New Indie.io Subscription Service Faces Heavy Criticism Ahead of April 13 Launch
A new subscription-based membership gaming service is scheduled to launch on April 13th, according to indie.io and its recent commercial for the 6.99-a-month Indie Pass, which offers 167 titles at launch, with 36 soon to come. This hasn’t gone over well. Gamers have uploaded their collective distaste to blogs and YouTube videos everywhere.
Gamers Want Straight Ownership Of Their Gaming Purchases
“Gamers want to own their games. They don’t want to deal with downloading 3rd-party programs, paying a subscription fee, or logging in. We want to own our games so we can install them and play them whenever we want.”
YouTube gaming voice, DiscussThing said in his April 3rd video.
“These corporations are trying to get their hands in everything, to control how and when we play. Streaming companies like Steam and G DEVELOP already offer these kinds of services, so what are you even offering?” DiscussThing went on to say. “Gamers are also largely of the mindset that purchasing the game is a major way of supporting the indie developers.”
Subscription Fatigue Is Real—And Indie.io Isn’t Offering Anything New
This seems to be the majority’s side of the discussion surrounding the launch of an additional monthly pay subscription service, gamers not remotely wanting or needing another corporate-leaning subscription-based platform, for anything more in our lives, much less independent game titles.
The AAA gaming giants used to be the ones to be impressed with, always guaranteeing a major video game title that checks all the boxes and still manages to wow its customers by implementing something fresh and original into the release. Now that corporations are condensing the companies they take over and firing huge portions of what has been the lifeblood of some of these AAA gaming giants, the shoe is flipped in the AAA titles versus indie games, and customers are making their feelings known via their spending.
Ubisoft’s Shutdown of The Crew Sparked a Global Consumer Rights Movement
It’s snowballed into fed-up customers in France getting together and forming groups meant to protect gamers in both the U.S and Europe. This is the direct result of Ubisoft’s fateful decision to pull the plug on their massively successful racing title called The CREW. This wasn’t just the multiplayer mode, or a couple of DLC maps they gutted; they full-on declared the game unplayable and withdrew the paying customers’ ability to play their game whatsoever. No single player mode to tool around with, either, dust to dust.
Triple-A game companies are in serious trouble. Red Storm Entertainment, a company that provided 90’s gamers with legendary titles like Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon and was started by Tom Clancy himself, just got the kill switch. The one hundred devs that found themselves discharged from RSE ended up providing focus IT and engine support, according to YouTuber RageWatch.
Before long, gaming giant Ubisoft found itself slammed with another case from a French consumer group called UFC- Que Choisor. This collection of remote chucking gamers is backing a separate, larger group called Stop Killing Games. These individuals are fed up and voicing their collective disgust in courts. Boldly stating that these companies have no right to make any game that the customer has paid any price for, and is entirely unplayable. They are over one hundred million signatures strong and consist of 2 lobbying groups that represent gamers in both the U.S and Europe.
Gamers Say Subscription Models Undermine Indie Developers, Not Support Them
Gamers feel the triple-A companies are out of touch with players to the point of no longer being concerned about the customer’s experience with a high-priced title, but instead are taking vampiric actions, hitting gamers with micro transactions left and right to happily bypass slow, repetitive sections of the gameplay or level up quicker.
No one wants this, and those major titles’ methods of operating to maintain maximum profits are drying up. Independent games are fun and better served and represented by the individual players’ purchase, not another unwanted monthly pay service that can have its plug pulled by corporate fat cats, leaving X amount of playable games yanked at any time.
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