6 ms·

You guys are walking into a trap. This is going to be way worse than movie streaming, and unlike movies, when one of these companies pulls a game you once love

You guys are walking into a trap. This is going to be way worse than movie streaming, and unlike movies, when one of these companies pulls a game you once loved and it's not available, there will be no pirates to save you, because the software is trapped in the cloud. The future may well be streaming-only. Mods will be greatly impacted eventually, with only sanctioned mods allowed to run in the cloud. There'll be no deep tweaking, no introspection or learning opportunities. Cloud mod API only. And it'll go the way of all cloud services: fragmented. You'll have to subscribe to a different one for each game you want to play. And you won't stop paying. To play a game over the course of 10 years, as many of you have with Diablo or Quake or Minecraft, you'll have to pay your $15/mo to each streaming service, so instead of Diablo being $50, it'll be $1500. That's before we even start talking about the F2P/IAP/DLC casinos. You used to choose on the character select screen or find items in the game, now new characters are $10 and items are $10 up to $100+, we all know it should be part of the game. Think, they don't really make arcade games anymore. I guess traditional videogames will die off too. More than one company has quit normal games to run a casino for children. I guess I'll go pen a dirge for the dying art I have loved. P.S., thank god for indie developers who make games without input from accountants and psychiatrists who specialize in addiction, they may save us all yet. There's also a glimmer of hope at gog.com where they still sell real games without DRM. I'll keep hoping.

