Probably bandwidth. You download a game or five and then you're good for a few weeks, whereas if you are streaming media you could run through several gigabytes a day of data per customer in perpetuity.
Obviously, with streaming media there is a continuously refreshing pool of money to cover those costs as compared to games being a one-time purchase, but even with that it would still take quite a while to expend the entire revenue of the purchased game in download expenses and storage overhead.
blargerer@kbin.social 1 month ago
Other comments are wrong, its complicated residual structures on tv/movies.
Bookmeat@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Exactly. The licensing and sublicensing structures in TV and film are way more complicated than in video games. They also intentionally license for relatively short durations for tax reasons and other corporate considerations that have nothing to do with the end viewer or consumer.