Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec

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• Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It sounds plausible Sony and Microsoft don’t have very fair algorithms to decide what a dev earns for their subscription. That’s an internal element, and we don’t get to see that calculation.

  Imagine a guy hears about Game Pass, and sees he can play Spiritfarer on it. “Spiritfarer!? That awesome emotional experience that everyone says they cried at? I’m definitely playing that!” 5-ish hours later, they’ve finished the game, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the subscription is still going.

  At this point, the subscriber decides they may as well play State of Decay 2 mindlessly the rest of the month, often without much interest, but trusts another excellent singleplayer indie darling will arrive next month.

  I’d bet the algorithm may pay the SOD2 devs far more in that case because numbers show that’s what “kept them engaged”, not to mention live service games like SOD2 have DLC to entice people into.

  Theres absolutely a danger in that thinking, since most people bought a PS5 after seeing Sony’s incredible singleplayer games, and I believe that’s primarily what gets people into Game Pass too.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Through lawsuits, we did get to see what those payouts were in the past, and they’re all individually negotiated in lump sums, not determined by algorithm. And those payouts were from the good days. Reporting indicates those payouts have dropped off dramatically, which was followed by a drop-off of Xbox ports, since that seems to be the primary way Xbox players play games at all.

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  • Zorque@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    At least for video streaming services, they care more about new subscribers than retaining subscribers. That State of Decay may be a retention game, but the indie darling was the first thing they played upon subscribing. That’s likely going to hold more weight.

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• thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Pete Hines didn’t fucking properly value developers. I don’t buy this shit at fucking all. Mandatory crunch, shitty benefits, and terrible consumer practices were par for the course during his whole tenure. Since I don’t see him out on the union front donating all his fucking blood money this is just a different way of saying “Pete Hines and other executives aren’t making enough money off residuals from a subscription model.” Bethesda (and ZeniMax) was a shitty place to work that conned devs into getting fucked because Bethesda. He can fuck right off with this shit.

  Devs haven’t been properly valued in decades and subscription models are nothing new.

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• cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Former not current… Bethesda never saw a dollar they didn’t like.

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• Launch@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Wait, you are telling me 20 dollars a month isn't enough to sustain a gaming service that releases all of xboxs unreal engine 5 slop day 1??!?? Could have never guessed

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It actually is, and they listed that in the article.

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• ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’ve seen Mat Piscatella talking about this, and it seems like his take is, paraphrasing, “it values different games”. Some games see far more success with the broad access they get to subscriptions, and some see less, which seems to be corroborated by the author of this article.

  Subscriptions have become the new four letter word, right? You can’t buy a product anymore.

  I mean…you can for anything in Game Pass, but that’s not the case for Nintendo.

  Without wishing to portray myself as a comprehensive researcher … I have come across one study of Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus that appears to bear elements … showing that in contrast to the music or movie and TV industry, these subscription services have not “substantially cannibalized existing revenue streams”.

  And I think a lot of that has to do with how much longer we spend with a given game than any song or movie. And even in television, every current show is on some streaming service, and you really can’t buy those, but in games, it’s the opposite. With few exceptions, you can just about always buy the game, and they’re often not present on a subscription service. When games are sold, they tend to command a higher price, too.

  Then, not mentioned in the article, are weird cases like Indiana Jones or Doom, where they’re quality games that don’t sell many copies despite impressive pedigrees, presumably because everyone knows they can get them on Game Pass. But then games like STALKER 2 or Clair Obscur, with low-ish review scores and basically no pedigree, respectively, sell plenty of copies despite being available for far cheaper on Game Pass. Some of this might be the association with Game Pass being for Microsoft-owned studios or something, and Microsoft is aiding that association by making fewer lucrative deals for third party studios.

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• NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Its exactly what we saw with the rise of Spotify and the like… but worse because it is so dependent on in-house productions (so Netflix?)

  For the AAA games? it doesn’t matter. They can get special deals (see Rockstar and Activision on Steam) or they just don’t have to care because people will play hundreds of hours of their game regardless. And for the A/B games? It is actually still a great deal because it drastically increases discoverability, early on, where “Well, I always fucking hated Shenmue but apparently people like these Yakuzas? Might as well give it a go for free”.

  But it fundamentally changes the medium. It is incredibly rare to see an Album anymore because people don’t listen to music as albums. They listen to them as singles in a playlist. Its why there is no real point in deciding whether something should be a film or a tv series because you can just release it as a four part miniseries or stretch things out for a full eight and so forth.

  And we are rapidly seeing that come out of MS. They bought so many dream team studios that were known for making AMAZING crafted SP games (Obsidian et al) and a variety of technically excellent games (iD) or money makers (Bethesda). But none of those map well to a system where there is little point in sticking to a single game and… monetary incentives towards short and sweet games.

  I forget if it came before or after Sony made PS+ another one, but the biggest mistake was day and date for all major MS releases on gamepass. Provide discounts and get the “patient gamers” but don’t put Indiana Jones on the subscription service the day it releases. It is just killing Q1 sales. And… once you do it, you can never undo it.

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  • ech@lemmy.ca ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It is incredibly rare to see an Album anymore because people don’t listen to music as albums.

    …what? This claim is so incredibly wrong, it slants your entire comment. Artists as small as you can get to those as big as Swift are still releasing albums. Just because you don’t interact with them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

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  • riot@fedia.io ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I don't really have my finger on the pulse of most of this, so I don't have anything to add to everything you said. But I am curious about your statement regarding albums:

    It is incredibly rare to see an Album anymore because people don't listen to music as albums. They listen to them as singles in a playlist.

    What genre are you listening to, where artists used to come out with albums but aren't anymore? As a listener of all kinds of music, like rock, metal, blues, kpop, reggaeton, EDM, country and many other genres, that has not been my experience at all.

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    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Music is released in album format in the sense of being a playlist that might get sold as a vinyl at a show. It is incredibly rare to be released as a curated listening experience. The idea that you listen to the music, in album order, and have a story told to you. One of love and loss or of making it past an infidelity or of murdering your brother in the hopes of waking up a subjugated populace and so forth.

      Plenty of musicians have talked about it and it is a very common talking point on the music side of things. I think Hayley Williams’s shadow dropped album (that was part of a hair product line or something?) is being widely praised as an Album? I dunno, I love her but I’ve been too busy to sit down and listen. Which… is also a big part of the problem.

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  • missingno@fedia.io ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    People have been calling albums 'dead' since radio, since MTV, since iTunes, and yet the vast majority of artists still release albums.

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  • pycorax@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Its why there is no real point in deciding whether something should be a film or a tv series because you can just release it as a four part miniseries or stretch things out for a full eight and so forth.

    There absolutely is. A movie is still expected to be watched in one go in its entirety and so is an episode of a mini series. It has a huge effects on the pacing of the media and how you segment episodes of one.

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• Cyberflunk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Fucking shit. The fucked as shit distributors and aggregation giants are devaluing developers. Stypid shit sucking weiner puking looser smooth brained FUCKS

  PUNCH UP!! Wtf

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