I cancelled too! I really wanna see what excuse Microsoft will pull out to walk back the changes.
Hit 'em where it hurts, people.
Netflix Spotify Disney and Amazon proved that price hikes are effective at increasing profits even despite the loss of subscribers. Capitalism baby.
I think the only time collective cancellations actually hurt one of these companies was that time Jimmy Kimmel made fun of the president and it took an estimated 1.7M ex-Disney Plus subscribers.
Maybe, but in the Kimmel case there could have been other reasons too. Like Hollywood people not wanting to make business with a company that would just cancel contacts when they have opinions on public. Disney needs those people, arguable more than subscribers.
IMO, consumer boycotts don’t really work in general, here it might have worked, but it is also possible it worked for other reasons.
Consumer boycotts are pretty much the only strategy guaranteed to work, the only exceptions being Facebook and Google, as they’re the only businesses I can think of that are both primarily B2B, and can operate on speculative liquidity
Pro financial tip: Be a patient gamer. Get the games you are interested in during sales. Fuck FOMO, subscription models and pre-orders.
Lately, I’ve only been buying indie games. I can’t justify dropping $70-$80 on one game and even when those games go on sale they’re usually $40-$50.
If you read reviews and do a little research you’ll find that there are actually a lot of really cool indie games and you can get multiple games for just a fraction of the cost of double or triple A games.
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I always preferred waiting a year for AAA games. Patches, mods, guides and sales.
Even better when GOTY editions or bundles with all the DLC on sale.
Word. Just give me a completed game that is mostly bug free and has all features that are alleged to be part of the game on release.
Yeah, I’ve got so many more games than I have time to play them that there’s never a need to play full price for anything. I wishlist em and pick them up when they’re on sale less than £10
Exactly. My limit is also under 10 eur for most games on my wishlist, or 20 eur for games Im interested the most.
Yeah. I might break my rule for phantom liberty, it’s reduced to £17 at the mo. I’m enjoying cyberpunk so much I might make an exception here! But I’ve still got plenty in my backlog.
While I wouldn’t say it is crucial by any means, it is a fun piece of DLC. I put over 400 hours into Cyberpunk before I got the DLC though, so that may have been why I was okay with purchasing it! Either way, it does make me happy to see someone enjoying the game! :-]
I agree. But if you are on a console and want to play online, you already need a subscription.
I want a subscription free Console that supports online play.
That’s just a computer. If you’ve heard about the steam deck, you can set up a pc to be basically the same but more powerful and permanently hooked up to a tv.
Yeah, I know that this is just a computer. From a skill point of view I have no problem to assemble it and set it up. The thing is I work in IT and spend the whole day on the computer. I do not want to administrate any system in my free time. That’s something I love about consoles. I’m aware they limit the possibilties, but they also low maintenance. I never actively installed system updates on my Xbox Series X, it is just done in the background. I turn it on and play. In worst case I need to install a game update. I have a store interface where I can buy and install games with pressing a few buttons. Inside the game, I do not need to play around with the graphic settings to find what runs best. If at all, I need to decide between graphics and performance mode. That’s what I love about consoles and do not want to have a gaming PC.
Consoles have obvious limitations, but they make it much easier if all you want to do is play.
I do not want to administrate any system in my free time.
Do you have a computer you use at home? How much time exactly do you think it takes to manage a personal computer?
I have a store interface where I can buy and install games with pressing a few buttons.
Seriously, look into a steam deck. The interface is very console-like and you can have it on a normal desktop if you want. Or don’t, you already seem pretty convinced that you only want a console.
I second this. The Steam Deck is the best console and a really cheap gaming PC at the same time. You can emulate and use it for other programs without needing to mod it like you would a console and even though it’s linux, it’s so easy to use. You don’t really need to use the desktop mode for much if you don’t want to, but it’s not bad at all. I’ve switched to Bazzite as my only OS for my main computer because of how much SteamOS has impressed me.
I want a subscription free Console that supports online play.
