I'm happy he did actually say it
I'm happy he did actually say it
This statement was made by Ubisoft's director of subscriptions, Phillipe Tremblay, who recently spoke to Gamesindustry.biz about the digital future and Ubisoft Plus specifically. Tremblay states that people eventually "got comfortable" with not owning their CD or DVD collections, and that a similar shift in attitude "needs to happen" in gamers.
They need to get used to not being paid for their games
181The push to live services, online DRM, microtransactions, DLC and other such things is because they have identified that there is more money to be made as a 'server operator' than a 'game developer.'
They don't really care about getting paid for the game, they'd rather give it away for free if they can make more money off controlling the servers.
30Exactly. This is only about finding the most effective way to suck the most amount of money from the gaming market.
12
Hah. Ubisoft execs think they should be paid whenever someone produces a Let's Play with one of their games. They're the horniest of the publishers with respect to game streaming.
They are beyond adament that they own your experiences. If they never see a piece of physical media again, they'll still be upset that their old games are still playable without their say so.
20
Ubisoft execs need to "get comfortable" with eating shit.
87That's fine. I don't really claim to own the things I pirate.
87He better get used to not making money…
But who am I kidding gamers have 0 impulse control.
Either way I have enough retro games to last me a lifetime.
79Either way I have enough retro games to last me a lifetime.
same tbh, there is a reason !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works is up in the lemmy explorer
16I still don't understand how people can look at the Ubisoft logo and not throw up in their mouths a little. Like, how is AC still huge after 15 years of putting out the same game copy and paste style?
15Because they copy paste the gameplay, in different environments. Like "travelling to the past". I recall AC being praised for the accurate portrayal of the environments they presented. Idk if that has persisted.
I have never played the game and never will because playing a game where your dude gets into a machine to watch the memories of an antecesor of you who was a kick ass assassin and then playing as the assassin doesn't really call me, but it did to plenty people.
1
If I can't expect to own it, then you'd better not expect me to buy it.
48Thats fine, the normies will, and then it will become normal just like everything else awful that is their fault for going along with it.
16That's ok for them though, you and me will sail the seas finding adventure and friendship and shit while they sit on their doodoo drm islands
12Remember how the ps4 mocked the Xbox one for not being able to lend games, then the PS5 launches with a digital edition, and then a slimmer version launches with only digital and you have to buy a separate disc drive?
4
It's nice that he's being honest about the bullshittery but all the same he can shove it. Glad I haven't bought a Ubi game in years and it doesn't look like that's going to be changing any time soon.
45Every single time Ubisoft opens their stupid mouths, it reinforces my decade old decision to boycott them.
30That’s cool. I’ve not played Far Cry since Primal, and have not played any Ubisoft games since Far Cry 4. So, I’m very used to not paying for or playing Ubisoft games.
29Even if I pay for a Ubisoft game through a place like Steam I still download it elsewhere because I hate going through their launcher.
6
"needs to happen" ...for what?
28It needs to happen in order to increase profits.
27
I feel no need to own any further Ubisoft games. That's for sure.
25I've never gotten comfortable with not owning CDs or DVDs. In fact, if I really really like a movie or album, I obtain a physical copy. If it's an independent artist, I'll even buy it directly from the record label.
And so far, I've been able to stream everything else when I just want to get my entertainment fix ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
24I'm in the same boat. I like having physical copies of my favorite games, music, movies, and shows. I also like supporting the artists/productions, so it's a win-win that i can buy their products. I've always struggled to understand why someone would pay the same price (or nearly as much) for a strictly-digital copy.
Making everything fully digital has its advantages but i never once thought it would act as a complete replacement for physical media.
8Digital can be just as good as physical, I buy just as many mp3s as I do CDs, but most industries are too greedy to offer good digital options
4I’ve always struggled to understand why someone would pay the same price (or nearly as much) for a strictly-digital copy
Convenience. I've been in situations where it seemed easier at the time to just buy a movie on Amazon. For example, if I'm on vacation or a work trip and I really want to see something.
