I never did and never will, if i don’t own my games then the only other option is 🏴☠️
deleted by creator
Yeah and those games are really cheap especially on Steam sales.
The only two types of game services I have seen are MMORPGs and some competitive games.
I have know people that subbed to EVE Online and I personally was once subscribed to Trackmania.
The fun part of it for me was getting to play in the competive scene in Trackmania, though I was very far from being good at it, but my enthusiasm for it fizzled out.
Generally if people are playing these subscription based games it’s because they’re almost always only playing that game and they’re playing it very regularly (multiple hours multiple times per week) to get the most enjoyment out of it or even making money from it.
Ultimately, it wasn’t my thing. I prefer playing multiple types of games and don’t want to feel obligated to play a game I’m paying a subscription for.
As someone who plays EVE Online, it’s a tough one especially with the increase in the monthly sub especially with the exchange rate. For example in Canada an EVE sub is gonna run you bout $30 a month. It’s rough and other games like FFXIV or WoW ain’t much better. FFXIV would be about $24 a month for me.
And the thing with EVE is that rarely can you get away with just having one account. The vast majority of players have multiple because of the nature of the game you kind of have to. Sure you can pay for your sub with ingame currency/PLEX but if your play time is limited due to having a life that’s going to be difficult to achieve.
I gave Xbox Game Pass a try for a bit when I first got my Series S (when Game Pass was still at a reasonable price), but I quickly realised it wasn’t worth the cost. With a subscription, I felt like I had to play as much as possible just to make the most of it, which took some of the fun out of it. What really bothered me was how games could disappear from the service with barely any warning.
I’d rather play at my own pace, so these days I just wait for good sales and buy the games I want instead of sticking with a subscription.
I did a year of Nintendo Switch Online, so my kids could play Animal Crossing with cousins, I could play competitive Tony Hawk, and we could all enjoy the NES and SNES libraries. It was fun but hard to justify outside of that narrow window of triple utility.
At least NSO is cheap unlike Game Pass.
Cheap? It was like $70 for a year.
Even with the expansion pack it is $50 per year. Where did you get that $70 for a year?
Family access, so multiple kids can play online together.
You mentioned NES and SNES in your original comment, so I guess you can do without the expansion pack. That would make it much cheaper even with the family plan.
The low tier is $20 per year
I mean, gamepass ultimate is jumping up to $30/month.
$70 nowadays is cheap, especially since you said you have the family plan (which means multiple users).
Subscriptions to games themselves are a nonstarter for me nowadays - the only ones I see as justified are for MMOs, and I can’t play MMOs anymore in the same way I can’t be in front of the TV for a show by a certain time. Even if I still enjoyed the game loop, and I do not. I tried Game Pass because Grounded was on it to play with my friend for a bit. Saved me some money, but cancelled it after a month and haven’t looked back. (To be clear, Grounded was great, but we beat it and I don’t play survival games alone so I haven’t considered buying it).
This might be a bit outside the question, but I’ve been really impressed with GeForce Now. Lowest latency I’ve seen for a cloud gaming service (which admittedly isn’t saying much, when I tried Shadow it was choppy AF), though I still feel some small input latency. It’s about like Steam Link in my estimation.
I’m sure they’re going to shittify it, but right now for gaming on a low power device like an Nvidia Shield from 2017 it’s surprisingly usable for living room gaming.
GeForce Now is great. But I am using Boosteroid because of the price. I might move to GeForce Now when my subscription with Boosteroid ends.
I’ve never heard of Boosteroid, just checked it out and am surprised by how big they are! How’s the performance (I’m curious as well if you use it over mobile data)? What device do you normally play on?
Performance is good. In terms of graphics it is nearly the high tier of GFN but at the low tier price.
In terms of latency and stability, it depends heavily on your location and how far you are from their servers.
But overall GFN is easier to use. Boosteroid does not automatically discover and add games from your library.
When it first became a thing it was a nobrainer for me. Instead of paying 60 bucks i could get a subscription for next to nothing. Play that one (newish) game i was legimatedly interested in and then try out maybe a few more after that which looked interesting but i wouldnt have bought. Sure, i didnt own the game afterwards. But tbh i barely play through most of my bought games. Playing through them a second time is even more rare.
I did the promotional months a few times on different services over the years and even bought once a legit 3 months prepaid card for PC Gamepass for like 30 bucks. It still was a pretty good deal because i could play Sniper Elite 5 and a few other titles which would have been way more expensive even with deals at the time. But i played through the games i wanted to play in the first month. In the other two months i paid for i barely touched the Gamepass app because the rest of the games catalogue was kinda meh.
I just looked it up. Those 3 months were 3 years ago. Since then it never felt like a good deal to me to subscribe to another service.
I think PS+ Essential is a good price for value if you are a patient gamer like me. If you play newer games mostly, then it probably isn’t worth the value either.
Good things about PS+ Essential for me is that games don’t leave the service once added to the library, of course you have to keep paying for the service. I have been subscribed to it for over a decade now, so I have tons of games in my library that I have yet to play, even not counting games I don’t care about, I get more games than I can play each year.
Every person’s use case is different though, so it probably doesn’t make sense for everyone.
Good things about PS+ Essential for me is that games don’t leave the service once added to the library
That sounds great and much better than how Game Pass keeps making games disappear. I wish more services follow the “add to library” model.
PS+ also has 3 tiers.
- PS+ Essential, is the basic one, gives you 3 games per month, if you don’t add to library they are gone forever, never to return. This also gives you multiplayer and online saves.
- PS+ Extra is your Game Pass like thing, it gives you PS+ Essential features, plus few hundred games, with some games added each month and some getting removed each month.
- PS+ Premium, all of the above, plus cloud gaming and retro games.
I had Extra, but games leaving made me very anxious, I prefer to play what I like, not based on what may leave next, also the price didn’t make sense with the speed I play, so downgraded to Essential.
I don’t think subscription services are worth it, especially in gaming.
I don’t play games fast enough to make it worth it tbh and I’d rather play at my own pace.
I think if someone bounced around a lot and played multiple games at once and likes to try things out, then game pass used to be worth it (probably not at their new rates).
When Game Pass had the $1 for the first month, I used it as a demo service to find games I like.
Humble bundles, maybe not the full subscription, but a new humble bundle full of steam games typically costs about $25 and you get to keep them. Pick and choose the bundles you want, imo that’s better than hoping next month something good gets added, or dreading the loss of an unfinished game
I’m paying $20/year for Nintendo Switch Online. On the one hand, that’s $20 more than it should cost just to access online play, but on the other hand, it’s really not that bad compared to, like, every other subscription service out there, especially Sony and Microsoft. For how often I play online, I am getting my money’s worth out of it. The NES/SNES/GB collections are a nice little extra too, but I probably wouldn’t pay separately for those if it wasn’t tied to the online subscription.
Yeah I don’t even play online. I wish there would be virtual console so I wouldn’t have to pay $20 for retro games.
After this year I might just go back to emulation on my phone.
I could not care less if I tried. I replay games a lot and I have next to no interest in new releases. On top of that, I don’t know a single subscription-based service that offers all of my favorite games.
Literally no reason to care no matter how I look at it.
