Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Unlike the streaming services though, you can still buy the games whether they are on Game Pass or not so this is just not true.

Is it a controversial opinion to say that I think game ownership is overrated?

Like, I agree its bad when like Destiny sunsets content you paid for, or sells expansions where all the content isn't in the game any more. Or when Ubisoft revokes the licence of a game you paid for and now you cant access it. Or a game is always online and they close the servers so you cant play them. I agree these are all real issues.

But in the context of Gamepass when people talk about ownership and talk about this dark future, like I don't care if I am being honest, I just don't.

Like maybe you're different, but I'm gonna say 95% of all the games I purchase I only ever play once. So for me, its a conversation of did I pay a tenner to play that game as part of a sub or sixty quid to play that game and have it sit in my library untouched until I die. And to me, the tenner sounds way better.

Plus if it comes off the subscription service at a later date and for some reason I want to play it again, Xbox always does a "leaving Gamepass" discount on the game purchase anyway.

@Pizzamorg Hard to say really. I consider ownership in general to be very important, if I'm being frank here

And games are no different. But if folks are fine not caring about game ownership, then that's on them. My opinion, that's all. I just like owning games that I PAID FOR with my hard-earned money. That's something I don't take very lightly. But it is what it is, I guess...

@Pizzamorg I do not think this is an unpopular opinion. Actually, it is the sole reason Gamepass exists.

There are gamers who care to own their games and there are gamers who care to consume/play games.

In addition, it is also one of the main reasons DRM game copies (Mostly Ubi modern games AC Shadows, Outlaws etc.) will sell well. Some gamers do not care for it.

Probably for me it's more like 50%.

Even more problematic for me, a lot of games I play such as puzzle games, longer RPGs, some level-based games, I play very slowly over months or sometimes years, so if a subscription service suddenly yeets it before I'm finished that really sucks.

@dmcc0 Well yeah, with Gamepass you can still buy the games now. If this were to be pushed further in the future though, I could see these services being the main way to get games. Games exclusive to pass services instead of being able to buy them outright.

(Not calling out DMCC, talking about what Pizzamorg said) Also, I don't agree with the people who are like "Ownership doesn't matter. Why do people care so much?"

Ownership 100% matters. Just because you don't play the games more than once doesn't mean that everyone should have to suffer because of your selfish decision. I play a ton of games over and over again, given that I genuinely loved the initial experience and wish to experience it again. This is why I care about game preservation. This is why I care about owning my own copies of the game. I want to be able to play the game 10-20 years from now and enjoy it. To look back on the first time I've played and re-experience the stories that I love. A ton of games tend to have stories that are actually better the second time around, given that you can see more of the nuance and see a scene in a brand new light.

Edit: And I was thinking about rebuying some of my digital purchases as physical releases. Stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

I've got about 3000 games in my collection, so that should tell you where I stand on ownership.

Most of them won't ever be played again, because I'd die of old age first, but exactly which ones I couldn't tell you as such decisions are often made on a whim. Meanwhile, subscription services are great for discovering new games, particularly ones from outside your comfort zone that you probably wouldn't drop seventy bucks on.

However, you've still got to be able to buy the keepers. Microsoft and Sony seem turned on to that, because they'll sell you anything you can play on PS+ or Game Pass, usually at a discount of some sort. Switch Online is very much an outlier, although I suspect things would change if Nintendo started to put more modern games on it. You can buy the DLC packages outright, at least.

With my preservation hat on, I'm not that worried about whether something comes on physical media. That's fine if you want a nice row of boxes on the shelf, but you're rarely getting the full game these days anyway, what with things like smart delivery, patches and DLC, so preservation mostly comes down to hacking and dumping. I wouldn't want to go into the details, but suffice it to say that almost everything released on the Switch so far is covered.

The real fly in the ointment is live service games and, more broadly, anything with a significant online component. Such games are nigh impossible to preserve, because we don't get access to the servers.

@VoidofLight I don't see any benefit of a sub-only model to be honest, it's not sustainable without people also buying games. With the budgets of some of the bigger games hitting hundreds of £/$millions there's no way studios would be able to make any money with a sub-only model - one of the reasons Sony say they don't put 1st party games on PS+ day-one is that they can't afford to.

@VoidofLight "Just because you don't play the games more than once doesn't mean that everyone should have to suffer because of your selfish decision." - what did you mean by this part? That because I don't care about game ownership, game ownership will be taken away or something?

All of the subs except Nintendo offer you the chance to purchase your games at a discount - are you concerned this option will disappear? Cause I don't see that future.

Gamepass is great business for Xbox, but its stagnating. Meanwhile on PC, every launcher wants to be the next Steam, which is a store front, not a streaming platform. Sony hasn't adapted a full Gamepass model and neither has Nintendo. I don't feel like we are in some sort of game sub arms race. In fact, I think we are at least one whole other console generation away after this one before that conversation even starts to shift at all. And even then, by that point Xbox may be moving away from Gamepass as its central pillar because of the reported stagnating growth.

