service just for the privilege of playing against the computer. When I complained about it, people acted like I was entitled or stuck up for expecting it to be free. Just absolute bullshit.
Gears of War (2006) also required the sub to play online but didn’t actually have dedicated servers, which for a twitch reflex shooter game meant the host always had an advantage no matter how good your connection was. It became really apparent with one of the tiny dlc maps Raven Down where the words “host shotgun advantage” were often heard.
This has always been my sole reason for never buying a console.
I mean subscription gaming properly started on the PC with MMOs
-and I say this as a mainly PC gamer. I remember thinking how insane it was that my friend paid monthly to play the new Warcraft game…this of course before I understood what server costs were
To be fair, running servers for MMOs wasn’t cheap. Network cost alone could be quite high, not to mention the storage and backup they’d have to keep rolling in order to ensure small blackouts or crashes didn’t doom months of player progress.
That’s completely different from what microsoft offered with the xbox, which was effectively a master lobby server to find matches. Little processing and networking needed.
This.
I have no problem subscribing for a (good) MMO. The extreme development times, investments and high performance servers as well as (somewhat) frequent content updates as well as long lifespan makes the subscription worth it.
But when a subscription provides nothing else than access to simple features or low-performnace/unoptimized servers then I cannot understand why it would be needed. Sure there are operating costs but today you can literally just do peer to peer hosting. No need for devs to host anything. And with full control of their consoles they could even validate the clients creating the lobbies. The added cost for online gaming is the worst scam Microsoft invented.
And you think it’s cheap to run cloud computing data centres?
Yes, especially for a simple lobby server. Not much “computing” in that “cloud data center”.
Yeah my bad. I’m dyslexic and read the “could” in the meme as “cloud” and thought it was talking about Microsoft gamepass cloud stuff.
They provided years of content, dedicated support and actively stopped glitches and hacking. Paying for solid service and no hackers can be beneficial.
Doesn’t matter where it started the point is that most pc gaming can be done without a subscription
