Adam Jensen said:
When I said that this would happen if we let the publishers brainwash us into thinking that always online is a good thing, I was bombed with "that's a slippery slope argument herpa derp". It's even happening to games that aren't always online.
YOU CANNOT ALLOW THE PUBLISHERS THIS KIND OF CONTROL OVER YOUR PROPERTY! GAMES ARE NOT A SERVICE JUST BECAUSE PUBLISHERS WANT THEM TO BE. DON'T BUY INTO THEIR CRAP!
Now imagine if they only made always online games in the future, and if you refused to buy the DLC, your game gets cut off and it won't work in offline mode? That's the sort of future they want. Customers forced to part with their cash to play. The subscription service of some online games made them greedy because they realised that instead of releasing full games with some expansion packs, they figured they could carve up the game and sell it in bits and pieces, and get you to pay to keep enjoying the game.
It won't be long before you're buying a game with no gameplay or textures for $100 followed by a texture and colour pack for $20 followed by a gameplay pack that allows you to enjoy the game for $30. Then you'll get the game of the year edition with everything in it (in other words, the COMPLETE game) for $140 in a Steam sale.
People say we're not forced into buying games or we can play something else, but no one tells you beforehand "the servers will be offline in a year or three". There is no way to predict when the company would pull support for a game. You buy it hoping it will be an enjoyable experience (hopefully for a bit longer than 3 years if it's that sort of game) and they tend to advertise their online component to get you playing with your friends. When they remove a key aspect of it (a server in this case), they're not refunding you for any DLC that was required for that aspect to work. In fact, they're kicking the consumer in the nads for having the audacity to buy their product and pay for their additional content.
Always online will create problems. They will promote subscription services for more games, in other words, you don't pay, you don't play. Essentially this would be a deposit before renting the game. Your $60 will get you the game, but you would then have to pay an additional $15 a month to keep playing it. This would then allow them to keep making DLC (which wouldn't be free) and extend even "single player" games for at least a year or two before their dodgy sequels came along. It's the reason Borderlands 2 had so many DLCs. It is the reason more games have DLCs these days than ever before.
The future of gaming seems to be more about getting down to business and less about having serious fun.