Physical games are a little different, as we do see those slowly disappearing, and there is a wider more abstract conversation about true ownership of digital games. But the move to an all digital future existed long before Gamepass did.

Given that Digital ownership doesn't actually exist, I see that as being just as bad as a subscription-based future. Sony and Ubisoft have been people's rights away to play games that they purchased digitally- and that's turned me off from ever touching digital games ever again. I've been buying physical titles ever since outside of PC, given that PC no longer truly gives you that choice.

It is funny, because before the pandemic, I was almost entirely physical on console but for the opposite reasons. Physical provided me the form of rental experience I wanted for games better than any subscription model at the time. I basically never paid any money for games. I would just play a game, go back to the store, trade it in and pick up another and so on forever. I kinda miss that honestly, but during the pandemic I shifted predominantly gaming on PC, so it won't work for me in the same way, as everything there is mostly digital.

@VoidofLight Technically you don't own physical games either - they're just a licence to play the game on that particular format. Granted you have control over the media so in theory you should have access to it 'forever' but, in the case of Ubisoft (I'm assuming you are referring to The Crew disappearing from storefronts) the physical game doesn't work anymore either as the servers shutdown too and it was always online.

It's a bit dumb selling a physical version of a game that requires an always-on internet connection IMO. With day-one patches and required downloads, todays physical media is becoming more like a licence key or installer rather than a full game in many cases.

Its usually just a plastic box with a code inside. How many games actually come on the disc these days? I guess Nintendo carts still do have the actual game on, but I feel like most of Sony and Xbox's physical editions are performative and have no actual function.

@Pizzamorg From what I've heard/read PlayStation games are mostly still on the disc - or at least are fully installed from the disc would be more accurate. Xbox is different in that with Smart Delivery (for those games that use it) you still have the disc, but the correct version is downloaded depending on which console you are using. I've seen speculation that the XB one version is on the disc but I can't say I've checked. The few physical Xbox Series games I do have all still contain discs though.

I really do hate how you have to copy the entire PS game onto the console before you play it. Makes me have to manage my storage much more hawkishly and I can't play a single game straight out the box anymore.

@jedgamesguy You're not really copying the game though, rather installing it. The internal SSD on modern consoles have data transfer rates way above those of the optical drive so the disc is useless in terms of actually playing the game. The disc nowadays is just a cheap method of getting the game on the SSD and a physical licence key once it's installed.

This has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine, especially as someone who has been using Steam for a long time. Using Steam charts to determine that a game is "dead."

It makes sense for a game that is Steam only, however as more and more games use crossplay, the Steam charts really do not represent the numbers of players playing as it does not take into account players playing on consoles or other PC storefronts (like Epic). So the player count could be higher than what Steam reports with their player count (because Steam can only count its players).

This also makes me miss the days when online games actually reported the number of players playing online. Good example, older Call of Duty games use to show this off in the multiplayer menu.

Counting this as unpopular, because people love using Steam player numbers to prove a game is "dead," even if it has crossplay between multiple systems.

Team Sonic Racing is the most underrated kart racer. I like the teamwork mechanic where you're passing around items to help your teammates out, and I also like the courses themselves. It also has the same great controls as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, and the music in TSR is absolutely awesome. The game may not be as good as Transformed, and it's missing the other Sega characters/courses, but I still had a lot of fun with it. Though... while I did find a good amount of players on TSR online around its launch, I was finding less and less players as time went on. It might be partially because Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled came out a month after this game, but then again, I didn't find a lot of players on Transformed, either. I'm always finding way more players on Mario Kart. Other than TSR's online being kind of a ghost town (last I checked), I still had a good time with the game, even with Sega's other franchises not making appearances in some form.

@MarioVillager92 This! The game is great, it just seemed the louder crowd didn't like it wasn't Sonic & All-Stars Racing, and just a Sonic game. I also remember some being angry about the capsule system to earn parts, compared to lootboxes in other games. However, the difference is you don't use real world money for it, only the credits you earned from racing. At least observations I've made online.

Yeah, Team Sonic Racing is a great game, I've had my copy since launch and double dipped on PC when it was on sale for like $4 on Steam one day.

If you have the Switch version, let me know if you'd ever like to play, I'd be more than happy to.

@Sunsy Agreed, it's a very good game for sure. Yeah, that capsule system you've mentioned was handled well, since there's no way to use real money toward it. And at least Sega didn't add microtransactions into their game later on... that happened with CTR: Nitro-Fueled. As great as that game was, that decision was, um, not a good one. I have Team Sonic Racing on Steam/PC, by the way. Would be cool to play that with you sometime.