Subscription services are gradually spreading, but not everyone approves of using this approach to content delivery.
Recently, former Vice President of PR and Marketing at Bethesda, Pete Hines, spoke with dbltap. He shared his opinion on subscriptions.
He doesn't like this content distribution model:
«I no longer work for any of these companies [Bethesda, Microsoft], so I don’t think anything I knew from when I was in the industry is relevant today. At the same time, I’m involved enough in the industry to understand that several years ago I saw what I thought was a short-sighted decision being made, and it seems like my guesses are being confirmed.
"Subscriptions" have become the new four-letter word, right? You can no longer buy a product. When it comes to a content-based subscription, if you don’t understand how to balance the needs of the service and its administrators, with the people who provide the content — without which your subscription is worthless — then you have a serious problem».
During the interview, they mentioned the case with Tango Gameworks studio — Microsoft talked about the success of Hi-Fi Rush, but then decided to close the studio.
Hines believes that developers and their projects are undervalued:
«It is necessary to properly recognize, compensate and understand what it takes to create this content — just create a game, but create a product. This tension hurts many people, including the content creators themselves, because they are embedded in an ecosystem that does not value and reward what they create properly».
