Luring gamers to sign a subscription instead of buying games using battlefield V launch acess, they've been chanting game as service for a while and now they just did it.
what a horrible company..

The last game from EA i played was Battlefield 3. After that i uninstalled Origin and didn't bother with them ever since. I'am not the target for their games anymore and surely will not pay any subscription to any game company.

I agree. That's a kick in the teeth to all the early adopters that pre-ordered the full game months ago.

The only reason EA is not on my boycott list is because of DICE, it used to be bioware too but they are in the dumpster now, they ruined both mass effect and dragon age, if anthem is not a hit it will be another studio EA will shut down.
They have so many great IPs they do nothing about ! might as well just go the konami way and make pachinko games out of them.

That Origin is now a download/game client is insulting enough reason to never buy an EA product again.

Oh, the Origin that once was...

the last bf ill ever buy was bf1 and thats only because i love wwi. Didnt much like the game though.

There is a 0 % chance id pay a subscription to play bf games.

The only sub i pay is iracing and thats because there is no other racing game with its quality and standard of racing.

I'm on the fence over the entire concept. I did play Warcraft for a couple years, and paid a monthly fee, on top of buying the discs. But with that monthly fee came the hosting of something pretty massive, complex, a LOT of players, and a constantly expanding "world" (I am talking not of the actual expansions, just the things you could do within a particular iteration).

I also could imagine a future where games are being run on quantum computers at a thousand times the specs any home PC could dream of, and gigabit+ internet connections commonplace enough to TRULY make it the only valid way to go about it (for any gaming that involves any kind of physics simulation whatsoever, even bullets, obviously there's lots of types of gaming that all the above would be useless for).

But for any current FPS type game, that is not also involving a complex and evolving "world", nope.

BUT, imagine an online "battlefield" (as in noun, not the game title) where anything that happens (like the ground getting busted up) PERMANENTLY stays that way, unless someone takes over that area, maybe builds something on it, only to someday later be blown to bits in a conflict, maybe be taken back over by someone else, or maybe staying a "no mans land" for a while and getting more beat up - basically a REALITY simulation.....

Start talking things like that, oh yeah I'd go subscription......

What's the big problem with the concept of renting games? (Which is what you do with Origin access).

So the subscribers get the game a couple of days early, boo #%&*$# hoo. If that is all you can complain about, go read a book or something.

I've been considering subscribing to be able to test out games that might be interesting without forking out the full price for them and I think it is a very interesting service they offer.

boo hoo to you, if you can't see the clear attempt to lure people into the system with a big attraction because they will be left out, and a huge disrespect to the consumer who stuck with them on pre order since many were boycoitting over #%&*$#, when they DIDNT announce this release window AT ALL.
This graphic was released yesterday after all the confusion online EVERYWHERE over who plays what when.
If you like this, i dont give two flying F.ks, enjoy to your heart contempt (not a typo), This is a clear manouver of EA before they pull the plug on full pricing, there were rumours early this year they wanted to do away with game purchases, now we have this, you can expect them to sudenly pull the plug and only allow you to subscribe to games,they will problably start with online games,so people dont complain so much initially.

That supporting this idea will drive the price per minute of gaming upwards. Because that's what these companies are going to do if customers let them - find ways to double and triple charge for the same amount of content.

Edit: Maybe I'm mistaken here, but I would think you still have to pay for the game in addition to the Premier fee - like Amazon Prime? Otherwise what's the point in making a 100USD yearly sub when you get four or six AAA titles per year for free - they would be losing money?

Thankfully it has never been easier than today to run a completely DRM-free games library.

It starts with a monthly sub to play games or you can buy them. Then they get rid of the option to buy them. Then they raise the monthly subscription because their catalogue of games is vastly superior. Then you have a 50 dollar a month subscription and you only want to play ONE game that you used to be able to buy for 60 bucks and play however long you #%&*$# wanted to because you owned the game.

If people make this EA monthly sub successful everyone will regret it after a few years. EA can go #%&*$# themselves just like Adobe can go #%&*$# themselves.

<Bold mine.>

I'm a very retro gamer so none of this matters to me. However, before someone tries to correct you on this...

I consider ownership of media (music, movies and games) being any media that I can will to someone (and I do keep a current will in a safety deposit box).

