GamePass vs buying games

[Zazigalka]

Recently I tried a basic 3 month xbox pass for PC just to see what it offers. I completed:
-Hellblade II (twice) - fantastic experience, I love story/character driven game genre
-Jedi Survivor - great adventure game

tried Atomic Heart - cool, started but playing Jedi got in the way, hope to finish it though.
tried Callisto protocol - played less than 2hrs, great visuals but I don't think I'll finish that.
tried NFS Unbound - cool, but not for a 40 year old like me

While I really appreciate how much it offers, I don't think I'll be renewing my subscription. I think buying games on sale on steam/gog/epic will still be my go-to method.

What is your personal preference ?

 

[Solaris17]

Buying them. You will never see me get a game or battle pass.

 

[Zazigalka]

Buying them. You will never see me get a game or battle pass.

They're great imo, but not my preferred way. It was fun to try though and ser how much games pass offers, and it offers a lot.

 

[JIWIL]

Not much interests me these days, I'm generally happy paying full price for games that do.

Then there are the ones that I want to support but will probably just go into the backlog.. I'll wait for a sale.

 

[_JP_]

Buying. Having the xbox and already knowing how Gold used to work, everything else that came after is of less value, so it's better off just not having FOMO and buying when it's cheaper. Disc, preferably.

 

[#22]

Few years of having Game Pass PC made me having problem to remind what games I bought recently. For now I recall Hogwart Legacy I bought like half a year ago. Before Hogwart I think Alan Wake 2 and Phantom Liberty both maybe week or two after they launched. Needs to be added that these few years mixed with crazy giving away games for free everywhere, especially Epic, but I think that I played maybe few games from their shop. And what crucial here, I'm not the guy who prefers to play games worse, but free or GP instead of playing ones he wants needing to be bought. In fact I'm totally opposite type, just have money, but naturally driven practice looks like described above for few years.

And I know why. Game Pass made me trying games I would never bought, but also made me extremely picky, making my "gaming life" so much better as a result. I install games and if one doesn't give me some really high levels of fun, I just swap it to another. Again and again until not more after few trials I find something fun enough. It also made me notice that suggesting with Metacritic works quite well, it's worth to sort games you would like to play by their scores and anytime you have no idea what to play taking something fat from the top. Few years listing Game Pass games like that made me notice that 90+ games are ones potentially the best you ever played, 80+ totally worth playing and whatever below almost always ending not worth my time. I ofc make exceptions for sometimes not so well critically acclaimed games I just want to play like e.g. Dragon Ball Kakarot I had so much fun.

 

[64K]

Never bought any type of subscription. The main reasons are that I get no choice in what games will be available and I get no control over how long they will be available. It doesn't cost a lot for me to buy games by waiting a couple of years and buy them for 75% off on a big sale. I don't replay most games after I play them but some I do replay every few years even games all the way back to the 1990s. No subscription would allow me that kind of freedom of choice.

Subscriptions are a good deal for a lot of gamers though. Just not for me.

 

[Mister300]

1.. Good for trying out a game on PC or Xbox. However all games are combo cloud and physical download/install.
2. Very hard to totally uninstall game on PC must jump through hidden protected access files to fully uninstall game. Hits you up with denied access permission BS.

 

[Blaeza]

I just got a 3 month pass to laugh at how bad black ops 6 is. No buyers remorse either as it saves me buying crap games.

 

[DaemonForce]

For me it's both and heavily skewed in favor of buying games on specific shops for a few reasons:
Platform home (Steam/Epic/GoG...)
Disk+DRM clash (Epic/Microsoft)
Fast access for online/offline play
Data vault supremacy (Do I want to see this game in my library?)
Collaborative efforts in small groups where the game is good but along the vein of a seasonal fad

When I open Steam, there are a number of expectations and comforts that have me coming back to it. First and foremost is always going to be the store itself but always waiting for me is a very LARGE and trouble-free library immediately populated with tons of medium/high rank games that I can enjoy online or offline. I don't keep any bad games here (unless they're hilarious) and for the most part, I tend to keep everything installed. More importantly, I do tend to play some of these once in a while.

