I cancelled my whole Live sub, which had been uninterrupted since it was in beta.
I never subbed even after using free trials because all of these subscription services follow the same capitalist shareholder corporate path, doesn’t matter what it’s for.
Initially cheap, good “value” and designed to be habit forming to retain their userbase. Operate at a loss. Then they jack the price up every year once they hit a magic number userbase goal and start cutting costs at the same time. Quality drops, price goes up.
I mean, also around that time they doubled down on supporting Israel’s genocide and, here in the US, mass surveilance by ICE. I know that’s equally if not more important for me personally
I think they need to invent a new way of playing games on a subscription, like renting a game for 3 months for x dollars. I bet many players subscribe for one month and play the heck out of a new release then stop paying.
I’d buy a month for $10 once in a while if there are 2-3 games I’m interested in but don’t want to commit to a full purchase for.
For $5/mo, I’d probably just subscribe and forget about it until they inevitably start hiking the price up again.
I was in on the $5/mo for a long time. Even when I went to Linux while having dual boot for Windows when necessary, I kept my GamePass sub since it was so cheap. I finally dropped it after the big price hike, they just reminded me how much I don’t need Microsoft.
/me lives with zero subscriptions
feels good. never paid ms to play games I own either
I am one of those who canceled the ultimate sub and went no sub after the price hike. Not missing it at all.
Microsoft has done a really good job of driving customers away for years. I should know they drove me away years ago …
Capitalism doesn’t understand limits. Whether or not they are there is irrelevant. Only profit gains exist, even when they cause losses.
It applies to all aspects of existence to them. Everything is something to be “leveraged” for growth.
They will use fancy trendy terms like “sustainability”, “net-zero”, “responsible” in an attempt to placate the masses, but deep inside the high level meetings for pretty much all of the fortune-500 corporations and beyond , non of these terms mean squat.
It is a curated maelstrom of ambiguity designed to obfuscate, deflect and thwart any perceived threat to profit.
Until that system is fundamentally dismantled, outlawed and abandoned completely. Things can only get worse.
