Categories
Episodes

Season 16, Episode 12

Fifteen bucks, little man…

I can remember a time well over a decade ago when paying a subscription to play a game wasn’t too far fetched. I guess they still exist now? I’m not sure. Seems most died out or went free-to-play and offered other ways of making money rather than paying something monthly.

Still, playing World Of Warcraft or City Of Heroes was a monthly fee. For one game. And I paid it willingly without issue. Like it was…reasonable. I have monthly fees now that cover so much more than a single game. Game Pass sort of broke that mold, but we were still doing it with places like GameFly and some other sub services that offered a few games a month.

It may still be around for MMO type of games like the ones I mentioned earlier but you just don’t see it anymore, really. That I know of. I could be wrong and there’s a whole world of subscription games. But I’m willing to bet there’s less of them now than there were a decade ago.

Having said that, here comes Zen Studios with a subscription plan for…pinball. I never thought I would see something like this come to pinball. A subscription model. For pinball. And it’s $15 a month. I mean, I know it lets you play all their tables for $15 a month, but that’s absurd.

I have a ton of their tables and I’ve played them a lot, but there’s this whole “bridge too far” thing, and I think I found it. And I get you’re paying that to play ALL of those tables so maybe it doesn’t break down to $15 for one game, but I’ve owned most of the tables on previous versions and only had to pay once for that. Now, they’re moving to a different storefront (it’s a stretch to say “platform” here) and tables will not transfer. You’ve gotta buy them all over again. OR…pay a monthly fee to play them all. They knew this would happen and I guess came up with the subscription plan as a way to say “Hey, you don’t have to rebuy them, just pay this a month and you get all of them!”

They’ve also changed how you buy the tables as well and it’s a mess. They’re catching the right kind of flack for this and I hate to see it happen because I’m a big fan of theirs. But bad business is bad business and I hope they eventually find a way to fix this for their customers and fans alike.

Meanwhile…Ubisoft, it’s been 3,154 days since the last Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, or VR exclusive).

Leave a Reply