In current standing, 1.86TB of Steam isn't something that just happens overnight even when slammed with 30GB of Destiny updates here, 7GB of Maiden updates there and so on. I have a number of apps, games, jobs, friends and streams constantly vying for my attention and Steam is sort of a primary comfort to untangle. Yes that sounds completely insane but at the end of the day I trust Steam to deliver and it always does. Thanks Valve.

When I open Epic, I am in a completely separate headspace. Maybe there's some free D class junk that gets pushed to a free period on a Thursday morning or some kind of Genshin/Wuthering gacha that hits the front page but my library reflects something else going on.

Immediately I am reminded of the failure of leadership, fumbling of the baton/beacon and absolute nutfuckery of pulling Unreal Tournament from the library. It was the game that put them on the map. Yet it still sits there, Unavailable. I will reach deep into my ISO library of antiques, install, patch and play Unreal once in a while as it is the great FPS that just won't die. Failing that, I will launch it from Steam because I can still do that. Early Internet culture and total platform adoption probably has a lot to do with this but the game is still very much active and good. It even registers my play time in Epic but I'm sure the time filter is based on local install period of the app and not sync'd with the back end. It looks like I don't play any of these titles and for the most part I really don't. Epic is useful in grabbing whatever I can to try out or stage games for future collabs where I don't want to be waiting forever to download/patch a game so I can hit the ground running the moment we're scheduled. Scuff is not part of my identity. It's either S class workflow or total disaster. It doesn't make sense to normal gamers but neither does loading up the library with games that are stuck there permanently. I cannot remove games from my Epic library. I can delete the binaries but I cannot remove the listings of bad or unwanted games and trust me there are plenty. It's an actual problem and a reason I won't spend a dime in there.

Now truth be known, I don't actually have access to Microsoft Store on this workstation and had to remote into my Surface just to open the app. This is what I see in today's nightmare and it's synonymous with the Xbox app as it runs on the same infra with another coat of paint:

How many of these titles look interesting to me? None. Wasn't the case when I got a code from my Ryzen purchase a few years ago but I wasn't exactly into gaming/streaming at the time either. Bloodstained was pretty fun for the brief few days I got around to playing it so I wishlisted it on Steam and bought it. The Microsoft Store has its own ecosystem for games and similar to my 360 that sees action maybe once a year, it's not a high priority for any kind of gamer nor should it be. It has a history of problems just getting the Xbox app to play nice, Major OS version lockout, Partition block size issues (you MUST use the default 4K) and general DRM issues that have people looking for ways to migrate their Xbox saves to and from the app. Even without my current situation with the app, it's a blight on mainstream computing and deserves total destruction. Maybe Microsoft has cleaned up their act and gotten the app to behave a little better but I would be none the wiser for it. If I install any of these games, they're getting the APPX backed up to NAS and the install portion is going on a separate partition of the VHD variety.

At the moment I still have key codes purchased early on to start the subscription again if I ever need to do so. It makes sense to have full access to the sub only titles again if the library gets interesting enough to demo but you have to be WWI general strategic about it to get ahead. MS Store/Xbox is really good for trying games and maybe buying them at a discount if you are that deeply tied to the store but having instant access to fad/collab/party games to play with others seems to be the best selling point and I'd rather find the games on Steam at a discount than fighting a bad cloud system. Every once in a while there is a gem that appears in the store. It's fun to try out a very big fully featured game here and that's very useful in personal and professional gaming territories. Use the Microsoft stuff for access to good games and access to friends in scheduled collabs. ✔

I was going to put something here about GoG, Ubisoft, Rockstar and others but I don't actually use any of them, meaning I don't need them. Which means you probably don't need them either.

 

[Ruru]

I have PS+ Premium myself and nothing to complain. I have so much unplayed games already on PC so I don't need a Game Pass subscription, at least for now.