But that was before I learned about which sites were safe to use for streaming and had high quality content.
Also, I've learned that my library still has a large DVD collection, so I apprise myself of that.
2
Similar to what happened to Netflix, competing services will harm this process. Currently the most comparable to old Netflix is the Xbox Game Pass; which if companies like EA and Ubisoft pulled their games from; it would be way less prefered.
As the profits that come to these companies decrease, they'll be more tempted to focus more on their own subsctiption platforms. Game industry has this trick up its sleeve that some games can be played 1000s of hours, but even adding games of this nature; satisfying every player with a single subscription service is impossible.
23points a tall bookshelf in his house
Those are board game I got to quit playing video games. Bonus points here...drumroll....I own all of them.
22DRMs your board games
9Sooo, over 10 years ago, somebody came up with the idea for a hybrid board game: Golem Arcana. It's a board game...that requires an app to play.
Of course, the app was proprietary, and it's no longer supported, so now the game is dead, because the app won't run on modern phones.
12Shit. You're right. Fucking Werewords.
1
I Rather pay more once. And actual own my games. Than get nickeld and dimed. And own noting..
22I'm playing an Ubisoft game right now; if a game is cheap enough on Steam I don't care who the publisher is. So I got Immortals Fenyx Rising in exchange for dirt.
It bears all the signs of a great creative team getting fucked over by exactly the sort of idiot who runs his mouth like that guy. There's even a demo level, explicitly called such in the game, for the now-cancelled sequel, how sad is that? The control scheme isn't completely ironed out and has some screwy behaviour in niche situations. There's a huge wait as you load the game while it checks the server for updates which will never come, duration of nearly a minute and sometimes longer, the sort of thing that a responsible company would remove when updates are no longer forthcoming (surely it's at most a few lines of code, and circumventable by one); and I haven't finished the game yet but it seems right now that the main story-giving NPC who hangs out at your base is just selling fuckin macrotransaction cosmetics. Tacky, and you can taste the dev team's resentment in being forced to include it.
21Ubisoft directors might need to become comfortable hiding quietly in dark attics when the revolution comes.
20Somewhere they don't own, apparently.
14Sadly this "own nothing and be happy" world only exists for those who don't make hundreds of thousands for the great gift of destroying the world for everybody else.
7
I've felt very comfortable not buying a single ubisoft game since rayman legends, a great game that i use my pirated copy to play because it works better than the DRMriddled version i paid for.
Generally i don't even bother to steal ubisoft games since i haven't played a good one (imo) since early early far cry or asscreed2
19AAAAAA FUCK COPYRIGHT, FUCK INTELELCTUAL PROPERTY, FUCK CORPORATIONS
17While i would sate that in a slightly different way i do agree with you, also i recommend you to remove word these, it would enhance quality of this statement.
3THANK YOOU!
1
Even buying a game digitally from most storefronts doesn't mean you actually own it. You simply buy a license to play it. Look what happens if your Steam account gets permanently banned for violating their ToS, you'll lose access to any game you paid for on that account. Same thing with Microsoft or Sony. I think GOG might be an exception to this, where they will never revoke access to the games you previously bought, but I am not 100% sure of their policies.
Regardless, all gamers will never fully embrace subscription purity. There are so many games that require a lot of time to complete, especially so if you're an adult with lots of responsibilities who can only game here and there. For example, Baldur's Gate 3 is massive and I've owned it since launch. I've only gotten to Act 2 with like 60 hours clocked in and I still want to play it to finish. However, if it was on a subscription service, I'd be constantly stressed that it'd be leaving the subscription any day.
And what about classic games (includes new games that become instant classics) I'll know I'll always treasure and want to be able to play whenever I'm in the mood? To this day, my wife will randomly bust out Mario 64 or even a more niche game like Fable 2 and just have them be her comfort food for a lazy weekend. Hell, just a few months ago we got our our original Xbox to play some Fuzion Frenzy for nostalgia sake. Can't do that with subscription models.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I just absolutely loathe this crushing pressure by corporations to force our entire economy into being rent based. Every expert economist has been warning us about the dangers of this for at least the last 10+ years, and yet consumers keep blindly marching towards it because it's "convenient," totally ignoring the long-term consequences.
