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Overwatch, Counter-Strike, Battlefield and countless others are tapping into the dark side of human psychology by charging players to maybe win something they want. So we’ll see some changes to how DLC works, it seems, but it’s likely to stay around in some form for a long time yet. We don’t have details yet, but Battlefront 2 this year seems to be saying that they won’t have DLC, or at least none that prevents all of their fans from playing together. Now, however, they’re beginning to realise that charging for extra multiplayer maps, and having only some players migrate over leaves all of their map servers underpopulated. This was never a popular approach, but it did work, and it helped AAA games remain viable despite their massively inflated budgets. DLCĪAA has been trying for years to squeeze extra pennies out of their fans by charging more for more content, and it’s gone as far as the total DLC costs sometimes now even costing as much as the core game.

#Sid meiers starships gene4rosity for free#

Both now offer the game for free at lower levels of play, but retain the subscription if you want a more complete experience. Granted, these games are both over a decade old, but if these titans don’t think that a subscription fee for their games is completely viable any more then it’s doubtful that newcomers will adopt the model either though it remains to be seen if this F2P/subscription blend will do the job for either of them. End of Game Subscriptions(?) If WOW has gone Free To Play, that’s saying something… then again, it’s 10 years old so…Įve Online and World of Warcraft have both been retreating a bit from their monthly subscription models, chasing after their dwindling player bases. Suddenly you’ve way more time to play games, but now have to cancel your subscription because you can’t afford it. In the last post, I mentioned how things like EA Access or a potential Steam equivalent could be disastrous for smaller games, but this is one way that EA is already trying to battle the downward trend in the perceived value of games. Hats off for trying, but I really hope they don’t succeed with this. Imagine you get laid off from work (as is quite the modern reality).

This is where you basically pay a subscription and get access to a library of games as long as you’re still paying. What’s Happening Today? Library Subscriptions I want to look at what is being done, and what might be done about this. The problem as I see it is that there’s a race to the bottom happening with the traditional pricing models, and while many, including myself, still prefer to pay for and own a copy of the exact game they’re looking for, the margins are shrinking all the time and in the future we may have far less games to choose from as smaller developers may no longer be able to afford to run studios, and even larger ones will be far less willing (even less than they are now) to innovate with their games. We stand to lose so much as gamers if certain trends take root over the next decade or so.

If we’re not careful, we’ll get to where there’s no money to be made in games and only the most trite, generic, relatively low cost and mass-appealing titles (the Call of Duties and FIFAs) will be financially viable. The success of Spotify and Netflix’s models in other industries concerns me and we see a bit of a move in that direction with things like Humble Bundles, EA Access, and console equivalents. To briefly sum up what I’ve said before, I’m concerned by an increasing trend towards heavily discounting games earlier and earlier ( Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Titanfall last Christmas, for example) and the effect that this has on the perceived value of games. So I wanted to follow on from last month’s blog and continue to discuss the possible future of games monetization. Deus Ex Mankind Divided tried some new ideas… in a premium game… it didn’t go down well.