 

[Laurijan]

Dependes on the situation if I buy a game or now. Playstation exclusives that usually dont go to any premium service very soon I buy. Lately I sold those discs right away after I beat them to get like 80% of my money back but found out that I usually want to replay some of those games down the line. Had to rebuy Spiderman 2, Jedi survivor and God of War Ragnarök when they were already cheaper - so made to sense to sell them first place. Most stuff I am happy to play from Gamepass or PS+ only and dont care that I dont own the games. Today you really can be sure either if games you own are taken away from a service or if for example services like Epic go bankrupt down the line. Stadia went to hell for example

 

[Dr. Dro]

I do not miss physical media, it's an obsolete medium. I prefer buying games, although I'm also not averse to subscriptions or GaaS - it's all a matter of it feeling right for what I'm getting in return.

I refuse to support platform exclusives and will always wait for the PC release. If it's not on PC it doesn't exist to me.

 

[Frick]

I do not miss physical media, it's an obsolete medium.

This is about movies and shows, but have you seen the kind of hell streaming is in right now? It's not far fetched to think games at some point will face the same situation. Off course in an ideal world the GOG model would apply to all forms of entertainment, but here we are.

 

[Dr. Dro]

This is about movies and shows, but have you seen the kind of hell streaming is in right now? It's not far fetched to think games at some point will face the same situation. Off course in an ideal world the GOG model would apply to all forms of entertainment, but here we are.

I mean, I don't think traditional digital stores like Steam or EGS are going anywhere. It's a good business model for Valve and players seem to be fond of it. GeForce Now requires you to own the games, and Game Pass has always been seen as a complimentary subscription, sort of like a "buffet" of games that you can sample on a rotation. That some are also available to play on the cloud and discounts are offered should you opt for a fixed purchase down the road are quite convenient.

Services like Game Pass lower the cost of entry for the gaming ecosystem and tend to be much more popular in lower income regions. Games are shifting to online GaaS models, if I had to say, the gacha monetization model and the ruthless "end of service" discontinuance of games that don't literally print money - as well as low-effort titles designed to make quick money using this monetization scheme are probably the worst threat and disease to gaming in recent history. Square Enix and Bandai Namco both routinely make these cash cow games and discontinue them as soon as they stop printing easy money.

Out of companies that use gacha monetization, miHoYo is by far the safest option - all of their games are high-effort and have been upkept, Honkai Impact 3rd was released in 2016 and still going.

 

[Vayra86]

Exclusively buying games. Will never sub an on-demand service for games, its bad for the industry, which means its bad for me. My money goes to well built games without predatory monetary policies. I've played my share of the latter, it was fun while it lasted, but it was bad for me. Bad psychology. Bad business model. Bad gaming atmosphere. Addictive aspects akin to gambling. I think a lot of the same tactics apply to on-demand gaming services: they draw you in with a low bar of entry, they get you hooked on an all you can eat model, they push limited availability of content to manipulate you, they'll 'of course' push a yearly or even more frequent price raise because 'inflation', etc. Netflix is already showing its ugly face and its close to getting kicked out the door, too. Its all kinds of bad and I want none of it. The most prevalent and real issue with these services is game persistence and ownership of course. You can't mod your shit. You can't return to your game years later if it happens to be gone. You gotta keep paying the full sub price for content you might play with half a mind or attention, which in my experience happens alot if you're not gaming 'on a clock', ergo lost in the experience, immersed if you will. I really don't see a paid sub fit well with all of that. It just kills the magic.

You will own nothing and be happy, hm? How about I'll own things and be happier and still have money left in pocket. On top of that, I'll even own my time instead of having the nagging idea of not making the most of 'my subs' all the time. I'm done doing 'my dailies' treadmill style gaming, or in other words a self-paid voluntary sweatshop assignment.

Services like Game Pass lower the cost of entry for the gaming ecosystem and tend to be much more popular in lower income regions.

