Folks are getting tired of all the streaming video subscriptions, how long do you think it's going to be before they get tired of gaming subscription services?
The companies will just keep pushing their preferred monetization model until a new generation doesn't know any better. "Oh, sorry sorry, we didn't realize there would be such an uproar, we'll roll it back" *only rolls 80% of it back* *waits a year and then tries pretty much the same thing again*
It sucks but it is inevitable. Physical media is dying. The younger generations are already acclimated to subscription music and subscription movies/TV shows. Gaming is halfway there already. Even the discs you buy at Gamestop rarely have the entire game on there. You still have to download part of the game off their servers. You are just buying plastic trash. We’ve got Steam, Xbox Game Pass, Playstation Plus. That is the future of gaming. Good thing I have 3 decades of arcade, console, and PC retro games downloaded onto hard drives and playable with emulators ☠️
"If buying something doesn't mean you own it, then pirating something doesn't mean you're stealing it"
I predict that in the lab at least, they'll invent a tech that quantum beams a whole show, a whole series, a whole game with no stream, no even breaking it down to bits, the whole thing comes as a glob instantly. But capitalism will prevent it rolling out.