Sorry, best we can do is a PC or phone
It’s honestly cheaper to just buy games than pay this subscription per year.
Plus, you get to keep the games.
Honestly, I’ve kinda gone back to buying physical media.
I bought DK Bananza on cart, and guess what? After I finished it, I gave it to my brother. Imagine that! Sharing a game you own? Madness.
I’m eager to pick up Ghost of Yotei from the store this afternoon, as well.
For PC games that’s impossible, at most you can find a disc-shaped steam redeem code
Family Share works really well in my experience. It worked better when I could change the users more frequently but this model is still works pretty well.
Is there a way to share a single game and use your library still?
I share my library with my son and when he’s using a game my whole library is unavailable to me, unless something has changed (or I’m old and ignorant … also likely)
And the huge drawback that if the kid finds some “easy trick to win matches” on YouTube and gets vac banned, the parent also gets vac banned
That would be grounds for a 64th trimester abortion IMO
Yeah they (if we’re talking about Steam here) changed their whole family stuff. You can keep playing, as long it’s not the same title.
That part changed. You only share what game is in use now.
That’s why I don’t really use Steam to buy games anymore, too.
At least maybe use GoG if possible to get a DRM free version.
I’ve never gone away from buying physical media, but I could understand exactly why you would want to return to it.
For me, when the Switch 1 came out it was just nice to have everything on the device and you never had to do the most heinous thing of taking a moment to put a cart into the device.
But more and more I buy one to two games a time and focus on those, so that issue is largely not a thing any more.
For me, with the Switch 1, I was worried about wanting to play a game but oh no it’s back at home. Happened a bunch of times with my 3DS.
But then I bought a case that had card slots in it, and that concern wasn’t much of a concern anymore. Then the pandemic happened, and I never really left home anyway, which meant it mattered even less. So now I have a few digital games that are super annoying to share.
The thing about this shit is…
Microsoft, like Google, is now a user-data driven company and they have already made loss/profit ratio analysis on this long before they released the price increase. They’re absolutely banking on people cancelling but making up the difference and then some from the people who stay.
For a thought experiment let’s consider how many subscribers they were reported to have in Feburary: 34 million. Let’s assume that everyone is paying for the highest tier to make the math easier. So current income would be 34 million user x $20 a month and thats $680 million a month. New income of 34 million users x $30 a month is $1.02 billion. The difference is $340 million a month. Let’s divide that by $30 a month. That gets us about 11,333,333 users. So they can hemorrhage over 11 million users and still break even. To make sure, let’s subtract 11 million users. That gives us 23 million users. 23 million users x $30 a month is $690 million a month, a cool $10 million a month above current profits.
For final context, 11 million users is roughly 32% of their entire subscriber count. They can afford to lose a third of the people subscribing and still make money.
The math doesn’t bode well for us who vote with our wallets.
One could imagine that conveniently, Microsoft’s online support pages and the amount of support staff were designed to only handle hundreds of thousands of cancelations at a time.
And it gets even better. Instead of up to 33% leaving, say 50% of that group convert to Premium instead of Ultimate. That isn’t any lost revenue since the price is going up to what Ultimate used to be. So that cushions their numbers even more.
I’m not a licensed math surgeon, but I think your math is wildly optimistic in favor of Microsoft due to how the subscription totals are actually distributed per price tier.
I don’t doubt that they did a lot of math to figure out an acceptable level of churn for this change, I just don’t think it’s nearly as generous and wide as you’re calculating.
There probably is a very real churn limit that they’re trying to avoid, and my hunch is that there exists a breaking point that could be hit with an aggressive and sustained boycott / cancellation spree, but again, I’m not a math surgeon so I could be wrong. That’s just my gut feeling.
Okay, but wouldn’t a higher price also discourage new people from subscribing in the first place? Or are companies that shortsighted?
Most of them are. Just make profit NOW!!
The same math is there too. They can afford to loose one third of new subscribers to get the same amount of money.
But their new customer acquisition cost wont get higher at the same pace and they get more valuable customers whose payback period will be shorter.
