Shawn Layden: "Subscription Services Turn Developers Into “Wage Slaves” and Are “Bad for the Business”"

ecosse_011172 said:
I think "mediocre filler" is unfair on Avowed and Indiana Jones and while SOM is mediocre, it's visuals, music etc. are fantastic, I'm really enjoying it.
Not sure how you measure "flopped" with Gamepass games anyway.
A million people played South of Midnight, apart from GaaS games I've no idea about the very idea of profitability on Gamepass games.
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And I enjoyed Concord as well as my initial impression on Hellblade 2, but both games are flops as well.

Besides, a million people out of 30+M subs that bothered to try a game that's available on said service they already subbed to isn't exactly showing good performance.

Main gist was that all those games performed rather poorly (like Doom that completely vanished from all charts in it's second month), which supports what Layden said.
 
Killjoy-NL said:
And I enjoyed Concord as well as my initial impression on Hellblade 2, but both games are flops as well.

Besides, a million people out of 30+M subs that bothered to try a game that's available on said service they already subbed to isn't exactly showing good performance.

Main gist was that all those games performed rather poorly (like Doom that completely vanished from all charts in it's second month), which supports what Layden said.
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Yeah, fair enough.
I think we're on the same page anyway.

For me, Gamepass is a demo subscription these days, I won't renew and anything that's really good (Clair Obscur, Metaphor:ReFantazio etc.) I'll buy on PSN.
I've realised that I really prefer owning a game and I want to support good games financially.
 
Joining Welcome Home GIF
 
I agree that Gamepass/PS+ is not what I want to play, I prefer invest the time I have to play in games that are valuable for me and that I'll replay and remember than playing a dozens of games that I play a couple of hours and then drop to go to the next one.

But it's quite hypocrit as he always have been supportive to the PS+. The GP = trash / PS+ = awesome ?
 
Grildon Tundy said:
I disagree on this point:

Profitability is the objective measure of success for a company.

What he should've said, but didn't, is: "Will it be profitable for Microsoft in the long term after they disrupt the industry by reducing incentives for developers to the point they no longer produce content that will drive consumers to Game Pass?"
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Maybe he sees it as a necessary expense like marketing. Whatever the benefits are overall outweigh just a loss in profits overall for Microsoft, and not just Xbox itself.

I agree with you though but just playing devils advocate.
 
ecosse_011172 said:
Why would it be any different to the other media that's already went down the path with the same results? Hardly anyone buys movies, hardly anyone buys music, it's all been devalued with the message of "You don't have to buy this".
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Who's complaining?
Killjoy-NL said:
We just have to look at the GamePass filler Xbox released this gen with games like Indiana, Avowed, SoM and Doom.

The proof is right there.
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Filler, my friend you've made yourself look very silly with 3 of those games you mentioned.
 
Make a good game.

If it's on a sub service:

1. Make it available to buy
2. Gets it in front of more gamers
3. Potentially will help sell publishers other games (put them on sale)
4. Release DLC and potentially sell to more gamers who are playing the game on the service
5. Eventually take off the sub service, put at a discount and gamers already invested in the game may purchase it

Many publishers and developers say sub services have benefited them.
 
Guesclin said:
Shawn Tencent Layden would say the opposite if Tencent had MS cloud marketshare because a future where gamers don't own the games is a highly profitable one for the investor.

18819.jpeg
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Shawn is talking about game subs, not about cloud gaming or what appears in that image: server cloud infrastructures.

Digital game stores like PSN, eShop and so on need server cloud infrastructures to work. Same goes with online multiplayer games, internal game metrics, etc.

Scrawnton said:
He is the strategic gaming advisor for Tencent and their bread and butter for gaming profits is investing and making money off massive F2P games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Arcane Studio games.

If cheap subscription services provide people with cheap access to non free to play games, that's less time and money spent on the predatory games Tencent is trying to foster.

