Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get 'Comfortable' Not Owning Their Games for Subscriptions to Take Off

“Philippe Tremblay, director of subscriptions at Ubisoft, explained to GI.biz what needs to happen before subscription services become a more significant slice of the video game business.”

One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That’s the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That’s a transformation that’s been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don’t lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That’s not been deleted. You don’t lose what you’ve built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it’s about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.

"I still have two boxes of DVDs. I definitely understand the gamers perspective with that. But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you’ll be able to access them when you feel like. That’s reassuring.

They want games to be like streaming movies and TV shows. He talks a lot about how “reliable” those streaming services are, and thus people felt comfortable ditching their DVD and Blu-ray collections. But the funny part is that the lack of reliability in those spheres is leading to a huge increase in piracy. So how comfortable are they really not owning their media? Partly I think it’s that once people got comfortable ditching those collections and relying on streaming, they were able to squeeze customers and it started getting worse. I feel like this happens with everything as the growth curve reaches its limit.

No one knows where to find stuff, ads are increasing even for paid subscriptions, you have to go to multiple services to finish one show, and sometimes they’re removed and nowhere to be found (not even moved to another streaming service or physical media), prices are increasing faster and faster, work is being canceled after the artists and creators have put in their effort but before it’s released, and Google is pulling all that shit with ad-blockers and YouTube. Right now game subscriptions seem great, but I’m sure they will be no different once they reach maturity in this cycle.

Despite capitalism being the best system for protection of private property according to its advocates, I’m fairly sure our oligarchs would prefer if everything worked on a rentier model and we owned nothing (and everything we do own, we are in debt for).