Live service games are commonly MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online) that require players to pay a subscription in order to play the game. Some of the most notable examples are World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Live service games usually cost nothing to download, and let the player have limited play, but then require the player to pay in order to continue to play the game.
This is a very consumer unfriendly tactic that needs to be stopped.
While the two examples I provided are well received, the fact you have to pay a subscription to play a single game is absurd. I’m already not a fan of services like Xbox Game Pass that give you access to a large number of games by paying a subscription, but most live service games cost similar for one game. MMO’s also tend to be very grindy (as can be attested to by my own father, who used to play WoW and called it a full time job). His exact words are “Well if you’re already paying $15 a month you best play it.” (Jake Allen)
The excuse that these games commonly use is that they need to pay for their servers, but if you just made the game cost money, and not a subscription this could be circumvented. If Elder Scroll Online and Fallout 76 can do it, then other games can. What makes this even more heinous is that neither of these MMOs were well received on launch, and took years to get to an acceptable point. But MMOs headed by Blizzard and EA, two of the biggest game developers, can’t make it so their games don’t need a subscription. These two aren’t even the worst. Final Fantasy 14 needs a subscription, and the game has a base price of $20 not counting any DLC (Downloadable content. There is no reason you should have to pay an additional fee to play a game you already bought.
A game like Warframe, which has an absurd amount of content, is free to play. However the poor multi-billion dollar company needs $15 a month to play their game. Even pay-to-win games are better than these, because at least you can still play the game without dumping your wallet into it. Speaking of wallet both WoW and SWTOR have marketplaces with large economies with an absurd amount of real world value. This encourages players to spend their hard earned money to get an item that no longer exists in the regular way to get it. Don’t forget that the game also usually takes a cut from both ends of the purchase. Now Live Service games aren’t the only ones that have a marketplace, in fact the average marketplace dwarfs in comparison to Team Fortress 2, however TF 2 is completely free to play.
These massive gaming companies know that people will pay absurd prices to access their game, and afterall why change their monetization model when people still fall for it. Live service games are a scum to the world of video games. The players of these games need to stop buying into these games and force these companies to change their policies so that we the consumer don’t have to pay hundreds just to play a game.