So, subscription services for single player games cuts into the "play for free but get hooked and spend endless money" gambling simulators Tencent is invested in like they're SMERSH from 007.
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Tencent also owns -or invested in- a ton of game companies that instead of being focused in F2P are focused instead on selling games, and that sometimes even have their own subscriptions. Like Ubisoft.

He -and basically the whole gaming industry- is ok with gamesubs that have old games and represent a small percentage of the industry because they are an extra revenue source that doesn't negatively affect the main one: to sell games and DLC/IAP. What he doesn't want is to have the market monopolized by one or two game subs with a very limited of new games per week as mostly the only one revenue source.

Because this means to destroy the industry since only a few devs would get decent money and the rest of the companies would die.
 
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If these idiots would spend half as much time working on making good games as they do coming up with excuses as to why the slop they are producing isn't selling, there wouldn't be a problem.

Subscriptions aren't the problem. Developers are.

If you make a good game, it will sell well, regardless of the existing subscription services.

If your game is slop, it isn't going to sell well no matter what.

Subscriptions represent an amazing value proposition for the average gamer. They aren't going anywhere.
 
Negotiator101 said:
Link?
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Mate, there are endless examples in the last 10 years.

blabbermouth.net

TRENT REZNOR: Streaming Music Services Have 'Mortally Wounded' A Whole Tier Of Artists

NINE INCH NAILS leader Trent Reznor has blasted Spotify and Apple Music for the paltry payments the music streaming services pay out to music rightsholders. Speaking to GQ magazine, the industrial rock pioneer said: "I think the terrible payout of streaming services has mortally wounded a whole...
blabbermouth.net blabbermouth.net
 
Good for business' must mean $80 games and Denuvo

So... bad for business, but good for me. Companies better step up their game if they want me as a customer
 
Layden might not like sub plans (even though as a Sony exec he was right there when PS+ was the first sub plan to add games and hen PS Now was the first one with lots of games).

But sub plans are way better than the junk he's peddling now like his Griple.

Griple, Inc.

Griple is the “PVP of fandom” that makes a game out of game day.
griple.com
 
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ecosse_011172 said:
I'm not really sure what you are arguing, are you trying to say that it would be good for video games to go the same way where 4% of the money spent is on buying games?
4% of the total is not "a lot" whatever way you spin it.
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You claimed that people hardly buy movies anymore; my point is that this is a false claim. The link you provided showed that digital movie sales alone brought in $1.6bil in 2024. How could movie sales bring in billions of dollars a year if people are hardly buying them?
 
Sinfulgore said:
You claimed that people hardly buy movies anymore; my point is that this is a false claim. The link you provided showed that digital movie sales alone brought in $1.6bil in 2024. How could movie sales bring in billions of dollars a year if people are hardly buying them?
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Because a billion dollars is fuck all, it's 4% of the total revenue.
If there were 100 people in a town and 4 of them bought films,4 of them rented films and 92% streamed them, how could you describe the 4%?
Would you say "hardly anyone is buying movies"?
If you say "lots of people are buying movies" that would give a false impression because ALMOST EVERYONE IS STREAMING THEM.
 
Sinfulgore said:
I disagree with Shawn. The idea that games only have launch is silly. Almost every major IP sells a ton of merchandise, and there are other ways, such as microtransactions or early access, to bring in more revenue. What's bad for businesses is spending 5+ years on a games that offer very little value. This was fine in the 360/PS3 era when there was a huge gap in quality between indie XBLA/PSN games like Braid and games like Assassin's Creed but times have changed. Not only have indie games increased in quality over the years, but so have free-to-play games. Subscription services aren't the problem; competition is the problem.
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The problem with guys like Shawn Layden is his biggest career tenure is Sony which focuses on SP games as their best success. So that's what he knows. Sub plans in any media industry can be successful or flop. It depends on the company and service.

