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]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

brian9824님이 먼저 게시:

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.

Steam has over 12,000 games on it. Again as you've been repeatedly told Steam cannot include games in a pass as they don't own them. It would be ILLEGAL. Steam is selling the games ON BEHALF of the publisher. They can't rent their games without the publisher agreeing to do so, and if the publisher wanted to rent their games they could do so themselves already with a few clicks of the mouse.

Steam isn't going to try to negotiate with thousands of developers to try to talk them into renting their games. Not to mention its not financially feasible. Valve would have to spend tens of billions of dollars to license games for streaming if the dev's didn't want to meaning you'd need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars a month for it to be worthwhile.

Passes like EA Play, Ubisoft, etc work because they own the games, they aren't licensing them, so it costs them nothing.

Passes like Gamepass work because they own a LOT of the games, and they are willing to take a loss on the pass or not profit on it because it helps drive console sales.

[Mad Scientist]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

brian9824님이 먼저 게시:

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.

You think a Dev would be "petty" to not want to be part of something where the more Devs involved, the less each will get paid monthly?

Wow, you really are immensely out of touch. "Businesses should do what I want or they're petty" is in itself, a very petty thing to say.

How much do you really think a Dev would make, per game, per user, if there's even 100 titles? Let's just say it's 1 Developer each, (50) $30 games and (50) $60 games for the sake of it, how much do you think those Devs will actually make from a monthly subscription?

That is why EA/Ubi etc do passes for their own things, they lose a minor cut, but gain all of the profit compared to sharing with many other Devs. Kind of like how a lot of people have their own streaming services; you share with them all, you die as a business.

[The Brown Hornet]

Mr. Gentlebot님이 먼저 게시:

"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.

What I think is that this is where society and digital distribution is at in the modern era. There is no need to purchase digital games or those "licenses" that many of you love to mention. A license that really doesn't mean a thing, you can only play the game nothing else...That's no different from if you were to rent or subscribe. The only difference is a time limit which is really all that's needed. Afterall do we truly need unwanted, finished, or completed games forever in the library, forever tied to accounts?

[Brian9824]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

[
What I think is that this is where society and digital distribution is at in the modern era. There is no need to purchase digital games or those "licenses" that many of you love to mention. A license that really doesn't mean a thing, you can only play the game nothing else...That's no different from if you were to rent or subscribe. The only difference is a time limit which is really all that's needed. Afterall do we truly need unwanted, finished, or completed games forever in the library, forever tied to accounts?

Which again, isn't up to steam to decide. Steam is a store. They don't own the games and they can't control how publishers want to sell their product.

Publishers have shown very little interest in what you describe, with the overwhelming majority completely ignoring it. So start writing to every gaming publisher and try to change their mind if you want it to be changed.

[Start_Running]

S others have pointed out The feature already exists. Any pub/dev or collective of pubdevs can create a subscription bundle for a set of titles at any time. MOst don't. This is not something most see as beneficial to their business.

Rental is the same thing. The feature existed back when steam did movies and I doubt the frame work has vanished. TStill there in all likelihood but again, devs would rather make a sale than have a one off weekend. Never mind that many games go on sale for about what you'd rent the game for a weekend.

[nullable]

brian9824님이 먼저 게시:

Snakub Plissken님이 먼저 게시:

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.

Again, I'm not referring to individual game subscriptions like that's some kinda of new thing yet to be fully realized....

And to my knowledge Valve doesn't offer a Steam branded subscription akin to Game Pass or EA Play. I've certainly not seen anything in the "Pay Valve $9.99 a month to play dozens or hundreds of games."

But I believe that sort of offering is the future, and they seem to be pretty popular so I figure it's just an eventuality where most platforms will offer something in that vein. I imagine the pricing, scope and economy will evolve a little.

[Brian9824]

Also hate to break it to you but you've NEVER owned a game, only a license which can be revoked. Its been that way since gaming started.

The only thing that has changed is technology now lets the rules be enforced...

I mean games you bought 20 years ago could have their cd keys revoked rendering the disc useless. Its not new.