Well that's the thing in a nutshell. Gosh why are the poor, still poor? Part of that is choices made. 'I want this now' won from 'I'll save for it, to own it'. Its a basic principle of good financial management. Anyone telling me they have their subs to game cheaper just deserves an explanation this is not true, but the funny thing is, you're an idiot for telling them, you're wrong, go f yourself is the general response
Then they tell me 'they're just casually gaming'... ah yes, so then its not cheaper to be buying the odd game you really fancy on sale, still? Its like the logic left the wallet with the money.

The real story is NOT lower cost of entry. The real story is people get fooled by the marketing. Game Pass shows you a vision of a world of access to ALL (or many) games, for a perceived low price per month. That's the sell. Its not the truth. But to know this you need to get down the numbers and the actual time investment and the behavioral change you undergo to 'fit the model'. Because that does happen, to many people, I'm certain. You adjust your habits to use that sub better. You will move more easily from one game to the next. You will probably not invest as much in a game to really figure it out anymore as you used to when having bought it. Etc.

To me those were, and still remain, pretty shocking revelations. To consider that commerce and its business model can get so deep under your skin, inside your daily patterns, inside that world you consider escapism because you're just having fun. The degree to which they figured out how to manipulate that behaviour, too. The minds behind this. The why behind it. It would be hilarious if it wasn't over such a pathetic thing, money. It shows you that everything and everyone is fair game to make someone else rich. And the little nudges work so well because they align so well with our deepest urges; to discover, to see more, new things, etc. That's the promise behind the Game Pass too; there's always another game. But that also directly means all of that content diminished in value - because there's always another game.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Well that's the thing in a nutshell. Gosh why are the poor, still poor? Part of that is choices made. 'I want this now' won from 'I'll save for it, to own it'. Its a basic principle of good financial management. Anyone telling me they have their subs to game cheaper just deserves an explanation this is not true, but the funny thing is, you're an idiot for telling them, you're wrong, go f yourself is the general response
Then they tell me 'they're just casually gaming'... ah yes, so then its not cheaper to be buying the odd game you really fancy on sale, still? Its like the logic left the wallet with the money.

The real story is NOT lower cost of entry. The real story is people get fooled by the marketing. Game Pass shows you a vision of a world of access to ALL (or many) games, for a perceived low price per month. That's the sell. Its not the truth. But to know this you need to get down the numbers and the actual time investment and the behavioral change you undergo to 'fit the model'. Because that does happen, to many people, I'm certain. You adjust your habits to use that sub better. You will move more easily from one game to the next. You will probably not invest as much in a game to really figure it out anymore as you used to when having bought it. Etc.

To me those were, and still remain, pretty shocking revelations. To consider that commerce and its business model can get so deep under your skin, inside your daily patterns, inside that world you consider escapism because you're just having fun. The degree to which they figured out how to manipulate that behaviour, too. The minds behind this. The why behind it. It would be hilarious if it wasn't over such a pathetic thing, money. It shows you that everything and everyone is fair game to make someone else rich.

Why is it shocking? I mean, if there is superfluous spending, then games are an integral part of it at any budget - but it's not like gamers are known for their fiscal and financial responsibility to begin with

This is even before any application of sunk cost fallacy, consideration for emotional attachments, etc.

 

[Vayra86]

I just got a 3 month pass to laugh at how bad black ops 6 is. No buyers remorse either as it saves me buying crap games.

You still paid the same company for crap games now though

Why is it shocking? I mean, if there is superfluous spending, then games are an integral part of it at any budget - but it's not like gamers are known for their fiscal and financial responsibility to begin with

This is even before any application of sunk cost fallacy, consideration for emotional attachments, etc.

Exactly, they're preying on the weak, that's what's shocking here to me. Children, too. Actively pursuing it.
'This is fine'.