16even more niche games like Fable 2
Ouch 😂 I remember playing the shit outta Fable 2; it's a great game and holds up pretty well even today, easily one of my favourites. I always thought that Peter Molyneux got treated too harshly for overpromising, and I stand by that to this day. Dude made good games, just not as good as he said they were gonna be.
3Ill wager it was just Molyneaux was a bad dev in a better age, before all games were released unfinished and had an online component, and dlc was truly dlc, like horse armor, not a part of the game deliberately withheld during development.
Games were expected to be finished products that lasted as long as you didn't break the install disk.
We've gone a long way down since I've been gaming
3
I think GOG might be an exception to this, where they will never revoke access to the games you previously bought, but I am not 100% sure of their policies.
They are, when you buy a game from gog they send you the installation files. You install and run it with your own hardware whereas with Steam and other digital gaming companies you are just getting access to the game on their servers. By sending you the installers and letting you play independently from their servers gog gives up the ability to lock you out. It's the primary reason that they should be the first choice for where to buy a digital version of a game. The upside is that it's the closest you can get to actually owning a digital copy of a game; the downside is that playing on another device requires that you transfer files and reinstall rather than just logging into a remote server.
2and yet consumers keep blindly marching towards it
Consumers are being frog-marched friend, we have absolutely no control over market forces. Voting with your wallet only works in highly competitive markets
1
You start making your microtransactions actually micro - transactions too small to do with real money, ie things that cost less than a cent - and maybe we'll consider this, you raging fucktard. I might even pay you 2c extra so that I can have all the clothes in a game I really like - the actual value of digital "goods".
16comfortable? tell that to my 24tb nas.
13"You can trust me not to eat the cabbage" says the goat.
10Lol the guy is the director of subscriptions even. It's like asking a vampire his thoughts on blood
4
You can't steal something if you can't own it Arrrr..
And really most of these AAa companies don't make any great games anymore, just cheap cash grabs, why would even care about them
9Tremblay’s gotta get used to people pirating ubi games.
9Tremblay's view on physical games isn't that shocking, considering he's a director of subscriptions, but he does leave out some concerns shared by many when it comes to subscription services. For starters, games actually do come and go on these services right now, with the most recent example being Grand Theft Auto 5 leaving Xbox Game Pass. If you play games only via subscription services, you can very easily lose access to certain titles on a regular basis.
Secondly, games that are pulled from online stores, for one reason or another, would mean they cease to exist in an all-digital future. Two high profile example are the original Alan Wake and Ubisoft's very own The Crew, both of which were pulled due to licensing issues. While the former eventually returned to digital storefronts thanks to the recent remaster, The Crew can no longer be bought and will poof out of existence on March 31, 2024.
I can see a lot of people being fine with that idea when it comes to subscriptions. I think people have kind of gotten used to the idea with content coming and going off of sites like Netflix.
I thought this has to do with DRM and license agreements when I first saw it.
6Permanently Deleted
0
It strikes me that this attitude might carry more weight if it came from a company with a better library... I mean, they have a handful of good games, most of which are quite old, and otherwise, mostly act like a cheap sequel machine.
5If it came from sony than sony fans gonna make it norm for everyone
5I really wish I didn't agree with you though same could be said of the Xbox or Nintendo fanatics. Whichever tyrant dictates it will find a following among the fanboys
2
"You will own nothing and like it"
4I have gamepass and it's fine. Large library, no penalty for choosing a stinker means I can experiment with games I wouldn't have before, and I can still buy games if I want. I think that's a reasonable middle ground that benefits everyone to some degree.
0Until they remove a game you like from gamepass with no recourse and no explanation.
8They've removed plenty of games. At least so far, there's always been notice a few weeks before they leave and the game remains in the store for purchase.
I've actually bought a few games on steam because I could try them on gamepass. No man's sky, last call bbs, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night come immediately to mind.
3