[captainwiseass]

I find it very odd that you consider playing the game an inessential part of the experience. What more, exactly, is there? Games are to be played. I want to play the game, I fork over the purchase price (or wait for a sale if I want the discount), I play the game. Pretty much exactly how it worked back when I was playing exclusively SNES games on my parents' CRT TV. Why do you feel entitled to anything else?

As for having old games in the library, so what? Really, where is the problem with this outside of your head?

[The Brown Hornet]

ElvisDeadly님이 먼저 게시:

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

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?

Well considering how much many Steam accounts have already paid and spent throughout the years would you suggest a fair price or that we be ripped off?

[Aachen]

Why does past purchase behavior bear on the pricing for a hypothetical Steam-wide sub?

[Brian9824]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

Well considering how much many of us have already paid and spent throughout the years would you suggest a fair price or that we be ripped off?

Well gamepass has like what, 400-500 games and is $15 a month

So at minimum $350 per month, and even then developers and steam would probably lose money on it. Realistically i'd triple it to about $1000 a month.

After all it not only costs a ton of money to license the games, your also losing out on the sales you would have made as steam would be undercutting itself, and the money has to be split among thousands of publishers as some games charge based on the number of hours played.

[The Brown Hornet]

brian9824님이 먼저 게시:

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

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.

Steam has over 12,000 games on it. Again as you've been repeatedly told Steam cannot include games in a pass as they don't own them. It would be ILLEGAL. Steam is selling the games ON BEHALF of the publisher. They can't rent their games without the publisher agreeing to do so, and if the publisher wanted to rent their games they could do so themselves already with a few clicks of the mouse.

Steam isn't going to try to negotiate with thousands of developers to try to talk them into renting their games. Not to mention its not financially feasible. Valve would have to spend tens of billions of dollars to license games for streaming if the dev's didn't want to meaning you'd need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars a month for it to be worthwhile.

Passes like EA Play, Ubisoft, etc work because they own the games, they aren't licensing them, so it costs them nothing.

Passes like Gamepass work because they own a LOT of the games, and they are willing to take a loss on the pass or not profit on it because it helps drive console sales.

I'm amazed at how little credit you give to Valve's ability to innovate. Illegal you say, you sure you not jumping to extremes? Third parties would certainly have an incentive for including their games. Maybe it's not 12,000 titles, maybe instead there are tiers for old gamess, new releases, top sellers, greatest hits, etc... The goal would be to curate a subscription based Library where titles go in and out based on market trends.

There are literally all types of ways to envision it. The fact is, we on Steam are a captured audience, we aren't going anywhere, so offer us something other than non ownership licenses to play games.

[Thermal Lance]

There would be no point. What games would be in there? Valve barely do anything game related these days. They would need to convinced publishers to come and do it when they can do it themselves. (The publisher's). Having valve as a middle man is pointless.

[The Brown Hornet]

brian9824님이 먼저 게시:

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

Well considering how much many of us have already paid and spent throughout the years would you suggest a fair price or that we be ripped off?

Well gamepass has like what, 400-500 games and is $15 a month

So at minimum $350 per month, and even then developers and steam would probably lose money on it. Realistically i'd triple it to about $1000 a month.

After all it not only costs a ton of money to license the games, your also losing out on the sales you would have made as steam would be undercutting itself, and the money has to be split among thousands of publishers as some games charge based on the number of hours played.

It really seems to me that you are only concerned with what Steam would llise rather than what consumers would gain. I imagine the gain for Steam would be paid subscriptions. Not you have options for those who choose buy the titles and those that rent, what's wrong with that?

[Nx Machina]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

Well considering how much many Steam accounts have already paid and spent throughout the years would you suggest a fair price or that we be ripped off?

How exactly were you ripped off when you confirmed the purchase for each licence and in doing so agreed to pay Valve their cut and the developer, publisher their cut.

Oh! of course you want to be paid for eating a meal, for buying groceries etc whilst not understanding the meaning behind consumer: (a person who buys goods or services for their own use).

A fair price to rent Valve's games excluding Alyx - £14.99 per month, with a minimum subscription period of 1 year, total payable £179.88.

As for ALL other games, Valve does not own them nor can add them to your yet again flawed suggestion of a subscription.

I honestly think the most important thing to come out of your two threads is your inability to control your own spending and expecting Valve to compensate you.

By the way any news on Epic's subscription model?