vineyardmike 4y ago
This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. If you ever decide you don’t want to stream - you can build a gaming PC like people already do. Those games that come out to $1500 over a decade? Don’t forget that a decade is probably 2x $2000 for building gaming PCs.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. Some of your gaming library, for example no Blizzard games are playable. Though this is not Nvidia's fault. I think a few publishers realized where this is going and pulled their games by threatening to sue so they could work towards a streaming service of their own.
- PostOnce 4y ago
  They let you bring your own games for now, once they're entrenched, games will be locked in exclusives. $1500 per subscription service, think, netflix apple disney yadda yadda, it might cost $5000 or more to play the half-dozen major games you like. Don't be fooled by the temporal marketing, the long term strategy is in place, and it ends with them screwing you out of something you once loved.
  - CGamesPlay 4y ago
    Well, then when those streaming only games come out, I won’t play them. This isn’t a trap at this point, because they are renting a replaceable commodity.
    - solarkraft 4y ago
      There's a good chance it won't stay that way.
- vimsee 4y ago
  > ..you can build a gaming PC like people already do. With the trend that the comment above you is describing, there wont be any option to build your own gaming PC because the market has shifted to streaming services by renting out both hardware and software through the cloud because that is more profitable.
- baq 4y ago
  This is where Netflix was 7 years ago. It was allowed access to the catalog until the IP owners finished building their own streaming platforms. It’s isn’t that much different in gaming except the very low latency requirement probably means much higher costs of entry.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  I've historically got along fine with $600-$800 machined used for 6 years at a stretch. My current machine is a $700 affair with a Geforce 1080 which plays all games at 1080p and some at 4k. I guess the GPU is about half the value so I guess if you divided that by 72 months gaming on my hardware instead of someone else's costs about $4.86 a month. I shouldn't be surprised if more people are gaming on the cheap than building $2000 machines. Disregarding this is comparing the cost of leasing or buying a Porsche while ignoring the fact that the Carolla exists.
donmcronald 4y ago
This is exactly what’ll happen. It’ll start as bring your own library with the odd exclusive, but eventually it’ll evolve into the only way to play AAA games. The pricing isn’t great either. I tried the 3080 tier for $25 CAD per month. It was really cool, but not realistic for my gaming budget. To me the pricing looks bad even with the hyper inflated, unrealistic prices of GPUs right now. I can buy a 3080 for about 3 years worth of GeForce Now (3080) and after 3 years I still have a half decent card to hand down to someone else. Personally I’ve always been a mid-range gamer at best, so the priority tier is closer to reality for me. That’s $13 CAD per month. I’m sure they used to advertise it as a 3060. If they hadn’t managed to hyper inflate GPU prices that would be a joke. Even now I paid $290 CAD for an RX6600XT (refurb, but seems brand new) which is less than 2 years of the priority subscription. My GPU before that was an RX480 for $200 CAD (new). That was a decent entry-mid range card 5 years ago, so the $150-$300 per year as pricing while buying market share makes me think the goal is a massive increase in the cost of gaming. Nvidia is out of touch IMO. Also factor in that Nvidia probably only needs 1 card per X subscribers and it’s obvious there’s already huge margin. With AMD as the only GPU competitor we’re destined for some serious price gouging. I’m rooting for Intel ARC.
- huseyinkeles 4y ago
  > I can buy a 3080 for about 3 years worth of GeForce Now (3080) and after 3 years I still have a half decent card to hand down to someone else. Yeah but you need to have a desktop PC to start with. And also don’t forget to add the energy prices.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    You need a PC anyway the price differential is nearly exactly the price of the GPU over the useful life of the GPU given that most users keep their hardware for about 6 years its 700 to buy once, 1200-1400 if you intend to buy the next best thing in 4 years and potentially sell the old one, or 2160 to rent something that can play a tiny fraction of the total games if they don't decide to take it away because its not economical at a moments notice. If you game 10 hours a week the difference in power usage is probably about $30 a year kind of a rounding error.
izacus 4y ago
This is literally already the case with GeForce Now - you're NOT allowed to play your whole library because the publishers sued nVidia for allowing you to play the GAME YOU OWN on the machines YOU PAY FOR in their cloud.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >GAME YOU OWN You can't own games. You can only get a license to play one.
  - amarant 4y ago
    I own a game called "Project Rito". It's a VR prototype where your arms are wings and you use them to sail on updrafts, occasionally allowing yourself to drop freely to fire your bow. I just need to improve the graphics a bit as it's mostly place-holder stuff for now. It's not a great game(yet), but god's damnit it's mine! .... Wait, it's made in unity, I don't really own that game either, do I?
    - StrictDabbler 4y ago
      You're also using concepts and tradmarks from Zelda and the Youtube channel for "Project Rito" appears to be for somebody else's cosplay, so it sounds like you own a little slice of a game. I'd like to play it though. Maybe "Project Birdperson"? Nobody would name a character "Birdperson".
      - amarant 4y ago
        Heh, yeah, the name, much like most of the game, is place holder stuff at this point. I hope Nintendo won't sue me until I publish, if I ever even get that far!
  - sebazzz 4y ago
    A license with very specific terms and conditions, it appears.
  - 4y ago
npteljes 4y ago
Attachment to games will change. If you go in with the knowledge that the experience is epheremal (as all experiences are by their very nature!), it will be easier to let one go (not pay the rent anymore) and go into the next. Network effect of course will be horrible, if everyone plays something, surely many will pay the rent just to not feel the fear of missing out. The second point, indie games will absolutely exist, even if AAA will go in this rent extracting direction. The next Stardew Valley will come along, just as it did in the age where AAA is $60. SV is $12 in my region on Steam.
- PostOnce 4y ago
  I don't want literature, film, or music to be "ephemeral", and I don't want to be unable to show these things to my friends and family. I don't want games to be ephemeral either. They are a form of art as valid as any of those others. Often, games combine all those forms into one magnificent modern whole. I want to be able to examine and study games as a form of art, the same way film & lit students study those things; I can't do that if they get pulled from the streaming service to get a tax cut, ala HBO. The only option is offline.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    I think we can discuss two things here, what will happen and what should happen. For the "should" part, I think it'd be great if software would somehow expire, and then become free software, as in, code and assets too. I'm not a lawyer or anything but as artwork goes public domain after a while, so should software and its assets. It would be great "for the people" so that the experience wouldn't go away as abandonware and I'm sure projects would spring up that would make them playable again on current architecture - similar to how GOG started out originally. For the "will happen" part, streaming services will go the Netflix way, work great for a short while (we're at this part I think), then the games would be pulled from third party services only to be played exlusively at specific services, while the first streaming only gaming sensation would spring up... so rent seeking basically, for gaming.
    - PostOnce 4y ago
account42 4y ago
> P.S., thank god for indie developers who make games without input from accountants and psychiatrists who specialize in addiction, they may save us all yet. Yes, I think indies (and AA studios before they inevitably get bought out) will always keep the art alive. Of course that means missing out on some types of games that are simply not feasible for smaller groups or without significant up front funding. > There's also a glimmer of hope at gog.com where they still sell real games without DRM. That is no longer true for all games on GOG unfortunately [0]. Similarly Steam does require games to have DRM once downloaded and there are many that you can just copy and run wherever you want (without a technical restriction anyways). I wouln't count on any distributor to have a significant effect on the keeping games clean. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24419237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24419237

