Video Game Ownership Is Already Dead

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay said something that, frankly, is not surprising to hear from a director of subscriptions: He wants players to grow “comfortable with not owning your game.” To hear those players tell it, he’s gonna have to win over a tough crowd. But companies have already laid a lot more groundwork on this front than players are ready to admit. Video game ownership, in this day and age, is more a brand-conjured illusion than something you can grasp with your own two hands.

Tremblay’s comments came in the wake of a sermon about changes to Ubisoft’s subscription offerings, which just got rebranded to fit under a larger umbrella: the $17.99 per month Ubisoft+ Premium subscription. This service promises “100+” games, day-one releases, and early access to new releases, along with premium editions and regular rewards. However, again, it costs $17.99 per month. That’s more than some Netflix, Hulu, and Max plans, and more pertinently, it exceeds the price, even, of Xbox Game Pass’ $16.99 “Ultimate” plan, which gets you access to hundreds of games across PC and Xbox, as well as day-one offerings, deals and discounts, and an EA Play membership. Ubisoft+ Premium also does not compare favorably to PlayStation Plus’ $14.99 “Extra” plan or its $17.99 “Premium” plan, both of which get you hundreds of games and numerous other benefits, one of which is “Ubisoft+ classics.” (And of course, Ubisoft+ Premium positively falters in the face of an Aftermath subscription, a $1,000,000,000,000 value, yours starting at $7 per month.) 

But there is another, larger issue at play here, which has resulted in much dunking on Tremblay over the course of the past 48 hours: People like to own their video games -- or rather, they enjoy the idea of owning games, regardless of how feasible it is to actually do so in this era of constant updates, connection requirements, server shutdowns, and accounts on services that are not guaranteed to last forever. Compared to mediums like television, film, and music, the contrast is stark: Subscription-based platforms have come to overwhelmingly rule those industries, whereas even Game Pass – the video game industry’s most prominent equivalent – is just a small slice of Xbox’s gooey green pie. Other big-name efforts, like Netflix’s own excursion into the world of video games, don’t seem to be doing so hot. When GI.biz asked Tremblay about this discrepancy, he offered little in the way of illuminating insights. 

"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," he said. "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. … 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.”

So basically, Tremblay seems to think that gamers right now are where TV, film, and music buffs were a handful of years ago, and if Ubisoft just stays the course, everything will work out. Maybe he’s right! Maybe thanks to services like Game Pass, the dominoes are already falling, and it's only a matter of time. I’m not gonna try to predict the future here, because I’m a crummy fortune teller even when it comes to gazing into the far-flung future of an hour from now and divining when I’ll arrive at a function. But I do want to point out that on this front, video games are meaningfully different from their entertainment industry compatriots. Subscription services are not inevitable, though predominantly because players are so obsessed with surface-level ideas of ownership that they've allowed companies to sneak under the hood and swap out the engine while players continue to stand watch over a piece of plastic.

Where subscription services are concerned, there are some clear walls to climb, beginning with tech constraints that continue to encourage more traditional approaches to ownership. Many games require quick reaction times, and even a bit of lag can poison the well. Last year I streamed Starfield over Game Pass to my phone, my Steam Deck, and my TV, and I noticed only a few hitches, but not everybody is as fortunate -- or as willing to pulverize their bank accounts -- as I am when it comes to internet speed. That unto itself is a major stumbling block, one that means true ubiquity for video game subscription services is likely at least a few years off, if it ever comes at all. Games are also typically longer than other entertainment experiences; where somebody might watch a movie in a couple hours or marathon a TV show in a week, a meaty game can linger in life’s orbit for months or even years. It’s easy to justify subscribing to a service for the sake of several shows, but for folks who only play a few games per year, a small handful of purchases (especially discounted ones) is a significantly better deal. 

If we go a layer deeper, we find that notions of ownership permeate not just games themselves, but the entire culture. This goes all the way back to the console wars of the Nintendo vs Sega era, which were and remain a shamefully embarrassing black mark on our collective history, but a lasting one. Nowadays hardcore PlayStation and Xbox (and to a lesser extent, Nintendo) fans don’t just buy consoles; they allow purchasing habits to define their perceptions of who they are. They jealously guard their chosen platform’s stock of exclusives, as Microsoft fans recently have with the likes of Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves, both of which might be testing the waters of free agency. Toxic as the mindset is, ownership is investment, and investment is identity. Companies benefit from this too: Who wouldn't want an audience that shows up early and often and does a large chunk of your marketing for you?

The idea of ownership is everywhere within games, as well. Steam doesn’t just allow users to amass hundreds or thousands-strong game libraries via countless sales of increasing specificity; it also features a vast community marketplace of in-game items players can buy and sell for real money, which constitutes an economy unto itself. Valve went so far as to hire an actual economist about this over a decade ago. That economist ended up becoming Greece’s minister of finance. Meanwhile, Counter-Strike players went on to become rainbow knife-obsessed skin perverts, which has resulted in more child gambling rings than you would generally want associated with your game.

Other games do this on a smaller, more individualized scale, boasting microtransactions and earnable items with real-world value. It’s worth noting that many of those games are now free-to-play, suggesting that gamers are plenty willing to sacrifice upfront ownership and start buying in later once they’ve let their defenses down. But even gacha games and other genres where the whale-est of whales gleefully part ways with thousands of dollars are a fundamentally different – and more ownership-pilled – proposition than TV shows, films, and music. Players like to make games theirs via cosmetics, purchasable characters, and things of the like. They demonstrate allegiance as a direct and consequential part of their interaction with the medium, not just while on social media or out and about. And they are understandably wary of those digital possessions suddenly going poof. Last year alone, over 60 games – many of them popular in their heydays – got taken permanently offline by publishers.  

However, in that sense, the very idea of video game ownership, though an ostensible pillar of the medium, is smoke and mirrors. It is no longer possible to own many games – or large portions of them, at least. Publishers can wipe servers and prohibit fans from hosting backups, or offer fans a license to host a backup that they can revoke at any time. They can delete characters for violations of terms of service, or just because they feel like it, if they really want. Same with accounts on platforms like Steam.

Heck, even more straightforwardly single-player games are now liable to be Ship-of-Theseus-ed into fundamentally different products over time. Cyberpunk 2077, which everybody loves because its developer overwrote what it once was, like a Relic turning its host into a brain-dead meat puppet, is a great example. Can you really own that?

This is not to discount the great work being done by video game preservationists, or the options offered by DRM-free services like GOG and, on the indie side of things, Itch.io. They are, however, swimming upstream, against the prevailing current of the industry.

Still, ownership as a concept maintains a certain power, one that makes propositions like Ubisoft’s new service a no-go for many. This did not happen in a vacuum. With services like Max going on merciless darling-killing sprees to secure tax breaks while upping subscription fees at a rate that’s almost impressive in its cynical audacity, audiences are learning that subscription-service impermanence can be a raw deal. It does not have to be that way for video games, and perhaps video game fans are wising up to that. Subscription fatigue is real and getting worse. In that sense, at least, I would argue that time is decidedly not on Tremblay's side.

But if the goal this week is to make him take as many Ls as possible for his ill-considered words, I have some bad news: His side has already won, regardless of how things turn out where subscriptions are concerned. Video game ownership is now nothing more than an idea, and it's very difficult to own those.