Comment #1693

oh ya eh?

- Christophe on Your suffering shall begin soon

Tags: apple, apple arcade, sony playstation plus, nintendo switch online, nintendo, sony, microsoft, microsoft game pass, renting not buying, games, games as a service

Apple has a platform known as Apple Arcade which is very similar to the Microsoft Game Pass, Sony's Playstation Plus and Nintendo's Switch Online platforms. Hell, even Google has Play Pass.

Games as a service are here. You don't technically own anything anymore. You simply rent it for a period of time and play it while it's made available to you.

Thanks Steam for bringing us down this road. Originally, I was against the idea of what Steam was, but never thought it would get this bad.

So Apple had a bunch of games that were on this rental service and now they're removing these 15:

• Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree


• BattleSky Brigade: Harpooner


• Cardpocalypse


• Dead End Job


• Don't Bug Me!


• Dread Nautical


• EarthNight


• Explottens


• Lifeslide


• Over the Alps


• Projection: First Light


• Spelldrifter


• Spidersaurs


• Towaga: Among Shadows


• Various Daylife

The agreement between the devs and Apple was that for a period of time those games would be on the arcade and they would be available to be played for anyone subscribing to the service. The terms are now up and people who play those games will eventually - 2 weeks? be met with a message saying no longer available. The dev can decide if they want to put the game for sale for full purchase on the store after that. People who had the game through the service will need to buy the game to continue playing it.

This raises all sorts of questions regarding ownership and preservation and the like. It still boggles my mind that people are willing to do it this way.