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Isn’t the subscription only for Stadia Pro, which gets you 4K streaming & some free access to games? I thought you still had access to purchased games (though n

Isn’t the subscription only for Stadia Pro, which gets you 4K streaming & some free access to games? I thought you still had access to purchased games (though not 4K) without the subscription. If indeed this is the case (maybe I’m wrong?) and there’s a “lot of other people” that aren’t interested in Stadia for this reason, that seems like a big failure in communication. The fact that I can’t answer the question with a few minutes of Googling is alarming.

badsectoracula 6y ago
You cannot have perpetual access (that is "keep having access to it") on a platform that doesn't give you the games directly but you can only access via what is essentially a glorified terminal. I do not think there is any communication failure there: if you cannot download the game and keep it on your collection without having to bother with Google's servers then you cannot have perpetual access by design. (usually people bring up Steam here, but with Steam you do get to download the game and while often it is tied on Steam, most of the time it is trivial to remove that dependency and many games do not even have it - though Steam isn't the only place to get games, personally i buy all my new games from GOG where i have about 660 games and all of them are stored on my own external HDD... which btw also contains games from services that are now defunct)
- serf 6y ago
  >most of the time it is trivial to remove that dependency and many games do not even have it it's also, much of the time, practically impossible to remove the dependency. Most online-tied steam games do some form of verification of the game files. Most steam work-arounds are modified executables or DLLs. Many (most) of the steam work-arounds carry the caveat 'offline only'. If you're lucky enough to buy from a developer that cares enough to avoid using the steam tie-ins, great -- but it shouldn't at all be expected. It's uncommon for games from any decently large developer. Kudos to Paradox for avoiding most of the steam tie-in stuff. A few others, but it's not an attribute I really considered recording -- one should avoid Steam all together if DRM-avoidance is the goal.
  - badsectoracula 6y ago
    Yeah, sadly this is true if you care about online gaming. Even games on GOG often rely on their client or some other form of online service for their multiplayer functionality. I think this is largely because people over the years learned to rely on external servers instead of the earlier P2P approach like what was used in the 90s Quake games where at best you'd have a central server that listed people's but that was optional and you could avoid it. It was quite an eye opening experience when i noticed several complains at an online forum years ago about a game not coming out of the box with dedicated servers and only allowing P2P connections - essentially people were asking for a game to be tied on a company's servers that would inevitable shut down when the game ceased to be profitable. But at least for single player games things are much better. Personally i do not care about online gaming so i tend to forget this :-P. And yeah some games (though it is far from the majority) aren't easy to remove the steam dependencies from (btw all you need are some open source tools, no need to rely on shady alternative DLLs or EXEs). This is why i only buy games on Steam when the price is very low, like less than $10 (and that for games i really like, for other games i might not buy them unless they're less than $5), so that if i cant remove the dependency it wont be that much of a loss to me and i'd still get to play the game in short term. Lately i usually just wait for a GOG or itch.io release though, unless it is some weird indie game that most likely wont appear on GOG or itch.io anyway.
drusepth 6y ago
You're right. Stadia Pro gets you free games (which also remain "yours" even after canceling your subscription), discounts on other games, 4K streaming on the games you've purchased, and supports surround sound. Stadia Base (free) lets you play your games in 60fps 1080p. This is the tier you play your purchased games on if you don't keep a subscription up.
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  > Stadia Base (free) lets you play your games in 60fps 1080p. This is the tier you play your purchased games on if you don't keep a subscription up. translation: the tier that lets you play the games you paid retail price to rent for no additional fee for the next 18 months until google kills stadia too. No thanks.

badsectoracula 6y ago

You cannot have perpetual access (that is "keep having access to it") on a platform that doesn't give you the games directly but you can only access via what is essentially a glorified terminal. I do not think there is any communication failure there: if you cannot download the game and keep it on your collection without having to bother with Google's servers then you cannot have perpetual access by design. (usually people bring up Steam here, but with Steam you do get to download the game and while often it is tied on Steam, most of the time it is trivial to remove that dependency and many games do not even have it - though Steam isn't the only place to get games, personally i buy all my new games from GOG where i have about 660 games and all of them are stored on my own external HDD... which btw also contains games from services that are now defunct)

serf 6y ago
>most of the time it is trivial to remove that dependency and many games do not even have it it's also, much of the time, practically impossible to remove the dependency. Most online-tied steam games do some form of verification of the game files. Most steam work-arounds are modified executables or DLLs. Many (most) of the steam work-arounds carry the caveat 'offline only'. If you're lucky enough to buy from a developer that cares enough to avoid using the steam tie-ins, great -- but it shouldn't at all be expected. It's uncommon for games from any decently large developer. Kudos to Paradox for avoiding most of the steam tie-in stuff. A few others, but it's not an attribute I really considered recording -- one should avoid Steam all together if DRM-avoidance is the goal.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  Yeah, sadly this is true if you care about online gaming. Even games on GOG often rely on their client or some other form of online service for their multiplayer functionality. I think this is largely because people over the years learned to rely on external servers instead of the earlier P2P approach like what was used in the 90s Quake games where at best you'd have a central server that listed people's but that was optional and you could avoid it. It was quite an eye opening experience when i noticed several complains at an online forum years ago about a game not coming out of the box with dedicated servers and only allowing P2P connections - essentially people were asking for a game to be tied on a company's servers that would inevitable shut down when the game ceased to be profitable. But at least for single player games things are much better. Personally i do not care about online gaming so i tend to forget this :-P. And yeah some games (though it is far from the majority) aren't easy to remove the steam dependencies from (btw all you need are some open source tools, no need to rely on shady alternative DLLs or EXEs). This is why i only buy games on Steam when the price is very low, like less than $10 (and that for games i really like, for other games i might not buy them unless they're less than $5), so that if i cant remove the dependency it wont be that much of a loss to me and i'd still get to play the game in short term. Lately i usually just wait for a GOG or itch.io release though, unless it is some weird indie game that most likely wont appear on GOG or itch.io anyway.

drusepth 6y ago

You're right. Stadia Pro gets you free games (which also remain "yours" even after canceling your subscription), discounts on other games, 4K streaming on the games you've purchased, and supports surround sound. Stadia Base (free) lets you play your games in 60fps 1080p. This is the tier you play your purchased games on if you don't keep a subscription up.

hprotagonist 6y ago
> Stadia Base (free) lets you play your games in 60fps 1080p. This is the tier you play your purchased games on if you don't keep a subscription up. translation: the tier that lets you play the games you paid retail price to rent for no additional fee for the next 18 months until google kills stadia too. No thanks.