Should Steam Offer Rental and Subscription Services?

[The Brown Hornet]

I previously posed the question "Should Steam Allow Game Trading?" and was met with staunch resistance from users and gamers predicting the collapse of digital gaming industry as we know it! Whereas I don't think it would hurt to allow account holders to convert a few titles a year into items more useful, others lament Valve losing income on something we already paid for.

So I move on to a new question...

Should Valve include a rental or subscription service as part of Steam?

I don't know about you but in my estimation it makes less sense to purchase digital games at full price. As others have asserted in my previous thread, "we don't own the game, it's just a license to play it!" Well if it's just a license, a pay to play arrangement and nothing else, then why are we being charged a full-priced ownership fee (promotions and sales withstanding)?

Back in the day downloading games directly to your PC was a new and fresh concept; instant and convenient...wow, no longer must we visit a store or await a retail item in the mail! In the current market however digital content and downloading is common, par for the course in music, film, TV, internet/web...in short, all forms of media!

Due to this high volume of media and digital consumption many gamers have reduced the amount of time spent in-game. In contrast gamers of the past generally put completionist amounts of time and effort into every title they bought. Today it seems we buy more but play less...this trend can be observed just by looking at player achievements, in game time and completion stats which Steam duly tracks.

Therefore does it make sense for Steam to expand from only selling licenses locked and tied to accounts to offering a selection of game rentals or subscription services? After all we don't own the games we purchased here...right? If we don't own then by default we are renting or borrowing, so shouldn't we be charged rent-level prices?

[Brian9824]

Steam already offers it and has offered it for years. Most developers aren't interested in it - https://store.steampowered.com/subscriptions/ea

Its up to developers to list their titles as Steam is not the owner and cannot list other people's titles for rent. They have to list them, just like EA Play already has.

[Crazy Tiger]

EA Play and Gamepass exist, the former also is on Steam (with a smaller catalog than on Origin) and the latter might be coming to Steam if one believes the rumors. Gabe recently mentioned in an interview that as it is now Valve isn't interested in offering it themselves.

Personally I'm not interested in subscription services, to me they add pressure that I have to play because I'm paying a monthly fee plus their catalog doesn't always stay the same (same issue I have with streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc). I prefer to wait for discounts, buy games cheap and then play them whenever I feel like it.

Plus I often replay games and can wait for games (well, most anyway), I'm not necessarily the "finished and done with it" or "need to play it now" type of "gamer".

[crunchyfrog]

Yeah they're not rentals. Good point.

We OWN the licnces. It seems to be another misunderstanding of what that means.

it's just wording to say you ain't got a physical copy and you can't resell it. That's the ONLY difference.

You still own it. And you can still replay it to your hearts content for as long as the service is available.

I use GamePass as it's great ofr demoing games. But any game I want, just like you Crazy Tiger, I will always buy.

[𝕎𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕫]

Steam is literally already a subscription service...:

STEAM® SUBSCRIBER AGREEMENT

Source: https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/english/

[J4MESOX4D]

Valve already offer the feature and 3rd party passes are already in place. These passes may seem good value for the consumer but they are crippling to the developers who usually get a cut of less than $1 per install. The reason MS, Ubi EA get away with it is because it's mostly their in-house developers products so it doesn't affect their overall balance sheet but for Valve to do something, it would be financially non-viable for all involved and would cause immense disarray on how the store operates fairly.

If you think Valve can whip up a pass overnight a cherrypick a few random games for users, it just isn't going to happen because yet again, the business model does not fit with the storefront concept whatsoever. Valve could do their own official pass but there is no point when you can get the entire Valve pack for less than the price of the average monthly rental.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Wouselz:

Steam is literally already a subscription service...:

STEAM® SUBSCRIBER AGREEMENT

Source: https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/english/

Well, yes and no.

THe Steam platform and UI are subscription.

The games are not.

[Mad Scientist]

"People aren't agreeing with me, let me try making another thread even though it's being discussed in the other thread"
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3279193518791451617/?ctp=12#c3279194062597550923

You think these things wouldn't hurt because you have zero idea about running a business, let alone digital distribution & purchasing, all because you have your own personal want to sell/trade games you're sitting on, that you chose to buy. Things you likely had a fair amount of time enjoying, which is the point of buying a digital copy, accessible to your account at any given moment.

