Earlier this week, Ubisoft split its self-titled Ubisoft+ game subscription platform into two tiers: Premium and Classics. And while Philippe Tremblay, Director of Subscriptions at the company tried to explain the divide, it was his mildly insinuating comments about gamers getting used to “not owning” their game copies in the future that has brought about a rise of discontent from the gaming industry.
“We looked at the consumer behaviour and how people were interacting with our offer and we saw an opportunity for us to evolve,” Tremblay explained. “When we look at how gamers engage with our different games, we see that our back catalogue is still very active and alive. So we saw an opportunity to offer these worlds to our consumers for a lower fee. And this is a response to the behaviour that we saw from players.”
Subs have been more additive than cannibalistic, and offer players, devs and pubs more choice in how to play or how to go to market. Fear mongering on this topic is quite unnecessary.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 17, 2024
To condense Ubisoft’s new subscription platforms, Premium gives subscribers early access to all of the publisher’s latest game titles, including the newly launched Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, for a monthly fee of US$17.99 (~RM84). For those subscribed to Classics, they’ll get access to the company’s back catalogue, which include Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Siege, plus all the older Assassin’s Creed titles, all for a monthly fee of US$7.99 (~RM37).
One video game industry analyst, Mat Piscatella, disagreed with Ubisoft’s view of video game ownership, offering up his own views on the matter. Piscatella says that the growth for subscription-based games access has flattened out over the years, accounting for just 10% of total content, particularly in the US. “Subs have been more additive than cannibalistic, and offer players, devs and pubs more choice in how to play or how to go to market. Fear mongering on this topic is quite unnecessary.”
Whatever the future of games looks like, content will always be king. But it’s going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not. Direct from developer to players is the way. https://t.co/wEUvd5adt0
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) January 17, 2024
Even Swen Vincke, founder of Larian Games, warned of the dangers of subscription-based video games in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter. He argues that contrary to Ubisoft’s stance on the matter, the content will always be king and that if subscription becomes the dominant model, it will be far more detrimental in allowing game designers to come up with new ideas and content. Given the model’s nature to always end up being a cost-benefit analysis exercise.
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