5 ms·

I don't understand their approach either but it hasn't helped them one bit that the market for 'subscription-like games for PC' became much more competitive and

by pvg 5y ago

I don't understand their approach either but it hasn't helped them one bit that the market for 'subscription-like games for PC' became much more competitive and a lot of the competition is either a far better deal or 'free' - Microsoft's Game Pass, Amazon Prime Gaming, the Epic Store giveaways, etc.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Ekaros 5y ago
They also want to move to the 'subscription-like' for Windows. That is what this move essentially boils down to. Simplify pricing, get rid of cheapest tier. Simplify offering, remove Linux and Mac miniscule part of market. Get your launcher with your titles to the gamers. Not that their offerings are that great or partly already not included to others...
- toyg 5y ago
  Removing Linux and Mac because "minuscule" is such a classic MBA-driven move. Linux and Mac is where you get the power users who sell you, by word of mouth, to their circle of friends and family on PC. You don't just lose goodwill, you lose sales even in your target market. But you can't see that on a spreadsheet, so... This sort of thing smells of vicious downward spiral.
  - neutronicus 5y ago
    IDK, in my experience hardcore gamers are on Windows and actively hostile to Mac users. If you're trying to recruit hardcore gamers to proselytize, Windows is a great place to find them
  - akoster 5y ago
    Funny because for this developer [1] [2] it appears that small user base more than pulls its weight for submitting high quality bug reports. (That alone seems like great value that should encourage supporting alternative platforms like Linux that even a MBA-holder can understand). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978086 [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav...
    - hyperman1 5y ago
      That's only because he wants the product to be used, not only bought, a developer point of view. From an MBA point of view, the ideal product is shelfware i.e. something you buy and immediately forget about. Users who actually use what they bought are a regrettable cost of doing business.
  - eru 5y ago
    > But you can't see that on a spreadsheet, so... If true, that just means that a small spreadsheet is dangerous. Not that going by numbers is bad by itself.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I actually doubt that. Looking at what I consider the best metric of market. That is Steam Hardware survey the Mac and Linux have combined market share of 3.8%... The Windows power-gamers can do the marketing as well, by pointing where to get cheap games when there is great deal around. I really think that Linux crowd is more vocal on forums than in reality.
    - toyg 5y ago
      You're doing the same mistake, looking at the issue through numbers. Let's say I am a power user, and I have 10 friends. I rave about a service because it serves me so well, my friends follow my lead, and now the service sees 9% users on Mac an 91% on Windows. A Linux power-user does the same, and now the service has 4.5% users on Linux, 4.5% on Mac, and 91% on Windows. Our friends then "recruit" their friends, and so on and so forth until the numbers are overwhelmingly pro-Windows - but the chains didn't start there. Scenario 2: a Windows friend tells me a service is great, he's seen it on this video and blablabla. I check and it's just for Windows. Not only will I not sign up, I will probably badmouth it whenever the subject comes up. So chances are that at least some of our common friends will follow my lead and not sign up, even just because "what if I buy a Mac tomorrow? Their laptops are so nice, I just can't afford it right now but once I get a new job..." You can't see these stories in a spreadsheet, because virality and clout are undocumented, so to speak, but they are often the difference between a healthy growing business and a dying MBA-driven shell of a company.
      - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        this. its stupid how gaming companies cite the minscule 1-2% of linux market share as "not worth it" when these are the people who DEFINITELY want to play their games but because of either dev incompetence or some other issue, are not able to but they still try it. Plus, these 1-2% band together and do the work of the gaming companies by fixing bugs themselves instead of waiting and expecting them to fix it. yet developers are scared of "bug reports" as if that is some scary monster that can only be killed if they adopt inbox zero approach and having inbox zero in terms of bug reports and errors is good for managerial execs.
  - samhh 5y ago
    They're also platforms without Game Pass i.e. with much less competition.
