In the last decade gaming has transitioned a lot to the point where it’s not mandatory to have an online connection and a large amount of additional space from launch and that’s not the worst part. The worst part now is that not only AAA companies are still heavily focusing on microtransactions but now the real kicker is what happens when games are at the end of the live spam. From the game being delisted to the servers getting shut meaning if it’s online only there’s no way to play the game ever again and this attitude of never being able to own a game , you just lease it so in some cases it will get removed from you account meaning no mods can be made and that attitude is perfectly normal in the eyes of Ubisoft. 

We all thought EA was bad from the heavily micro transacted buggy mess of games which have been coming out but oh no Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay “players should get used to not owning their games”

This has caused a huge uproar in the gaming world as it’s now the case of what’s the point. People who owned the Crew game felt the wrath of this and it’s disgusting! I mean, is this what will happen to crew 2?

For me I’ve been a gamer since I was kid, playing on the megadrive since I was 6 then moving on to the 64 moving onto the gamecube,ps2, xbox, and xbox 360 before moving to pc back in 2014. The reason why I mention all these is because even on the 360 yes some games had a few megabytes of a patch but ignore that on the earlier games and you could just put in any disc and bam it’ll work no problem! Sure the era of line was at its peak with us witnessing a generation of gamers being able to buy games digitally along with physical and having access to any dlc’s which back then wasn’t too bad!

You could still put a game in and play no issues. I still do this today with a big stack of retro games on the shelf. Now from moving onto PC  and seeing the shift in how games are launched over the last 10 years the gaming world has been shaped in a new direction where the physical disc’s are pretty much useless unless it’s a smaller game but even so there’s bound to be patches so what’s the point?

What is banana’s now is the game sizes. Back in the 360 days with the small hard drives 8gb was a big deal back then but with AAA games coming out with a whopping 100-200gb and yes 200gb for far cy 6 which you need to be online at all times even to play offline is hell to get running. I’m looking at you ubisoft! It makes you think when will this actually stop.

Yes you can buy a 1,2 terabyte hard drive for the consoles and pc but what’s the point as new games are 100gb alone and that’s before dlcs. Now for me I don’t actually play a lot of new games that come out, only a handful. If you see my collection on steam the average game is 10 years old and then moving onto physical discs on the PC which takes some games over 20 years old and I still play and prefer those as they just work. No internet required , they take up a fraction of the space and they won’t get deleted!

So this brings us back to the state of gaming today. Online only, microtransactions  and a huge amount of storage is needed! Yes games do look more amazing graphically.. the ones that aren’t’ buggy of course but how many games that are out now will be unplayable in years to come if they get deleted from peoples accounts so there’s no mods to make servers? More to the point, what about video game preservation? We aren’t too sure on the percentage of games that haven’t been able to be preserved as only recently Nintendo have shut down the WII U and 3ds store and the xbox 360 marketplace is shutting down too on July 24th 2024. The only plus side is you can still re-download any content you have apparently. Still this is very alarming! I know there are abandonware sites out there which have a large collection of games from pretty much every retro console but there’s still a very large amount that doesn’t exist at all.

AAA game developers do frown upon this way of saving games but if the publishers don’t relist the games and have no reason to do so for example if it contains any licensed stuff like brands car names etc then why don’t they help preserve games?

It’s not all doom and gloom which is a big one. Though the AAA developers have really really pissed everyone off with half arsed games coming out on launch riddled with issues both glitches and performance along with graphics there has been a rise of smaller independent game developers which have been pumping out some really decent games! Yes some are naff , riddled with issues or been abandoned in early access but I have to say a large chunk of games i’m wanting are from small time developers even some solo developers. Just look at Palworld, lethal company and Helldivers 2.

Are we seeing the true fall of all AAA Developers as we’ve seen a huge wave of layoffs and are we seeing the rise of small indie developers? Steam is full of ace examples of this.

What do you think of this? Are you also sick of how bad things are?

Update time 6th May: So this article was made at the end of april and since then helldivers 2 has been in the spotlight because you now need to have a PSN account to play the game and this affects all players. Now the backlash is bad from what i’ve been reading from reviews is this was never ment to happen. The players had no infomation that this will eventually be a PSN account requirement.

Now this is a pretty pretty huge deal as fans have stated 177 countries will be affected by this as the PSN ( Playstation Network) isn’t avalible in those countires meaning the players affected by this won’t be able to play the game they have paid for. There’s that and some fans are annoyed because of all the security breaches playstation has had.

It also gets worse too as i’m pretty sure on the comments to this wasn’t supposed to happen from the start there was no infomation to state a PSN sign in is mandatory but last night while on Twitter/X which I now can’t seem to find is one of the developers actually posted saying six months ago they knew this would be mandatory and despite this allowed the game to be on sale to some countires which again the PSN network isn’t available.

And yes this game has been reviewbombed to hell and this might be the very end of helldivers 2.

So now this has sorta come full circle again with another major issue with gaming. Will this be the new normal where independant studios get published to the big publishers such as playstation, xbox , ubisoft etc. Oh and the PSN store for the PS3 shut down last year too which is also pretty grim despite I think over 1 million people still use the console!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

So with Ubisoft and the crew getting removed from peoples accounts as it’s unplayable this has now begun to get investigated by the UK & EU consumer law which pretty much states all goods must be deemed playable and the consumer must be allowed to keep any game they buy. Hopefully this will get investigated even further and change how AAA developers/companies handle with “expired games”

Here’s hoping something changes otherwise I think it will get a lot worse lets see if the consumer law actually deals a blow to these corporate companies

Update 3: Playstation have done a u turn on the mandatory PSN account on helldivers 2! Absolute Bananas!