You should probably cancel your Gamepass subscription
The 'Netflix of Games' is not all its cracked up to be
A few years back I finally bit the bullet and subscribed to Microsoft’s Gamepass service. The basic level, less than a tenner, felt like a no brainer to me. I got a lot of value out of it, allowing me to play things that I probably wouldn’t have had I been asked to cough up the money for them individually. In turn I found titles that would go on to steal a spot in my heart in the years that followed.
As time went on, however, I started to reconcile with the fact that this service was changing the way I played games, altering my relationship in the process, and I found myself at a crossroads. Choice paralysis became the primary agony. I started to drop experiences after not all that much time because there was always the next thing to move onto. Still caught in that cycle of engagement, so many titles that I wanted to play were being launched on the service that, even though I was increasingly aware of the detrimental effect it was having on me, I felt like I could not let go.
It was great value for money, and, as I understood it, helped support a lot of smaller developers with getting their work across the finish line. There were many reasons to stay, but as it turned out eventually, more reasons to go.
It was the news of Arkane Austin being shut down last year that led me to finally cancel my subscription. A piece of industry history, deleted without second thought, due to the poor performance of a single game. A shameful display of corporate pettiness that forced a lot of other things into perspective for me that day.
Of course, now it seems so petty that this was the catalyst, considering the weight of Microsoft’s more serious decisions. A company continuing to support an occupying miltary force two years into an explicit and inarguable genocide is one of the worst things any of us could be involved in. Closing the studio that made Dishonored seems positively tame in the wake of that. But at the time that was the thing that made me take action, and given the rest of it, i’m glad to no longer support them.
There are many reasons to support the ongoing boycott of Microsoft products. They’ve made it patently clear how little concern they have for human lives and livelihoods. With everything being numbers on a spreadsheet, divorced from the consequences of their choices, the only hope we have of fighting back is by denying them the only thing they care about: Revenue.
With the news last week of Microsoft’s decision to withdraw access of their AI services to the Israeli Occupation Forces, there’s a clear throughline that these boycotts do work. A more prescient reaction to this news, however, is not elation but rather a need for perseverence. There’s a risk that we become complacent in the wake of what is puportedly good news, allowing it to become little more than optics, and a reputation salve for a company that is still responsible for a litany of bad behaviours.
The months, if not years, of support for what many, including myself, consider to be war criminals. The grotesque consumption of game studios only to shut them down without a second thought. The fact that the company has spent over eighty billion dollars investing in that digital snake oil that is AI. Really, the recently announced price increase barely registers as an annoyance in the light of everything else.
The thing is, even without the list above, I would argue that Gamepass was never really worth it. Like other media subscription services it cheapens our understanding of the value of things. Not just the big budget affairs, but those smaller, niche projects too. A greater willingness to switch off before you’ve even gotten to grips with what that particular thing is trying to offer you. A seemingly paradoxical reluctance to even engage with it in the first place despite the convenience of its availability to you.
This was the stuff that I was starting to worry about. What should have opened my eyes instead drove me to complacency, and I’m starting to think that no subscription services are actually worth it. I cancelled my Netflix and Disney+. I keep a Mubi sub going but I’ve watched four things on it this year at most. I’ve just started buying things again. Yes, its technically more expensive, but its also a more mindful approach to how I spend my free hours.
The more time that passes since I cancelled my subscription, the more scrutiny I place on those arguments that were made in favour of the service. The whole spiel about Gamepass being good for indies? I’m not so convinced. Although there are testimonies from developers to that effect, I’m also conscious of the number of accounts I’ve read recently of projects being cancelled due to funding falling through. Who’s to say the same doesn’t happen with the corporation who have been unceremoniously shitcanning studios left and right, regardless of the financial success of their respective outputs?
Gamepass is great value for the consumer though, right? Perhaps on paper, but given how much you can engage with online for next to nothing, coupled with a still blossoming second hand economy, its quite easy to find joy and culturally enriching experiences for next to nothing, or even nothing at all, as I’ve outlined in more than one video on my channel. I reckon I could even find you more games than you would have time to actually play every month, for less than the lowest price tier of Gamepass.
They might not be the games you’re really excited for, but there’s still magic to be found out there, and even by doing something as simple as following a few dedicated curators (myself included) its remarkably easy to find those diamonds in the rough.
Independent of any moral responsibility I am in no position to demand of anyone, we owe it to ourselves to build a better relationship with the things we agree to spend our free time with. The act of play, the rite of engaging with something someone put their blood, sweat and tears into putting out into the world. It’s almost sacred, the relationship between us and them.
Please don’t let a good deal sour that.