The big difference with Game Pass is that the $10 gets me all those games just for that month, whereas my Steam library is full of games I've bought over the years, usually for <$10/each. If I were to have paid $10/mo over the same period of time, I would have paid significantly more -- and I'd have to keep paying it in order to play those games.
I subscribe to Game Pass occasionally and it sucks every time to lose access to all the games I'm playing. It becomes a balancing act of "I can buy this game for $30 or I can play it (and others) for 3 months at the same price... but what if I want to play it again in the future?" Like most rental models, most times it's easier and cheaper to just buy the game upfront if you can afford it, especially when it's on sale, which is easy to predict (and be notified of) on stores like Steam.
>> and I'd have to keep paying it in order to play those games.
But how long do you play these games for, and how often do you replay them? There are definitely games I replay a lot (Resident Evil games, for one) but there are many where I'm done after one playthrough. I'm totally okay "renting" it and moving on with Game Pass for a lot of titles.
This might be specific to my tastes, but most of the games I play don't really have an "end" to playthroughs (and for the ones that do, it's very rare that I dedicate the time to play it start to finish without taking breaks to play other games, which usually drags playthroughs on for much longer than less casual players). And sometimes I just come back to old games years later for nostalgia.
Some of my most-played on Game Pass are Crusader Kings 3, ARK, Dragon Age, My Time at Portia, and No Man's Sky, which are basically what I go back to every time I resubscribe. But after getting up near a dozen months subscribed at $10/mo, I'm now really wishing I would have just dished out the cash earlier to buy the games instead, especially if I want to keep playing them over time. I'm very much in a sunk cost mindset though: "I've already paid to play the game so much, surely this month is the month I'll 'finish' it and get to stop paying, right? Therefore, I shouldn't pay full price to own it when I can just pay the $10..."
It's very much a digital Blockbuster all over again. There, too, I spent many more hundreds of dollars on repeatedly renting games that I should have just bought. But, like Blockbuster, Game Pass is really good for discovering new games because it's such a low cost to try anything in the library once.
The nice thing about Game Pass is that after a game has been on the service for a number of months, you get a 20% discount if you choose to buy it. It's useful for instances where a game you want to keep playing is about to leave the service, or you want to get off the subscription plan.
look at this way: a business makes a change (in this case buying vs subscription). do they do it in their own interest or yours?
super simple stuff.
steam presented a bit of an issue about owning what you pay for. because, if their service is down, you can't access your "assets". some people called it a type of subscription model.
with this shift in the industry, outright paying a subscription for temporary access, we move even further away from owning what we pay for.
imagine never buying a house but always renting. why be against it? who is that business model good for? what kind of world are we voting for when we buy into these types of businesses?
in the long term, a subscription model puts us, the customers, at a loss. and a successful business plans for long term.
I subscribe to Game Pass occasionally and it sucks every time to lose access to all the games I'm playing. It becomes a balancing act of "I can buy this game for $30 or I can play it (and others) for 3 months at the same price... but what if I want to play it again in the future?" Like most rental models, most times it's easier and cheaper to just buy the game upfront if you can afford it, especially when it's on sale, which is easy to predict (and be notified of) on stores like Steam.