This week, certain statements by Philip Tremblay, director of subscriptions at Ubisoft, caused mild consternation.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Tremblay said that for video game subscription plans like Ubisoft+ and Game Pass to expand, gamers would need to become more accustomed to not owning games, which he He suggested that this is likely to happen.

"[Consumers] have become comfortable with not owning a CD collection or DVD collection." It is a conversion that was a little slow to happen (in gaming). As gamers become more comfortable with that aspect of ...... they do not lose progress. If you restart the game at another time, the progress file is still there. It is not deleted. You do not lose anything you have built up in the game or your involvement with the game. In other words, you feel comfortable not owning your game."

From the negative reaction to this comment (which some have taken as a request from Ubisoft rather than an observation), I would guess that most gamers are now very comfortable with the idea of not owning the games they are playing. I think they are fed up with subscriptions to games, movies, TV shows, music, etc. in general.

Still, I can't say that despite my objections to streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, I've become less comfortable relying on them over the last 15 years. (Physical media revivalists may prefer the term "complacency," but the point is the same.) I see no reason to doubt that a subset of gamers will become comfortable with game library subscriptions in the future.

Case in point: at least those who remember buying games at brick-and-mortar stores did. The Steam Terms of Service, which we all agreed to, states that if you break the rules, Valve can close your Steam account without refunding you for the games you purchased.

Game ownership has also been diminished by the growing dominance of live service games. Counter-Strike Global Offensive was replaced last year by Counter-Strike 2.

Expressing discomfort with the idea of a subscription-based future would probably be fine if the future were not as optimistic as mine, but even though subscription services are on the rise and Ubisoft is very likely correct in this prediction, game I still don't think there is any need to panic over the complete death of ownership.

At least one gaming industry executive has stated that he is not convinced that subscriptions will replace individual game purchases.

"The point is not to force users to go either route," Tremblay told GamesIndustry.biz. 'What matters here is the preference of the gamer.'

Some prominent game developers are also dismissive of the idea. For example, Michael Daus, Larian's publishing director, scoffed at Ubisoft's views on X.

DRM-free releases are arguably the only way to truly "own" a game today, but if you accept Steam's ownership as close enough, I'm not worried at this point. steam is basically a big collection of individual games for sale and by all accounts it is doing very well. If that were to change, I bet the driving force would be something like Fortnite, which recently added Lego survival and racing games to its modes, rather than something like Ubisoft+.