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.
If I don’t own it, I am not paying for it.
Wut?
If you don’t own it when you buy, it’s not stealing when you take it.
Well, that’s not really true isn’t it? I’m not against stealing games from corporate devs, but imagine you decide to get a kick ass printer, those they use in companies. Those printers are usually leased, not bought, and the printer leasing company usually updates and upgrades it every X time. The company pays for the use of the printer, but they don’t own it. The leasing company is very clear in what they are selling you, they are selling you a service. You still need to have a place to store the printer, you still need to pay for the ink used, you still need to have paper, just as a game needs storage space, a gpu and all the periferals.
Imagine if taking a printer from the leasing company makes them lose 0 money in material costs, since this is what happens with digital goods, they still lose money from you being able to use the printer without paying the lease, when you would originally not be able to use it if they didn’t develop it. In that sense, what you stole is their revenue from the lease.
All of this to say that pirating IS stealing, and I still do it proudly. All of this to say, either they let me own it or I’m stealing it.
They need to get used to not being paid for their games
The 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.
Exactly. This is only about finding the most effective way to suck the most amount of money from the gaming market.
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.
Ubisoft execs need to “get comfortable” with eating shit.
If I can’t expect to own it, then you’d better not expect me to buy it.
He 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.
Either 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
I 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?
That’s fine. I don’t really claim to own the things I pirate.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
If buying is owning, piracy is still not stealing. Theft involves a tangible loss for someone else.
Which is a shame, because if I could create tangible loss for Ubisoft by downloading their games, I would do nothing else until they went under.
According to their logic, you can set up a shellscript that repeatedly copies an ISO of theirs to /dev/null. That should bankrupt them after a week or so.
Where’s that greentext with the guy who takes over a company by pirating their game 100k times?
Ubisoft directors might need to become comfortable hiding quietly in dark attics when the revolution comes.
Somewhere they don’t own, apparently.
points 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.
I’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)_/¯
I’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.
I Rather pay more once. And actual own my games. Than get nickeld and dimed. And own noting…
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.
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.
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.