Also i dont think its relevant here, but less customers means less operating costs, so they will most likelly save some money on customer service and behind the scenes things like server upkeeps etc., but i dont think these make real difference here.
Also if for some reason things start to go bad they still have option to create “a budget version” for the people who see the normal subscrition as too expencive.
Now factor in the cost savings from a lower server load and less staff to run the back end, and possibly the smaller licensing\use costs for the games available to play since less people would be accessing those games.
But also less new users and still the usual churn of existing users. It could be a downward spiral.
That’s the next CEOs problem.
Yes, but still something they will look at. It means when it becomes unviable with the squeeze already on, those that chose to pay the higher fees lose access to everything as they shut it down. I’m sure they will thank their loyal subscribers, so there is that.
My guess is they realise that xbox users in general is likely on a downward trajectory and now is the time to milk them.
I haven’t subbed to gamepads for years because I knew this would eventually happen. Gamepass was designed to get people used to not purchasing games and instead letting them come to them. Subscribers now have to chose between paying even more each month or losing access to the library of games available to them.
Gamepass only ever made sense to people who had time to play or dabble in a sufficiently large amount of games per year and felt the need to play some new titles soon or immediately instead of waiting. Otherwise, eventually your total subscription costs would outpace the total cost to purchase what you played, especially if purchased on sale at a later date. And the value gets worse if you ever replayed a game (s).
I’ll never really understand the excitement about this service. It was always a Trojan horse.
Gamepass only ever made sense to people who had time to play or dabble in a sufficiently large amount of games per year
Exactly. I only played two games before unsubscribing. You have to have so many free time to make the gamepass worth your while and money.
I learned after a few months of game pass that most of the games that looked interesting actually weren’t. It’s no big loss, and it’s cheaper to just buy the few games I actually want anymore. Doubly true now.
Knowing Microsoft, I’d like to thing that it went down like this:
Pardon me, your department isn’t achieving the expected 20% annual revenue increase.
But we’re just selling subscriptions to games that cost us nearly nothing. It’s free money.
And you need to make more money from it, increase your subscriber count or your costs, or we’ll cut your staff.
Then they cut staff anyways, because why leave free money on the table?
You know, fundamentally, I don’t hate Gamepass as a concept. “Netflix, but for videogames” is an idea I can get behind, as it widens the audience for something I love by lowering the bar of entry. There are plenty of people out there that benefit from being able to play a few games here and there without needing to commit hundreds of hours to $100 purchases.
But Netflix has overstepped with price hikes and ads, and I’ve cancelled my service with them. That Microsoft thinks it can charge some ~$40CAD a month is pure hubris. I hope they learn quickly that, at that price point, the enthusiast market will happily cancel and just buy their games outright, and the casual market will decide it’s an expense they don’t need.
The price increase is absurd. I cancelled too, because while I do play quite a bit, this level of corporate greed is completely unjustifiable to me. If rather watch playthroughs of new games on Twitch or YouTube and then buy them a year later on sale than pay this bloody much, eff that.
To be fair it‘s as absurd as it was inevitable. Gamepass was always meant as this temporary thing you can try out to play some new games until everyone jumps ship because of increased prices. It has been preached for years. No one could‘ve seriously thought this was a long term alternative to buying games or at least buying licenses to games on Steam. All online subscriptions are scams in the process.
Why watch playthroughs at all? Just wait till the games are on sale. And only a year isn’t that long, wait more and get better deals with more complete games. There’s nothing saying you need to hurry in any way, and several things saying it’s a good idea to wait. There are more than enough games available for anyone to not have to constantly claw at the newest releases in any way.
“watch playthroughs of new games on Twitch of YouTube”
welcome to my life for the last couple of many years lol. Not that I’ve been boycotting per se, but I haven’t bought a new game in years cuz my laptop is over a decade old so the best I can play is minecraft, or just use my xbox one for battlefield 4. the corporate greed from the last decade has caused me to never buy this crap again. I love videogames so much, thank god for emulators.