vineyardmike 4y ago

This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. If you ever decide you don’t want to stream - you can build a gaming PC like people already do. Those games that come out to $1500 over a decade? Don’t forget that a decade is probably 2x $2000 for building gaming PCs.

AlexandrB 4y ago
> This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. Some of your gaming library, for example no Blizzard games are playable. Though this is not Nvidia's fault. I think a few publishers realized where this is going and pulled their games by threatening to sue so they could work towards a streaming service of their own.
PostOnce 4y ago
They let you bring your own games for now, once they're entrenched, games will be locked in exclusives. $1500 per subscription service, think, netflix apple disney yadda yadda, it might cost $5000 or more to play the half-dozen major games you like. Don't be fooled by the temporal marketing, the long term strategy is in place, and it ends with them screwing you out of something you once loved.
- CGamesPlay 4y ago
  Well, then when those streaming only games come out, I won’t play them. This isn’t a trap at this point, because they are renting a replaceable commodity.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    There's a good chance it won't stay that way.
vimsee 4y ago
> ..you can build a gaming PC like people already do. With the trend that the comment above you is describing, there wont be any option to build your own gaming PC because the market has shifted to streaming services by renting out both hardware and software through the cloud because that is more profitable.
baq 4y ago
This is where Netflix was 7 years ago. It was allowed access to the catalog until the IP owners finished building their own streaming platforms. It’s isn’t that much different in gaming except the very low latency requirement probably means much higher costs of entry.
michaelmrose 4y ago
I've historically got along fine with $600-$800 machined used for 6 years at a stretch. My current machine is a $700 affair with a Geforce 1080 which plays all games at 1080p and some at 4k. I guess the GPU is about half the value so I guess if you divided that by 72 months gaming on my hardware instead of someone else's costs about $4.86 a month. I shouldn't be surprised if more people are gaming on the cheap than building $2000 machines. Disregarding this is comparing the cost of leasing or buying a Porsche while ignoring the fact that the Carolla exists.

donmcronald 4y ago

This is exactly what’ll happen. It’ll start as bring your own library with the odd exclusive, but eventually it’ll evolve into the only way to play AAA games. The pricing isn’t great either. I tried the 3080 tier for $25 CAD per month. It was really cool, but not realistic for my gaming budget. To me the pricing looks bad even with the hyper inflated, unrealistic prices of GPUs right now. I can buy a 3080 for about 3 years worth of GeForce Now (3080) and after 3 years I still have a half decent card to hand down to someone else. Personally I’ve always been a mid-range gamer at best, so the priority tier is closer to reality for me. That’s $13 CAD per month. I’m sure they used to advertise it as a 3060. If they hadn’t managed to hyper inflate GPU prices that would be a joke. Even now I paid $290 CAD for an RX6600XT (refurb, but seems brand new) which is less than 2 years of the priority subscription. My GPU before that was an RX480 for $200 CAD (new). That was a decent entry-mid range card 5 years ago, so the $150-$300 per year as pricing while buying market share makes me think the goal is a massive increase in the cost of gaming. Nvidia is out of touch IMO. Also factor in that Nvidia probably only needs 1 card per X subscribers and it’s obvious there’s already huge margin. With AMD as the only GPU competitor we’re destined for some serious price gouging. I’m rooting for Intel ARC.