If Valve wants to do their own monthly subscription, it likely wouldn't include too much as Devs still need to opt-in and get paid. Why allow a $1-$5 rental, instead of people buying at full price, getting everything back from expenses, and later when having a healthy profit doing sales? Not to mention they have the ability without rental, to enjoy as much of their game as they want, at any one given day unlike rentals.

Rentals made sense back in the day for physical copies where you'd have very few games, and you wanted to try/play another game, but we're in the digital distribution era, so outright purchases are far more favorable for businesses. Subscriptions also are better for temporary media (netflix etc) for movies & tv shows one-and-done, but games often have large amount of possible hours and replayability, so outright licenses are superior.


Don't go making another thread with an active discussion, about that active discussion, because you can't handle the immense amount of issues with every single thing you come up with always being correctly noted as a horrible idea. If Valve thought this was profitable compared to normal sales, they would've done this long ago, they're far more wise than random users with zero business sense.

[ShelLuser]

SaaS, aka Software As a Service, only benefits the seller. NOT the consumers.

Think about it: every day you're not playing or not using the software you're basically wasting money. And the moment you do want to play... well, hopefully you can quickly (re?) -enable the subscription again.

Generally speaking it's a ♥♥♥♥ show 😑

This concept was also heavily pushed within the audio industry by several companies selling DAWs and other audio related material. Some even pushed for 'subscription only' but quickly came around from that because it simply didn't work out.

Of course on that level it can have some uses, but... for most it's just a waste of money.

[☎need4naiim☎]

I am kind of a human who starts playing his purchased game 2+ years later, or next month.

I am the exact opposite of what Gamepass subscriptions want me to do.

Since most games stand as "play once and move on" type of things (i don't talk for myself), Renting games for a period of time doesn't really fit in an enticing business model.

[Falsus Te Deum]

Subscriptions are starting to be more common, even if it is a few that does it. EA, maybe gamepass and not to forget Paradox dlc subsciption for crusader kings 2. I guess we will see more of this when/if digital ownership laws get implemented in any form.

[nullable]

Subscriptions are the future. Valve will probably offer something eventually. There's no rush to do it tomorrow though, so they'll take their time and do it their way.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Snakub Plissken:

Subscriptions are the future. Valve will probably offer something eventually. There's no rush to do it tomorrow though, so they'll take their time and do it their way.

Again, valve already offers it, dev's just have no desire in using it.

[The Brown Hornet]

Originally posted by brian9824:

Steam already offers it and has offered it for years. Most developers aren't interested in it - https://store.steampowered.com/subscriptions/ea

Its up to developers to list their titles as Steam is not the owner and cannot list other people's titles for rent. They have to list them, just like EA Play already has.

I'm not talking about EA Play or Ubi or Gamepass, I'm taking about Steam and any game sold on Steam. Of course a petty dev would be fickle about including or excluding their games but a Steam subscription service where rather than pay for individual titles users may access the larger selection of games offered on this store.

[ElvisDeadly]

Originally posted by The Brown Hornet:

Originally posted by brian9824:

Steam already offers it and has offered it for years. Most developers aren't interested in it - https://store.steampowered.com/subscriptions/ea

Its up to developers to list their titles as Steam is not the owner and cannot list other people's titles for rent. They have to list them, just like EA Play already has.

I'm not talking about EA Play or Ubi or Gamepass, I'm taking about Steam and any game sold on Steam. Of course a petty dev would be fickle about including or excluding their games but a Steam subscription service where rather than pay for individual titles, can access the larger selection of games offered on this store.

And exactly how much would you expect to pay a month to access EVERY game on Steam?

How exactly would the devs get paid? By hours played? By number of downloads? How would it work?

Do you have any idea how complex such a thing would be to set up and manage?

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by The Brown Hornet:

Originally posted by brian9824:

Steam already offers it and has offered it for years. Most developers aren't interested in it - https://store.steampowered.com/subscriptions/ea

Its up to developers to list their titles as Steam is not the owner and cannot list other people's titles for rent. They have to list them, just like EA Play already has.

I'm not talking about EA Play or Ubi or Gamepass, I'm taking about Steam and any game sold on Steam. Of course a petty dev would be fickle about including or excluding their games but a Steam subscription service where rather than pay for individual titles, can access the larger selection of games offered on this store.

It's clear what you're talking about. But it's also clear Valve won't do that anytime soon due to Gabe Newell stating that. He did say he would be happy to work with Microsoft to bring Gamepass to Steam. The interview in which he stated it was with PC Gamer last february.