Didn't they just have the news recently on how buying Activision Blizzard did not move the needle on Game Pass subscriptions?
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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I know this is going to backfire: gamepass is convenient but every person subscribing fuels the toxic „rentseeking culture“ of capitalists worldwide. Some would say that its much better to pirate than to use this shit. Besides: it is technologically subpar and surely privacy invasive.
Gaming industry today is 90% gambling addiction: chests, gaming pass, achievements, competition, etc...Most "hardcore gamers" are stupid casual-competitive toxic players, or wannabe twitchers, without a real artistic culture. Glad we have indie devs and many real passionate people supporting these.
/rant
I mean, I’ll bite: I enjoyed GP for a while, up until MS went firing-crazy and upped their prices.
Until then, I was very aware I rented games and might not get to play them later. Given that I was generally playing games that were new or sampling genres I don’t play much of, I wasn’t opposed to the time limitation, and the low price was reasonable.
Now that their price increased, I ended it. I am not locked into their ecosystem, and in fact swore off it pretty easily due to their changing circumstances.
I would agree the renting situation is poisonous when it comes to housing, because the model has driven the purchasing price of homes through the sky. But that is a situation with scarcity of goods. You can get video games anywhere.
I would agree if there wasnt a giant hole in your reasoning.
Once you stopped paying, „your“ library evaporated. It isnt that you rent out individual games. You have whole libraries built just from that.
And please dont go into the „gamers responsibility“. Thats an ableist view. Lots of gamers are underage and/or unable to make basic decisions especially against dark patterns and social pressure. Education and laws to limit exposure to this toxic stuff needs to happen, period.
That set of games in my library evaporated. I still have plenty of other games.
I’ll admit, if GP was someone’s entry into gaming and they never buy individual games, they would be a bit starved on unsubscribing except for any F2P games (which, tbf, is still a big set of options). But someone only able to spend that much a month on games is not going to have many options anyway; they’re the type that might buy a Ubisoft open world game just to get hundreds of hours through the year for their money.
But you’re also missing that this is very much the agreement and expectation: It is literally over a hundred video games, given the instant you pay them $15 (now I think $20) It is very fully understood to be on rental basis.
Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones released in this measured quarter. Mainly COD pulling these numbers up.
30% is huge though. I think with game pass, keeping those subscribers means adding more high quality games at a good cadence. Doom the dark ages, Avowed, Fable releasing this year might be a part of this strategy.
This year is already looking crazy good. Citizen Sleeper 2, the surprise drop of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, Ninja Gaiden 4 day one, O.G. Diablo... The hits just keep coming.
I had a game pass sub a couple of years ago and quit it because the games that I wanted to play quickly ran out. I had a sub for a month until a few days ago and I must say game pass is in a way better place than it used to be.
Nine Sols, Kunitsu Gami, Cocoon, Chants of Senaar and black ops 6 campaign were all unexpectedly good experiences.
I'm loving doing eternal on my new 3070. But not from game pass though.
How good does Doom run! It is incredibly well optimised. My steam deck was getting a solid 60fps on medium settings from memory.
Maxed out, 60 fps. I like vsync when the card is good enough, so it's locked there. Buttery smooth, I just suck and run out of ammo all the time lol
Just asking why for the vsync? I got a new PC last fall and have only used freesync going forward. I wasn't aware there was still a reason to vsync ever again if you had the option to do so.
No idea, I don't know what freesync is, I turned on vsync and it was super smooth, didn't look past that.
I don't game a lot, just wanted to play a few newer titles.
Ahhh, my bad. I figured you were talking about freesync (AMD) or g-sync (Nvidea) options, which allows you to get the benefit of vsync without using as many resources to power it. Your monitor and gpu have to support it before it can be enabled. I was like, how is this bad haha!?
No you're good. I never used the vsync before because I felt like it always made my movements too slow but now with a better graphics card and a better monitor it's super smooth and accurate and I really like it
I upgraded from a 1070 and a 1080p basic monitor. I now have dual 1440p asus IPS monitors and the 3070, so huge upgrade, about a decades worth of technology
I don't think Fable is releasing this year, they've still shown barely anything and it was missing entirely from their recent developer direct of high profile 2025 games.
Oh, I thought Fable was getting released sometime later this year. Google suggests as much.
Games have short marketing cycles these days, so it's not much of an indicator for when it's due to release. Perfect Dark wasn't there either, and I think both are allegedly slated for this year.
I can't be the only one that has had issues with game pass, can I? I've tried it 3 separate times for 2-3 months each on three different PCs, and every time I've had different issues.
The windows client has been buggy. Sometimes clicking things just... doesn't work. The pathing for save files is done in such a way that you can't transfer them from PC to PC. Some games just straight up not working. The list went on for me. I figured I'd keep giving it another try on a new system, but not anymore.
I've read some people have absolutely zero issues after years of using it. I wonder why the experiences vary so highly from user to user. Game Pass was an interesting service, but a horrible experience for me.
I've had issues as well with installing games. The worst thing about Game Pass is that the games are installed deep in your file system that you can't access normally. You have to fight with the file manager and mess with ownerships just to copy your save file...
Genuinely an awful user experience. It runs so laggy and slow on my computer, despite relatively modern hardware
Dont forget that it also creates folders that you cannot delete without either booting up a copy of Linux or reformatting your machine.
The Microsoft store is broken. I haven't had issues with Gamepass specifically but I have had issues with the Microsoft store, so buggy that the only fix to download a game was to reinstall Windows. Happened to my desktop and laptop the same.
I had some issues with game pass like you experienced in the beginning, but haven't had problems since.
I used it a lot like 5 years ago when they basically gave it away for $1 a month and then gave you additional months sometimes for $3 if you stayed. I even found a really old Xbox gamepass 1 year card from like 2004, which I got for xmas from an aunt who thought I had an Xbox. My mind was blown when it worked, and then they let you convert that old service into gamepass months for a bit. Anyway, it worked great, no issues at all. The one issue I ended up having was around space, I think. I wanna say it was something weird, like if you deleted the game from the client and it still kept the files. You had to do extra things to make sure they deleted because the files were also kept in the same location as the windows store files, which is a super odd place if you ever seen it.
And how much profit does GamePass make? And how much do the developers benefit from GamePass