The vast majority of Sony's MP/GAAS kind of games have bombed over multiple generations. It's so bad that starting with the PS4 era, they basically gave up on it except for PS1 era legacy IPs like GT and baseball as their biggest MP games. And aside from H2, they still cant figure it out some reason. Even super successful Bungie with Destiny 2 started bombing once they bought them. And Marathon has been a disaster too (even excluding the stolen art debacle assuming the art was legit the whole time).

So aside from legacy games GT and baseball, and Arrowhead's hugely successful H2 (which H1 was barely mentioned anywhere), some reason the rest of the MP efforts flame out. And some spectacularly like Concord and Marathon art issue.

So Layden doesn't understand F2P games, GAAS, MMO sub plan games, early access or any stuff which games like COD, FIFA, Minecraft and even lesser played games like Warframe have been doing for a decade or more to great success.

Big corporate guys like Layden are used to big budget gaming with office tower kind of settings. Guys like him in big companies win by spending money trying to get sales on spectacle and marketing. A big corporation making games will pretty much never make a game like Minecraft made by Notch (whatever his real name is). So when their big SP games start getting crunched in financials because the costs are outpacing sales squeezing margins, he doesnt know what to do. Other companies can make good games on smaller budgets and have other sources of money (as you said) or try to make their game into a 5 or 10 year cycle of GAAS. He doesn't know how to do that.

Some of the biggest games out there are even F2P. But a company like Sony doesn't know how to make F2P games.

Sub plans cant be that bad. Sony even started it off with PS+ giving away monthly free games to hook PS gamers into a sub plan, and then got PS Now up in summer 2014. GP didnt launch for 3 more years.
 
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ReasonBeing said:
Well you aren't wrong that Netflix puts out some slop. Being a teenager in the early 2000's, I was exposed to a television platform that consisted of 632 different channels that were full of shitty movies and shows that no one wanted to see. Quantitatively, there are a similar amount of television shows that are worth watching today, as there was before streaming was a thing. At least that's my perspective. I feel like our short memories do us a disservice in allowing us to believe that traditional television wasn't smack full of dreadful 'content' before the streaming platforms took over.

I will concede that there are less movies coming out that I am interested in, but this also could be a function of me getting older and developing a more specific taste.
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You were watching movies that had already been shown in the cinema and not an avalanche of stupid movies made like a cake recipe to please a bubble of consumers.
 
Roberts said:
Usually I hear this sentiment from people who turns out haven't played the fucking games. Psychonauts 2 is one of the greatest platformers ever with writing that puts most games to shame, Grounded has the most creative, incredible open world probably ever and gameplay mechanics that are more varied than most games, Sea of Thieves updates, especially narrative ones, until recently have been tons of fun and experience unlike anything else on the market, Avowed is a fantastic action RPG, Age of Empire remakes/remasters were adapted to consoles brilliantly, South of Midnight and Hellblade 2 might not be for everyone and have flaws but as gaming experiences they were visceral audio-visual treats. Pentiment is a masterclass of writing and mood, As Dusk Falls was fun, Indiana Jones is way better than it had any right to be. Even Starfield is widely misunderstood and will most likely be re-evaluated in ten years or so. Oh, and FH5 is better than 2 and 4. And I am probably forgetting stuff.
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So anyone who disagrees with you hasn't played the games, got it.

I will give you psychonauts 2( although it was in development far before ms boight the studio) and grounded.

Sea of thieves though kind of proves my point. It was extremely bare bones at launch and is kind of f2p.

Avowed while having good combat, has an extremely dead world with NPCs not moving at all.

Age of mythology retold's chinese dlc has AI voice over. While the game is good( because it is a remake of a great game) you can see the cut corners. Also it is a remake that has dlcs being regularly released, same with age of empires 2 de.

Both south of midnight and hellblade were kind of flops( from what I recall, they didn't even chart in even monthly sales charts) and while I can't speak about south of midnight ( I have no interest in it), hellblade has only visuals and audio going for it. It is worse than mid in terms of being a game, in the same tier as order 1886.

