Linked the story for anyone who wants context. It’s about a list compiled by Twitter user https://x.com/Crusader3456
Here’s a direct link to a list of the games in a Google Sheets spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dJl8_JsJ5O2HyaP_oT4AoqrO1QEs9Own/edit?gid=1739673700#gid=1739673700
I have different reasons I hate MS and Game Pass specifically, but I was never convinced by this argument.
It works on the argument of “We would like to stop offering direct purchase models, and require consumers to play by subscription.” But no one has done that. No one has really come close to doing that.
People argue the price will steadily go up; and that’s one of the reasons I don’t play Game Pass anymore. I knew that I wouldn’t maintain access to the games on there, which is why I bought the ones I wanted to keep playing - not very many.
Removed by mod
They have started doing that though. No company is going to stop selling individual games. They are going to continue raising the prices, specially of games in high demand, to price out most people.
Same result for us. But they get the ideologue whales who keep buying individual games to virtue signal, and also get to exploit gamers. It’s a win win.
Capitalism needs to die if you want change.
So this is basically an observation about raising prices. But I think there’s a misconception on social media that you have to be reading the news and on your soapbox to alert people to those things.
Pricing has always very readily affected people’s spending behavior. Not just people that follow gaming news, but people browsing GameStop for whatever’s new. We’ve even seen that - stats are showing people spent much less on games this year. Some people are even spending less through the option of going for a subscription rather than buying 8 games through the year. The publisher plan is certainly to tune up that cost with time, but personally, I don’t think that plan has a high chance of success.
And there’s a very worrying reality on the publisher side that gamers have many alternatives, especially as quality falls in these AAA products. You can imagine someone starved for a Soulslike might’ve spent $70 on generic copycat “Folly of the Dodgeroll 7”, if not for seeing Hollow Knight Silksong for $20 one shelf over.
So basically, I never hated the subscription model itself as a “weapon of capitalism”; just the constant attempts to shrinkflate as has been happening to most else.