I don’t think it betrays their profound revelations so much as they probably should have contextualized their based game around this instead. Hotline Miami 1/2 does the same thing in perpetuating the cycle of violence until the bombs go off at the end of it. But I wish TLoU2 baked the premise into the game itself…

Well they charged you regardless of whether or not you played the game. And that was 6 or 7 dollars of way back when money for 2 nights.

I know I’m going to get shouted down for cherry picking here, but Alan Wake 2 chose to release digital only so it could keep the price lower. In the UK it was £49.99 on console when pretty much all AAA releases are now £69.99. So it is possible for digital releases to cost less at the same quality level but... When…

We factually, for an absolute undeniable provable fact, have more options than ever.

No, you can live in a home for an extremely definite amount of time - the single month for which you have paid rent.

No. It isn't. These are luxuries, not necessities, and you send a stronger message by not buying a product than you do by stealing it. Piracy just gives companies excuses.

You’re not talking about the same thing they’re talking about. The people you replied to (and the article) are talking about Ubisoft’s $18/month subscription service, which is very much a rental and not marketed anywhere as a sale, and how their execs seem to want users to grow accustomed to subscribing for games…

First of all, you okay, buddy? You’re awful wound up.

Secondly, in what possible way are they wrong? Are you seriously saying that it’s just as possible to go to a music store or video store and buy a DVD/CD/Blu Ray as it was 10 years ago? You seen a mall lately? Been to a Best Buy to peruse their “media section”?

Whether you have to return something isn’t necessary to define it as a “rental.” For example, you can live in a home “indefinitely” as long you pay the rent every month (it’s called a month-to-month lease). And when you stop paying the rent, you lose access to the property, kind of like a streaming service. That’s…

Let’s be real here, all massive piracy is gonna do is make them come up with newer more draconian methods. Like make their games streaming only or some shit on PC. The only major company to ever respond positively toward piracy by giving a better product than piracy was Valve. Everyone else has either done nothing or…

I know nothing of what you speak. I built this rig 4 years ago for way less than 2k. It’s the 6th machine I’ve built since the mid-90s. Plays everything I buy, even the latest and greatest. Maybe not at max settings, but I long ago grew out of that infantile mindset. I will never pay for a top end card again because…

Naw, fuck the big companies, but his arguments are well considered. Also, game developers, like everyone else, need to eat 

Look, I LOVE gamepass. 0 qualms with paying for it because the value is great.

The sky is perpetually falling in some peoples’ worlds. Seems exhausting. I fail to see how this is different than renting games was from the video store, save for the format of the offering.

Let’s not lose perspective, we’re talking about luxury entertainment here. Piracy isn’t your only option, your main option is to just not play the game if you don’t like its price or monetisation. I’m saying this both as a former game developer and as someone who pirated a lot in my past: you’re not entitled to take…

Agree, I can imagine some people opting to sub for a month to play and finish something like PoP or AC:Mirage rather than pay the full retail price, essentially using it as a glorified rental service. 

“Got comfortable” and “Begrudgingly accepted the lack of alternatives” are two very different things.

Future? Digital has been a thing for almost twenty years at this point and PC has been all-digital for well over a decade. It’s been pretty great, actually. The PC game market has never been stronger and there are a ton of games that simply wouldn’t exist if games were still chained to retail.

Clearly people are ok with not owning their games or media and this is not new - renting was obviously massively popular pre-streaming.

Text to Speech placeholder has been a thing in game narratives for 20 years. We’re talking Microsoft Sam. We had a thing in one game I worked on that if there was no speech audio file associated with a dialogue event line, Microsoft Sam would read line instead. Very embarrassing that Ubisoft shipped with this.