That's that bar of common sense slowly moving right there. We think this is normal. But even if the movements mimic what we've seen with physical products... its not the same thing. It moving to the digital world, and then, the online digital world is a new territory. You see similar things with social media. We had focus groups before that, we had all of the bad of society before that. But when it gets online, it gets ugly, fast.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Buy, have hundreds of games on steam

 

[Sithaer]

I'm on my second full year of Game Pass Ultimate cause someone dear to me keeps gifting keys to me.
Before that I was kinda against these sub based things but honestly Game Pass really does work out for me, there are enough games to last me a year if not 2 and thats not including the new games being added to it. 'counted it a few days ago cause this topic came up recently, theres literally 40+ games on GP that I'm interested in'
Even IF I had to buy the monthly keys myself its still the best bang for buck option for me so if that happens thats what I will do.

I've used to prefer owning stuff in the past heck I even liked to have my box copy of games but eh times change so get on with it grandpa.
Single player games I don't care about owning anymore unless its something that I 100% want on day 1 no questions asked and its not on GP and the games I plan to play long term like live service games with constant updates then I just buy those right away anyway.

Tbh GP is a lot better for me than hoarding games from sales that I will never end up playing or only play once maybe.

 

[Frick]

Well that's the thing in a nutshell. Gosh why are the poor, still poor? Part of that is choices made. 'I want this now' won from 'I'll save for it, to own it'. Its a basic principle of good financial management.

There are so many asterisks around all of those words. It's a downwards spiral: if you're poor enough it's impossible to have "good financial management", and I'd argue the very concept is flawed, at least as you use it. People don't get into financial trouble because streaming services, people get into trouble because addiction (including shopping/spending). And when poverty is involved the age old question comes into play: sure I can spend a year saving those €500 I need for that thing, but I sorta need/want that thing now and if I spread those €500 out over the year it's €50/month with the interest and stuff, and that I can manage but I just don't have €500 now. Or €200 is too much, but €22/month for a year? Managable.

 

[Vayra86]

There are so many asterisks around all of those words. It's a downwards spiral: if you're poor enough it's impossible to have "good financial management", and I'd argue the very concept is flawed, at least as you use it. People don't get into financial trouble because streaming services, people get into trouble because addiction (including shopping/spending). And when poverty is involved the age old question comes into play: sure I can spend a year saving those €500 I need for that thing, but I sorta need/want that thing now and if I spread those €500 out over the year it's €50/month with the interest and stuff, and that I can manage but I just don't have €500 now. Or €200 is too much, but €22/month for a year? Managable.

Correct. In the end its the urge of wanting it now, winning from the discipline of saving for something to finally get it. And that is a mode people get into and apparently find hard to get out of.

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

I stopped playing new games, and don't care about them. I like the old games more, which i can play offline. I will NEVER pay for an online subscription, and pay monthly for that.

 

[Laurijan]

I stopped playing new games, and don't care about them. I like the old games more, which i can play offline. I will NEVER pay for an online subscription, and pay monthly for that.

Being in part time job now i had time to beat many of my backlog games. Mostly older stuff I started at some point but didnt beat. Last couple of month I really didnt have to buy new games when backlog consists of stuff I own for years now. Next game im gonna play is Star Wars Outlaws but wont buy it for 130 bucks to play gold edition 3 days early, just gonna take 1 month of ubisoft plus.

 

[kapone32]

If the Game is good enough it gets a full price Green Man Gaming discount. I have already bought Space Marine 2. I appreciated Game Pass when I was playing FH5. After about 2 months I had done all of the things I wanted to. There are caveats to Game Pass as well as you don't own the Game and therefore as per MS have no access to the files. I have been PC Gaming since I was 9 or 10 also lived in Arcades so things like Humble Choice are way better than Game Pass to me as I can share that with my friends and family but still own the key to the Game. Epic has given away enough quality Games to change their narrative so they must be mentioned in this discussion.

MS owns the biggest franchises so you can expect that even more things come to Game Pass but MS is not Humble or CD project in philosophy so that remains to be seen.