I didn't like Indiana Jones( you can even read my comment history if you don't believe me). The gameplay was bad and the game got too repetitive too quickly. Personally I believe it is hard to like that game if you weren't already an Indiana Jones fan.

Starfield is deservedly trashed upon, I don't even need to expand on that. There are some really great posts and even videos that go into details as to the numerous flaws that it has.

FH 5 being better than 2 and 4? That's an extremely uncommon opinion and I don't even understand as to why anyone would think that. Fh4 atleast tried something new( with the seasons mechanics), fh5 was basically a copy and paste of fh3 and fh4( hilariously even having the same bugs as fh3 and fh4 atleast launch). It is considered by the sim community( along with big parts of forza community) to be the worst in the series( although it is the best selling one).

vaibhavpisal said:
FH5 is GAAS racer. Do you levy same complaint against GT7 or Mario Kart?

I have played enough FH5 to understand its appeal, not to mention, a ton of people play it regularly. Its a solid title if you are into driving games.

FM I didn't play, but I will take your word for it, it wasn't launched in best possible state probably.


You have no idea what you are talking about.

Its no 1 complaint from day 1 is live service model that 343 adapted to please both long term fans and regular players that like to grind battle passes etc.

I imagine you don't play many live service titles. Apex Legends has 1-2 maps with 1-2 modes active at a time that you can grind. And it feels good. Better than what Infinite presents.


Name those mid games, and utterly shit ones as well.

Unless you like to repeat this shit without giving it any thought like the poster above.
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Gt 7 atleast had brand new systems and physics. Fh5 retained even the same bugs and model errors as previous games( same with the latest FM).

Yet as previously mentioned, there is a reason why forza and sim community in general has labelled it as boring. There is nothing in fh5 that isn't already there in fh3 and fh4. Heck FH 4 had a far more interesting map and the seasons mechanics was great. Sure it was still far too similar to FH3( the best FH) but if was still good. Fh5 has a bigger map in a world that feels far less alive than any of the previous forza. There just so fewer people actually there ( or even moving about, although in all honesty, fh has been degrading in that case game by game). Anyways, don't want to add more since it becomes way too long of a post.


Out of the games I have played( from the top of my head):

Good: grounded 1&2, Age of mythology retold( besides the dlc), aoe 2, ori 1&2, cuphead, fm5, fh 3&4, flight sim 2020

Mid: Indiana Jones, avowed, starfield, fh5, flight sim 2024, pertinent, fm 6&7

Shit: hellblade, redfall, fm, stae of decay 2, crackdown 3.
 
Det said:
You were watching movies that had already been shown in the cinema and not an avalanche of stupid movies made like a cake recipe to please a bubble of consumers.
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I mean sure. This doesn't change my main point , and it surely doesn't change the fact that people in the past regularly spent more time looking for something to watch than actually watching TV, which was your point that I was responding too.

Edit: people spent so much time on the TV guide channel that they started treating it like a legit channel with shows and commercials.
 
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ecosse_011172 said:
Because a billion dollars is fuck all, it's 4% of the total revenue.
If there were 100 people in a town and 4 of them bought films,4 of them rented films and 92% streamed them, how could you describe the 4%?
Would you say "hardly anyone is buying movies"?
If you say "lots of people are buying movies" that would give a false impression because ALMOST EVERYONE IS STREAMING THEM.
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You are trying to move the goalpost here. Whether or not people are buying movies is different than comparing movie sales revenue with streaming revenue. These are two entirely different metrics. If I sell 1 million items at 1$ and someone else sells 400k items at $20, the second seller would have way more revenue, but my $1 product still sold way more. You can't judge whether people are buying something based solely on how much revenue it makes compared to something else.

As for percentages, a low percentage can still be a lot depending on the context. If you had 4% of Elon Musk's wealth, you would have a lot of money.
 