    - yokoprime 5y ago
      There is Arcade for macOS/iOS et al, but no AAA titles or anything like that
      - qsort 5y ago
        Yeah, Arcade's selection is very lackluster. I have it as part of my Apple One subscription and I personally enjoy it, but I'm not much of a gamer and I'm pretty sure most serious players would rather have Game Pass.
  - musingsole 5y ago
    > who sell you, by word of mouth, to their circle of friends and family The warcry of uberfans of this or that IP the world over. I don't buy it anymore. That group can help, but they're not necessary for an IP/service to move forward. Worse, they have higher demands and expectations and feel personally offended when you do wrong by them. Whether it's Humble dropping Linux or Marvel not lampshading a character detail, I'm moving closer to the perspective that a sold ticket is a sold ticket. But a sold ticket that doesn't result in a swarm of complaint emails is worth its weight in gold.
    - toyg 5y ago
      Without the silly DRM launcher, they would have had no complaining emails or support tickets either.
    - Mezzie 5y ago
      I think it matters when a service or good is new, but not so much later. In the 90s when you had to convince people that video games were worth the time + most people didn't have a home PC? Yeah, in that case a person who plays games on their Linux machine is important to growing the community. Same for things like trying to convince people to watch anime back when you often had to buy fansubbed VHSes in the mail. Now everybody and their mom knows what video games are + they're an accepted component of life and there's a huge gaming market, so uberfans aren't necessary for growth.
      - mcguire 5y ago
        "In the 90s when you had to convince people that video games were worth the time + most people didn't have a home PC? Yeah, in that case a person who plays games on their Linux machine is important to growing the community." There were no games available on Linux in the '90s.* * Except for those specifically written there.
        toyg 5y ago
        > There were no games available on Linux in the '90s. Indeed. Before 1998 there wasn't even a proper full-blown desktop.
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    If they go Windows-only they're in direct competition with PC Game Pass which is cheaper and packed with AAA titles. I'm not optimistic about this move. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/pc-game-pass https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/pc-game-pass
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Or EA Play for under half the price... Not great, but still decent library... The competition on that market is tough and their own publishing catalog is frankly pathetic...
      - zwayhowder 5y ago
        I get that free with my PC Game Pass :D
    - namelessoracle 5y ago
      Not only packed with triple aaa titles but cheaper and subsidized by Microsoft. They've already commmited to everyone getting the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout as part of it.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    exactly - like the sticker on the desk of the "CEO" of a (eventually-failed) product sales website. WINNER TAKE ALL with some WIntel reference.. f-f-f-f-f-u
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> Simplify pricing I wouldn't call moving from a single lump sum to a subscription model a simplification. What they are doing is replacing one-time payments with a slow trickle of multiple payments. With interests rates where they are, that slow trickle is worth more than the lump sums.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    It was already a multi-tier subscription service. With 12$ grandfathered tier offering the most. Then having crappy lite tier, that is access to some DRM-Free games and 10% discount. A 15$ tier which allowed you to choose 3 games of 9-12 with 20% and 20$ tier which at the beginning offered single game less than grandfathered classic tier. Later they moved giving all the games to 12 and 20 dollar tiers. I would say going from 4 prices to one is simplification.
- zwayhowder 5y ago
  Because there are no good subscription services available for the Windows market already. Oh wait I've got Xbox Game Pass and dozens of free games on that. And EA Play And the 1000+ games I own on Steam (Many bought from Humble) and the Epic Store. I had Humble Choice for a year and loved it, then last Feb I skipped a month because there was nothing I wanted. I haven't paid since because the Choice options were getting less and less valuable to me. (As in interesting games, not price). I almost purchased another year in their sale last month, but I'm glad I didn't I'd feel very ripped off now.

