Witnessing a moment of clarity

Jesus. Was it really three years ago that I first posted about Game Pass?

There are users for whom Game Pass is a good fit; heavy users who really will save money using the service, wealthy gamers for whom the cost of the service is essentially irrelevant, and ruthlessly opportunistic gamers who will pay for a single month only, and only when they "need" it, to play exactly one newly-released game and then cancel [...]

Game Pass is not a good deal; its value proposition is not, and never has been, "insane;" it is not a value option at all, really, except for people who semi-professionally play a wide variety of games, or people who may well have burgeoning video game addictions. So, be honest with yourself. 

Do you have a problem? Are video games taking over your life, in ways that are possibly self-destructive and unhealthy? If so, then you don't need Game Pass; you need help, and there's no shame in asking for that help.

For a long time, I thought I was alone, screaming my frustration into the void. Because the deal really was bad, but nobody else seemed to be willing to call it out for the anti-consumer nonsense it was. Even as every multimedia conglomerate on Earth launched their own subscriber-driven Contentᵀᴹ service, only to watch them all beat hasty retreats after those services lost boatloads of money, Game Pass was made of Teflonᵀᴹ. Nothing ever stuck; the narrative never evolved.

That is, until today. From Ethan Gach at Kotaku:

It’s Time To Start Killing Your Subscriptions

The prices are going up and you probably barely use them anyway

I feel so seen right now.

The point of Gach's article emerges pretty quickly.

There’s a problem at the heart of subscription entertainment and it’s that very few people actually have the time or money to truly justify them. I can’t keep up with every new Star Wars spin-off and extended Marvel Cinematic Universe show, let alone the critically-acclaimed hits that debut every other month on competing platforms. It’s even worse in video games. The Xbox Game Pass library grows every week, while PlayStation Plus and Switch Online regularly bring classic games from decades ago back into circulation [...]

[D]ipping in and out of paid seasons and monthly subscriptions is easier said than done. It requires foresight, planning, and diligence. How many times have I stumbled through a login screen to cancel something, fumbling for a forgotten password and trying to convince a robot that I’m not also a robot, only to give up or forget when one of my kids starts screaming for something, dinner begins to burn on the stove, or another notification for another app distracts me on my phone?

For example, if you had asked me throughout last year if I was a Google Stadia subscriber I would have said no. If you had asked Google Stadia it would have said yes. Despite my vivid memories of canceling multiple times, the membership fee was paid on time every month. $10.59 for Stadia Pro, like clockwork. I realized this when the service announced late last year that it was closing down and refunding customers their purchases and I went to check the status of my account. What started as a multi-month free trial in November 2019 had rolled on for nearly three years. $307.11 down the drain. Stadia had been a joke. It made me feel like one too.

This is how subscription services work. It's how they all work. It's how they have always worked.

I have always maintained that Game Pass was a terrible value for almost everybody currently subscribed to it. The only thing that's changed is that some of the people who had been shamelessly shilling for Game Pass, up until now anyway, seem to finally be having a "come to Jesus" moment about it all. 

It's about damn time.