Sinfulgore said:
You are trying to move the goalpost here. Whether or not people are buying movies is different than comparing movie sales revenue with streaming revenue. These are two entirely different metrics. If I sell 1 million items at 1$ and someone else sells 400k items at $20, the second seller would have way more revenue, but my $1 product still sold way more. You can't judge whether people are buying something based solely on how much revenue it makes compared to something else.

As for percentages, a low percentage can still be a lot depending on the context. If you had 4% of Elon Musk's wealth, you would have a lot of money.
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straw man nonsense.
Mate, if you genuinely believe that streaming doesn't completely dominate the music and TV/movie markets then you're in la-la land.

Note that I buy all my music on vinyl as well as streaming with Qobuz and have a decent amount of Blu-Ray and 4K UHD discs but that is not the average customer.
 
You mean to tell me that the dev that needs to sell so many copies to get paid is going to produce a better game then a Dev that gets paid regardless.....
 
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I personally think it has devalued the big games, at least for me. I used to subscribe to GP but stopped because I realised I wasn't actually playing many games on it. There was just zero attachment to the games as I hadn't made a choice with my own money to buy them. I just couldn't stick with any game for long enough, as there's always another potentially better one to download. I spent more time downloading games than actually playing or caring about them.

I've stopped paying for Ultimate, now pay for my own game choices, and I value the games infinitely more. GP Ultimate is not good for games/gamers in the long run.
 
ecosse_011172 said:
straw man nonsense.
Mate, if you genuinely believe that streaming doesn't completely dominate the music and TV/movie markets then you're in la-la land.

Note that I buy all my music on vinyl as well as streaming with Qobuz and have a decent amount of Blu-Ray and 4K UHD discs but that is not the average customer.
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lol. I have never once claimed that streaming doesn't dominate anything. You don't seem to understand that two things can be true. Streaming can(and is) very popular but people still buy movies thats why it brings in so much money ever year. Here's another example: The Super Mario Movie made $140 million in revenue from VOD and physical sales.
 
olninty said:
I personally think it has devalued the big games, at least for me. I used to subscribe to GP but stopped because I realised I wasn't actually playing many games on it. There was just zero attachment to the games as I hadn't made a choice with my own money to buy them. I just couldn't stick with any game for long enough, as there's always another potentially better one to download. I spent more time downloading games than actually playing or caring about them.

I've stopped paying for Ultimate, now pay for my own game choices, and I value the games infinitely more. GP Ultimate is not good for games/gamers in the long run.
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Morgan Freeman Applause GIF by The Academy Awards
 
Insanemaelstrom said:
Out of the games I have played( from the top of my head):

Good: grounded 1&2, Age of mythology retold( besides the dlc), aoe 2, ori 1&2, cuphead, fm5, fh 3&4, flight sim 2020

Mid: Indiana Jones, avowed, starfield, fh5, flight sim 2024, pertinent, fm 6&7

Shit: hellblade, redfall, fm, stae of decay 2, crackdown 3.
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So they have a mix of good, mid, bad games. Just like any other developer.

Your original post implied they only have mid games cause of gamepass.

In practice that didn't turn out to be the case.
 
Sinfulgore said:
lol. I have never once claimed that streaming doesn't dominate anything. You don't seem to understand that two things can be true. Streaming can(and is) very popular but people still buy movies thats why it brings in so much money ever year. Here's another example: The Super Mario Movie made $140 million in revenue from VOD and physical sales.
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Streaming isn't "very popular", it's almost the entire market.
Anyway, this thread is about gaming and judging by your dogged arguing, you must believe that Game Pass is good for the industry.
I disagree.
 
I suppose this point has been made already, but I'll repeat it for the hell of it. Sub services aren't bad in themselves. You can have a sub service devoted to legacy/backcatalog stuff, and it will be fine. It's the Day 1 giveaways that are the problem.
 
I think Shawn will eventually be proven right about the creative limitations. MS itself even said it would lay people off, close studios, and focus on big IPs in the last round of layoffs.

Now, about the salary… it's not like people in the industry are getting tons and tons of bonuses when a game does well.
 
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