I don’t need any trash EsaudiaA dishes out. People need to go play old/vintage games, get back to the roots, before games were nothing but meaningless cash grabs.
Just so you know, they only thought you were stupid enough to pay more because you were stupid to enough to pay at all.
Use your brain before your wallet. Start torrenting.
Stop being average.
It’s nice they pulled this nonsense during a steam sale. Cancelled and picked up halo mcc and silksong.
silksong isn’t on sale.
Impulse purchase
It’s a pretty low price already, and I personally think the devs deserve it. Hope you enjoy!
A game, where depending on opinion, $20 is only $20.
Coming for the sale and leaving having bought a game not on sale is part of why sales exist!
I already canceled because of the atrocities Microsoft does / is / supports.
Not that the harm hasn’t already been done, but I did just see this: https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/microsoft-pulls-azure-services-from-israeli-military/
Thanks for sharing! Small wins!!
Know also that they did not really pull out completely. They are still there, but made sure to let everyone know they did something.
Oh, so it’s kinda for show.
I canceled. I don’t want the features they added. I don’t even use all the features they charge me for now. I just want to be able to try out so new games every so often. I’ll take the $30 I save and buy those same games, probably with some money leftover
You should start using your brain instead of your wallet and begin torrenting.
For all the money you’ve wasted renting games with gamepass, you could’ve been owning them with a fraction of the cost of a VPN.
I understand, but I do want to support devs, especially indie devs, when u can. That’s why I have no qualms about canceling an expensive service and putting that money directly in their hands when it’s possible
Between the cost of housing and the cost of food, and the fact wages aren’t that much better than they were 15 years ago - you’d think they would realize they are asking for the scraps people have left.
I’ve always just bought games when they’re on a good sale, I’ve never had a game pass type thing. But maybe they just want to squeeze a bit more out of their most loyal customers and they’re accepting that it is a dying model.
Once upon a time, the idea with subscriptions like this was to have customers set it and forget it. Charge them a small/reasonable amount and they’ll keep giving you money forever. Giving people a reason to think about - or worse, evaluate the merits of - the monthly deposit they’re giving you used to be a sin for companies.
But here we are, seeing the difference between “companies” and “corpos”.
…is the difference being publicly traded on the stock exchange? The only company I can think of that doesn’t fall under “corpo” is Valve, and it seems to mostly be because they don’t have to answer to shareholders.
I mean “corpos” in the Cyberpunk sense - mega-huge companies that put profits far and above all else, discarding any notion of ethics, morality, or care about others in the process.
They’re the companies that buy up emerging tech solely so they can kill it (their competition). They don’t give a shit about long-term sustainability - if it raises the bottom line today, they do it. They disregard laws and consumer protections because the only consequences are paltry (for them) fines, which they see as the cost of doing business.
EA also further buried the ability to cancel EA accounts, after the announcement they had been sold to the Saudis and Kushner.
Between that, this, and Disney+ cancellation page “accidentally” going down during that fiasco, this is exactly why I’ve switched to using only virtual cards for subscriptions. Pause/Cancel the virtual card, voila, no more subscription.
Good thing I never signed up for one.
Any Steam game that requires an EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, whatever account is a total non-starter for me. I’ve looked at some of the newer Battlefields when they’re on sale for like $2 and I still can’t be convinced. Likely never will.
Ok with me, there’s lots of other publishers out there, both independents and studios, that I’d much rather give my $2 to.
they dont want SA or kushner to hold an EMPTY bag, but i suspect they will get alot of cancellations in the future. wish they seperate westwood so a proper CNC can be revived.
Westwood, my beloved 😢
Would be good if Maxis also got out of their throes, though that’s extremely unlikely, given The Sims
And Kyrandia!
To be fair, those kinds of changes do not usually happen so rapidly after a purchase, and was likely already planned for implementation and started before the sale.
In other words, it is likely EA was already planning to make that change regardless of if the sale went through or not.