huseyinkeles 4y ago
> I can buy a 3080 for about 3 years worth of GeForce Now (3080) and after 3 years I still have a half decent card to hand down to someone else. Yeah but you need to have a desktop PC to start with. And also don’t forget to add the energy prices.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  You need a PC anyway the price differential is nearly exactly the price of the GPU over the useful life of the GPU given that most users keep their hardware for about 6 years its 700 to buy once, 1200-1400 if you intend to buy the next best thing in 4 years and potentially sell the old one, or 2160 to rent something that can play a tiny fraction of the total games if they don't decide to take it away because its not economical at a moments notice. If you game 10 hours a week the difference in power usage is probably about $30 a year kind of a rounding error.

izacus 4y ago

This is literally already the case with GeForce Now - you're NOT allowed to play your whole library because the publishers sued nVidia for allowing you to play the GAME YOU OWN on the machines YOU PAY FOR in their cloud.

charcircuit 4y ago
>GAME YOU OWN You can't own games. You can only get a license to play one.
- amarant 4y ago
  I own a game called "Project Rito". It's a VR prototype where your arms are wings and you use them to sail on updrafts, occasionally allowing yourself to drop freely to fire your bow. I just need to improve the graphics a bit as it's mostly place-holder stuff for now. It's not a great game(yet), but god's damnit it's mine! .... Wait, it's made in unity, I don't really own that game either, do I?
  - StrictDabbler 4y ago
    You're also using concepts and tradmarks from Zelda and the Youtube channel for "Project Rito" appears to be for somebody else's cosplay, so it sounds like you own a little slice of a game. I'd like to play it though. Maybe "Project Birdperson"? Nobody would name a character "Birdperson".
    - amarant 4y ago
      Heh, yeah, the name, much like most of the game, is place holder stuff at this point. I hope Nintendo won't sue me until I publish, if I ever even get that far!
- sebazzz 4y ago
  A license with very specific terms and conditions, it appears.
- 4y ago

npteljes 4y ago

Attachment to games will change. If you go in with the knowledge that the experience is epheremal (as all experiences are by their very nature!), it will be easier to let one go (not pay the rent anymore) and go into the next. Network effect of course will be horrible, if everyone plays something, surely many will pay the rent just to not feel the fear of missing out. The second point, indie games will absolutely exist, even if AAA will go in this rent extracting direction. The next Stardew Valley will come along, just as it did in the age where AAA is $60. SV is $12 in my region on Steam.

PostOnce 4y ago
I don't want literature, film, or music to be "ephemeral", and I don't want to be unable to show these things to my friends and family. I don't want games to be ephemeral either. They are a form of art as valid as any of those others. Often, games combine all those forms into one magnificent modern whole. I want to be able to examine and study games as a form of art, the same way film & lit students study those things; I can't do that if they get pulled from the streaming service to get a tax cut, ala HBO. The only option is offline.
- npteljes 4y ago
  I think we can discuss two things here, what will happen and what should happen. For the "should" part, I think it'd be great if software would somehow expire, and then become free software, as in, code and assets too. I'm not a lawyer or anything but as artwork goes public domain after a while, so should software and its assets. It would be great "for the people" so that the experience wouldn't go away as abandonware and I'm sure projects would spring up that would make them playable again on current architecture - similar to how GOG started out originally. For the "will happen" part, streaming services will go the Netflix way, work great for a short while (we're at this part I think), then the games would be pulled from third party services only to be played exlusively at specific services, while the first streaming only gaming sensation would spring up... so rent seeking basically, for gaming.
  - PostOnce 4y ago

account42 4y ago

> P.S., thank god for indie developers who make games without input from accountants and psychiatrists who specialize in addiction, they may save us all yet. Yes, I think indies (and AA studios before they inevitably get bought out) will always keep the art alive. Of course that means missing out on some types of games that are simply not feasible for smaller groups or without significant up front funding. > There's also a glimmer of hope at gog.com where they still sell real games without DRM. That is no longer true for all games on GOG unfortunately [0]. Similarly Steam does require games to have DRM once downloaded and there are many that you can just copy and run wherever you want (without a technical restriction anyways). I wouln't count on any distributor to have a significant effect on the keeping games clean. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24419237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24419237