by pvg 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Ekaros 5y ago

They also want to move to the 'subscription-like' for Windows. That is what this move essentially boils down to. Simplify pricing, get rid of cheapest tier. Simplify offering, remove Linux and Mac miniscule part of market. Get your launcher with your titles to the gamers. Not that their offerings are that great or partly already not included to others...

toyg 5y ago
Removing Linux and Mac because "minuscule" is such a classic MBA-driven move. Linux and Mac is where you get the power users who sell you, by word of mouth, to their circle of friends and family on PC. You don't just lose goodwill, you lose sales even in your target market. But you can't see that on a spreadsheet, so... This sort of thing smells of vicious downward spiral.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  IDK, in my experience hardcore gamers are on Windows and actively hostile to Mac users. If you're trying to recruit hardcore gamers to proselytize, Windows is a great place to find them
- akoster 5y ago
  Funny because for this developer [1] [2] it appears that small user base more than pulls its weight for submitting high quality bug reports. (That alone seems like great value that should encourage supporting alternative platforms like Linux that even a MBA-holder can understand). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978086 [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav...
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    That's only because he wants the product to be used, not only bought, a developer point of view. From an MBA point of view, the ideal product is shelfware i.e. something you buy and immediately forget about. Users who actually use what they bought are a regrettable cost of doing business.
- eru 5y ago
  > But you can't see that on a spreadsheet, so... If true, that just means that a small spreadsheet is dangerous. Not that going by numbers is bad by itself.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I actually doubt that. Looking at what I consider the best metric of market. That is Steam Hardware survey the Mac and Linux have combined market share of 3.8%... The Windows power-gamers can do the marketing as well, by pointing where to get cheap games when there is great deal around. I really think that Linux crowd is more vocal on forums than in reality.
  - toyg 5y ago
    You're doing the same mistake, looking at the issue through numbers. Let's say I am a power user, and I have 10 friends. I rave about a service because it serves me so well, my friends follow my lead, and now the service sees 9% users on Mac an 91% on Windows. A Linux power-user does the same, and now the service has 4.5% users on Linux, 4.5% on Mac, and 91% on Windows. Our friends then "recruit" their friends, and so on and so forth until the numbers are overwhelmingly pro-Windows - but the chains didn't start there. Scenario 2: a Windows friend tells me a service is great, he's seen it on this video and blablabla. I check and it's just for Windows. Not only will I not sign up, I will probably badmouth it whenever the subject comes up. So chances are that at least some of our common friends will follow my lead and not sign up, even just because "what if I buy a Mac tomorrow? Their laptops are so nice, I just can't afford it right now but once I get a new job..." You can't see these stories in a spreadsheet, because virality and clout are undocumented, so to speak, but they are often the difference between a healthy growing business and a dying MBA-driven shell of a company.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      this. its stupid how gaming companies cite the minscule 1-2% of linux market share as "not worth it" when these are the people who DEFINITELY want to play their games but because of either dev incompetence or some other issue, are not able to but they still try it. Plus, these 1-2% band together and do the work of the gaming companies by fixing bugs themselves instead of waiting and expecting them to fix it. yet developers are scared of "bug reports" as if that is some scary monster that can only be killed if they adopt inbox zero approach and having inbox zero in terms of bug reports and errors is good for managerial execs.
- samhh 5y ago
  They're also platforms without Game Pass i.e. with much less competition.
  - yokoprime 5y ago
    There is Arcade for macOS/iOS et al, but no AAA titles or anything like that
    - qsort 5y ago
      Yeah, Arcade's selection is very lackluster. I have it as part of my Apple One subscription and I personally enjoy it, but I'm not much of a gamer and I'm pretty sure most serious players would rather have Game Pass.
- musingsole 5y ago
  > who sell you, by word of mouth, to their circle of friends and family The warcry of uberfans of this or that IP the world over. I don't buy it anymore. That group can help, but they're not necessary for an IP/service to move forward. Worse, they have higher demands and expectations and feel personally offended when you do wrong by them. Whether it's Humble dropping Linux or Marvel not lampshading a character detail, I'm moving closer to the perspective that a sold ticket is a sold ticket. But a sold ticket that doesn't result in a swarm of complaint emails is worth its weight in gold.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Without the silly DRM launcher, they would have had no complaining emails or support tickets either.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    I think it matters when a service or good is new, but not so much later. In the 90s when you had to convince people that video games were worth the time + most people didn't have a home PC? Yeah, in that case a person who plays games on their Linux machine is important to growing the community. Same for things like trying to convince people to watch anime back when you often had to buy fansubbed VHSes in the mail. Now everybody and their mom knows what video games are + they're an accepted component of life and there's a huge gaming market, so uberfans aren't necessary for growth.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      "In the 90s when you had to convince people that video games were worth the time + most people didn't have a home PC? Yeah, in that case a person who plays games on their Linux machine is important to growing the community." There were no games available on Linux in the '90s.* * Except for those specifically written there.
      - toyg 5y ago
        > There were no games available on Linux in the '90s. Indeed. Before 1998 there wasn't even a proper full-blown desktop.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  If they go Windows-only they're in direct competition with PC Game Pass which is cheaper and packed with AAA titles. I'm not optimistic about this move. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/pc-game-pass https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/pc-game-pass
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Or EA Play for under half the price... Not great, but still decent library... The competition on that market is tough and their own publishing catalog is frankly pathetic...
    - zwayhowder 5y ago
      I get that free with my PC Game Pass :D
  - namelessoracle 5y ago
    Not only packed with triple aaa titles but cheaper and subsidized by Microsoft. They've already commmited to everyone getting the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout as part of it.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  exactly - like the sticker on the desk of the "CEO" of a (eventually-failed) product sales website. WINNER TAKE ALL with some WIntel reference.. f-f-f-f-f-u
sandworm101 5y ago
>> Simplify pricing I wouldn't call moving from a single lump sum to a subscription model a simplification. What they are doing is replacing one-time payments with a slow trickle of multiple payments. With interests rates where they are, that slow trickle is worth more than the lump sums.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  It was already a multi-tier subscription service. With 12$ grandfathered tier offering the most. Then having crappy lite tier, that is access to some DRM-Free games and 10% discount. A 15$ tier which allowed you to choose 3 games of 9-12 with 20% and 20$ tier which at the beginning offered single game less than grandfathered classic tier. Later they moved giving all the games to 12 and 20 dollar tiers. I would say going from 4 prices to one is simplification.
zwayhowder 5y ago
Because there are no good subscription services available for the Windows market already. Oh wait I've got Xbox Game Pass and dozens of free games on that. And EA Play And the 1000+ games I own on Steam (Many bought from Humble) and the Epic Store. I had Humble Choice for a year and loved it, then last Feb I skipped a month because there was nothing I wanted. I haven't paid since because the Choice options were getting less and less valuable to me. (As in interesting games, not price). I almost purchased another year in their sale last month, but I'm glad I didn't I'd feel very ripped off now.