Why You Don’t Own Your Own Video Games Any More
4. It's Only Going To Get Worse
The ambiguity of video game ownership is only going to become more overt with the increasing popularity of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, EA Play, PlayStation Now, Uplay+, and so on.
True ownership is set to sharply decline as players instead invest more of their money in a few subscription services of their choice, in turn being able to play many different types of game - a great deal, for sure - but ultimately have nothing tangible to show for it at the end.
Then there's Google Stadia, which removes another step of physical access from the transaction entirely, because players don't even need to own the hardware, while the game is effectively transformed into a streamed video.
But unlike all the aforementioned services, you also need to cough up dough for every individual game you want to play.
Though it's tough to imagine a global future without Google, the company's own history of supporting its tech projects is poor to say the least, so it's reasonable to be worried less about them going bust as it is them shifting their focus away from video games in the future.
These services are all getting us comfortable with the idea of treating games less as pieces of considered art we place on our shelves and more as disposable one-and-done time-wasters which we're invited to quickly forget about as we move onto the next one, and rinse and repeat.
Moreover, many games are only on these Netflix-like services temporarily, ensuring a future where our shelves are empty and players may largely have only their memories of certain games without any way to actually play them in their original state.
The success of subscription services also has the potential to create a rather troubling knock-on effect in the industry...