5 Greedy Decisions That Changed Gaming For The Worse

In the past, when a person a bought a cartridge, floppy, or CD for a game, they had ownership over that particular unit of the product. Of course, it was still safe guarded by all its copyrights preventing unauthorized re-distribution, but at the very least that particular CD or cartridge was the possession of the person who paid for it. Now with the gaming industry driven by live service models, this is no longer the case. Games hosted on a server and made available online isn’t really yours even if you pay for it. In essence, gamers nowadays are only renting games, something that companies often exploit through various practices.

The live service model, or the monetization strategy where the initial purchase of a game is only an entry fee, with a constant stream of updates being both a requirement and coming at extra charge, has been around for a while. In the late 90s games like Ultima Online and EverQuest provided online worlds and expansion-based models with yearly updates. In the 2000s World of Warcraft helped cement this format as the norm with the introduction of a subscription-based system which required players to pay a monthly fee, going on to attract one of the largest player communities in the history of video games. Subsequently, the likes of L.A. Noire, Mortal Kombat 2011 included Season Passes which gave gamers access to future updates (more on these later). With most major franchises adopting this model, today buying a game only implies you have paid the fee needed to start said game.

This has led to a scenario where gamers may no longer have access to their favourite game as and when they want to, not all of it at least. For example, if the platforms servicing a particular game go down, it may interrupt access for players; which would never have been an issue when people simply owned CDs safely stored in their homes. This is worse for games accessible via services such as Xbox Game Pass. Here games can simply de-listed, meaning people will lose access to something that they technically have already paid for. The adverse effect this has had on the ability to retrieve games and will have on preservation of games has been demonstrated. In a study conducted by the Video Game History Foundation and Software Preservation Network and the University of Washington’s GAME Research Group has found that only around 13% of classic video games (released pre-2010) are still currently playable or available. With ownership stripped away from consumers, this situation may only get worse as companies may be disinterested in spending resources on preserving content that is no longer fetching them a profit.

Another drawback of the loss of ownership is the concurrent loss of the First Sale Doctrine. Before, purchasing a physical game meant consumers enjoyed the privilege of lending, gifting, or even re-selling. Today, the prevalence of digital media has stripped away those rights. What’s frustrating here is that the transition to digital platforms, though bringing its own fair share of issues, did not necessitate this withdrawal of ownership from consumers. This was without a doubt another greedy choice that further expanded the amount of control companies exerted over their customers, all the while creating more subtle and not-so-subtle ways of squeezing more money out of them.