[georgeecollins]

I am surprised this reply gets down voted because it is pretty accurate. Video game makers/publishers (I am one!) design and distribute games based on what they can make money on. People tend to be cheap about entertainment, particularly the biggest consumers who have more time than money. So they complain about free to play but probably download 20 free to play games for every premium one they pay for. It's their right to do so. But they do tend to pick whatever is cheapest to them up front.

[dns_snek]

It's being downvoted because it's baseless fearmongering.

We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it! In my experience, the tide started turning around 15 years ago, every big release started getting infested with in-game payments, always-online components, and most titles took away our ability to self-host servers.

With those changes, their profits skyrocketed - but greedy bastards running the show never seem to have enough, so they kill unprofitable games to get everyone to move to their new product.

Personally I don't buy AAA games anymore - partially due to these hostile practices, partially because their creators have lost any semblance of taste. Indie games and smaller studios are still pumping out real gems that don't implement any of these predatory practices at the cost of $20-50.

[johnnyanmac]

We seem to be falling to mob mentality. Someone upstream compared a video game to a pacemaker, this is a horrible analogy and frankly just shows how entitled the gaming audience is.

>We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it!

And you still can. If you want real change vote with your wallet instead of saying "but no, I want THIS game to be playable for free forever!". But clearly others have already voted. It's not going away.

Nothing is forever. I see a game I may want to play X years later, I don't play if if it looks like it'll shut down <X years later. I don't bother clinging to keep other games open, I just move on to what's new. Or you know, not worry because I play mostly single player games.

>Indie games and smaller studios are still pumping out real gems that don't implement any of these predatory practices at the cost of $20-50.

yup. And look what the most profitable games are. Again, wallets have voted. We are the niche, the minority. And that's okay, that's just my life as a nutshell.

[triceratops]

It's being downvoted because there are plenty of DRM-free, no server-required games in existence today and they don't cost $100 + a monthly fee. AAA games back in the days when they were distributed by CD-ROM or disk didn't charge a monthly fee either.