An exception would be some production software like AutoCAD (I'm referring to pre-online versions that were shipped in a big beautiful hernia-inducing box with massive documentation) which couldn't be legally sold or passed down, and this is where I let my own morality override any legalities. For example, when updating my AutoCAD versions (new box), I was suppose to destroy the physical copy of the previous version. Yeah, fat chance. The last versions which were registered to me were actually registered to my defunct s-corp and I'm not sure, although I paid for them out of my pocket, if I'm even suppose to use them today since my s-corp was dissolved many years ago.

All moot to me though as I don't subscribe to or use media which requires online activation or continuance. If I were a current gamer, I guess I'd have no choice but to reconsider.

To muddy this further... you don't actually own the game, you only have a license to play the game. Pragmatically of course if you own a physical CD/DVD then that represents a license. Online available games have other ways to establish license ownership, usually via a verifiable account. I'm with everyone else here though on the idea of "renting" game time vs having a non time-limited license is a crappy idea, but unfortunately as far as large development games go you're up against the fat slice of that pie's target audience, which is fan boys and people who just think this is the way it is. Poor sales would reverse that, but eh. Fat pie slices will win out.

Same with CDs. You don't own the music but they are still your property, to be sold, possibly stolen or whatever. You own them and can will them.

I don't believe, for example, that you can will someone your iTunes library. But I could be wrong and if so, then you own the music. If not, you don't. That's how I look at it.

EDIT: My iTunes library consists of hundreds of burned CDs (mostly MP3s converted from lossless format) which are stored away, so I actually do own my iTunes library.

About License versus Ownership: A true "perpetual license" it isn't if it's tied to the company activating your right to use everytime you migrate to a new machine or after a given time.

GOG makes no claims that you "own the game" but they clearly make a point to prove that you can make use of your license forever.

Nothing stops you from unsubbing at any time. What they do in X years I don't care about. What they offer today is of interest to me. Just like subscribing to HBO, Netflix etc. It's whats on offer today I take into consderation. Not ifs and buts and conspiration theories.

If it is a good offer, I'll jump on it.

***shrug***

The final arbiter in all of this will be the free market. If enough consumers balk at the subscription model and EA’s revenue plummets, you better believe they will rethink their strategy.

However, if most consumers end up being ok with this and EA’s revenue goes up then the decision was the correct one. What any of us think as individuals is irrelevant.

Streaming services like this will result in the death of games as we know it. It is all about maximizing their profit while cutting their costs. Rising subscription costs & multiple subscription services will end up costing you more in the long run. Enjoy paying $100 a year to play a single Ubisoft game, make that $200 if you want to play it for two years before being cut off at an exact date. That is on top of your EA, 2K, ect. subscription.

That will be the first step. The next will be to enjoy games designed for the new lowest common denominator: Phones. Yes, traditional PC/console games will be pushed onto phones and everyone will have to suffer the consequences of a game having to work on a tiny mobile device such as GUI. Once subscription takes off they will push it to streaming purely; or place so many restrictions on running a game locally that it no one will do it.

As a side effect, I am sure most PC gaming business will go under. Probably all but a few of the big GPU manufactures will go out of business with the few left selling them directly to data centers. Companies based around cases, cooling and other PC hardware will be gone. I suppose that is a large reason why a lot of the companies like EVGA are trying so hard to expand into peripherals. They see the writing on the wall. Essentially outside of monitors and peripherals PC hardware businesses won't have a market. The biggest brands like ASUS and MSI make a variety of core computer components that aren't relating to gaming, so they'll be fine. But for a company like Corsair it will be tough with the gaming RAM, PSU, case & SSD market dying off (they can't compete with their OEMs, Micron/Samsung/SX Hynix for laptops/data centers). They did make the jump to peripherals though (typing this on a Corsair keyboard).

Interesting times. Obviously everything changes, but sometimes not for the better. Gaming subscriptions and streaming is one of those instances.

+1

This is how it starts, what is stoping EA from taking games from the catalogue for whatever reason (not enough players to maintain servers, etc) ? since you don't own them anymore they can.
Disney used to do this back in the VHS times, they would remove a movie from the market in order to keep its price. they did this in DVDs as well, i dont know if they followed this with blu rays since there was already a digital market by then so it would make no sense.