they want us to pay constantly, forever.

it will not stop unless its stopped.

Most users on this platform are batshit mentally insane leftists, yes.

Rent Extraction is the objective, and I partly disagree that killing the secondary market is the blanket objective. Look at ticketmaster. They sell the tickets, then they also take fees on the resale of those same tickets purchased by customers/scalpers. They profit twice thanks to the secondary market. Doesn’t work (yet) for something like books, but give it time.

The general objective is to force everything to subscription and also force upgrades thanks to them controlling EOL for everything. They never want to give users the ability to run their own servers for sunsetted services.

Killing ownership is the objective, killing the secondary market is collateral

Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?

Many people here are. People will lash out over the smallest thing. There are a lot of cool people too, but I highly advise using the block feature liberally. The jerks can really be a buzzkill as they truly love to judge your entire life by one comment and they truly love to imagine you're the worst version of you they can imagine. So yeah, strap in. I think overall, the communities here are worth it, but there are times that assholes make me doubt that. Block instances, communities, and users who make you feel that way. It's definitely a far superior experience to reddit even given the assholes, though.

Same thing happened to the home video market. No more dvd sales and resales. Everything gets funneled into subscriptions.

This killed a lot of Indy films and films that had weak releases can no longer recoup any money via dvd sales. So more of those films simply don’t get made anymore

Sorry but I must ban your PSN, XBox and Steam account because of this comment. It's not my fault. People told me to do it. All your digital purchases are gone Sir.

Capitalism loves planned obsolescence, artificial scarcity, and rental everything.

Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?

Their greatest competition is games that already exist. They want to transition to experiences as the service, to ensure you can't provide yourself with an experience that doesn't get them paid. This is much wider than video games, it's all media, from books to movies to music to videos games to dating and relationships. Controlling everything we value is the goal.

Supplemental Question: This is my first post on Lemmy, and the responses have me wanting to clarify something- Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?

No, but the fediverse has a good portion of the crazier parts of the left wing (and they are very vocal). If it bothers you, go heavy on blocking the worst offenders and you'll find that most lemmings are pretty chill. We're "just" nuts enough stray from the mainstream platforms where most normies hang out.

I for one look forward to the day when I can recommend the fediverse to at least my left-wing friends w/o them questioning my sanity.

There is such a huge library of games made over the previous 30ish years. We really need new console games? Fuck it. Bring back vintage games. They were fun then and they are fun now

Thank you for the insight. I had no clue about the news on my own

This is so much bigger than the secondary resale market, which is a small added bonus for them

The move from physical media; the price of computer components rising beyond reasonable levels; the locking down of hardware; the locking down of software distribution methods; the inevitability of de-anonymizing all Internet users…

The capitalist class has had enough of your criticism. We discovered their little criminal playground that preyed on children, we discovered how they hide their wealth without contributing back to society, we even discovered how government programs meant to “keep us safe” are used to exploit everyone on earth.

You think Sony ending physical discs is about video games? Brother it’s about the mind prison they’re designing to keep you in line while they fuck preteens on yachts until this whole planet burns to the ground

I think that big game publishers have found that there's a real ceiling for what people are willing to pay for games, and direct digital sales are the only way they can drive up their share of that amount.

Game prices have not kept up with inflation over the past 30 years. If you cut the production costs and you cut out the reseller's margin, that equals more revenue for first-party titles. And it further sweetens the pot for console companies because they can take a cut of third-party titles that go through their stores. (Third-party developers still save on physical production and distribution, so it's a win for them, too.)

Not to mention the overall move toward software-as-a-service subscriptions across the board. If they can take your one-time $70 purchase and convert it into a monthly $5 subscription fee, now you're paying $130 for the first year and $60 per year afterward for that game.

I have games from 25 years ago that I still play. I feel really sorry for young gamers because they probably won't even have the option to revisit some of their old faves 25 years from now.

(I'm working my way through Castlevania: Circle of the Moon right now. It's not the best entry in the series, but it has its charms.)