Game Subscriptions Make it Hard to Vote with my Wallet
To vote with your wallet simply means to buy products from companies that align with your personal ethics or needs while not buying products from those companies that don’t. It’s easier said than done, for sure. Not everyone has the luxury of choice when it comes to some essential products. If you don’t make enough money to shop elsewhere, it doesn’t matter how many hobos Walmart kills, or how staunchly you are against hobo murder, you’ve got to shop at Walmart and risk getting hobo blood on your shoes. So even the very idea of voting with one’s wallet implies a level of privilege and elitism that many, maybe even most, people simply do not have.
But sometimes, for some people, there are non-essential products and services that are “on the ballot” so to speak, and I would argue that for all people video games are firmly non-essential. And Ubisoft is one of those companies that is doing something I don’t like. Do your own research on the company, this article isn’t about taking a stance against Ubisoft. All you need to know is that I will not be giving them any of my money ever again. Again, this article isn’t about condemning a single company, so please don’t click away yet. I’m not asking anyone to do the same as me. Buy what you want. I only mention Ubisoft as an example, one that I’m personally passionate about, so I can explore how changes in video game sales channels affect my ability to vote with my wallet.
So, my personal villain is Ubisoft, but yours, for the sake of this exploration, can be any company. You could hate Activision Blizzard for the incredible greed at the top of the company. You could hate Gearbox Software for its thieving CEO. Or you could hate the Captain for all his crunch…I’m funny.
When I buy a game, when I add that game to my cart, I’m voting in favor of that company. When I don’t buy a game, I’m voting against that company. Simple. Or, at least it had been until recently. Game streaming services have changed this simple, elegant system and not for the better. They’ve confused the system.
Here’s what got me thinking about this. I just played the Immortals Fenyx Rising demo on Google Stadia, a game streaming service, and the game is good. Really good. I’d love to play the full version, but I’ll never give Ubisoft money for it. Or will I? If this game comes to Game Pass or Stadia Pro, and I play it as part of that subscription, have I voted in favor of the company, even though I didn’t exactly buy the game? Maybe a portion of my subscription is going directly to Ubisoft.I don’t know, and unfortunately streaming services are not clear on how the subscription fees make their way to individual publishers.
Or, in some streaming models, the platform holder pays the publisher up front for the game, so technically the publisher has made all the money it will ever make on the streaming platform before the first player ever plays it. That’s good right. Problem solved? I can play the game with a clear conscience.
No. Me simply playing that game still sends positive signals to that streaming platform, meaning future games by the garbage company have my official backing even if I didn’t explicitly vote with a purchase of the game.
It seems quite probable that I’d be supporting this company I don’t like without adding anything to my cart. That’s kinda scary.
Streaming services have obfuscated the game buying transaction. The buying process is different, with streaming services. It’s hard, maybe impossible, for consumers to know where their money is going, which makes voting with your wallet less like actual voting and more like money laundering, where money passes from one shell company to another until eventually the paper trail obfuscates the money’s source. Game streaming is vote laundering.
I know there are plenty of you reading this article who don’t care about the ethical stances of game publishers. That’s okay. The point of this article isn’t to tell you which thing to disagree with or to disagree with anything at all. The point of this article is to explore the idea that game streaming services may actually take some power away from the consumer—the consumer who would have chosen to wield such power—when it comes to holding games companies accountable for their actions, and that is scary.
So, what’s the path forward? Well, for me, I’ll simply need to exercise more self control. Think of it like dieting. Dieting is easy if you are the one in charge of buying food. But if you are living with someone, sometimes you open the pantry and there’s so much candy and chips that you didn’t buy and the CEOs of those candy and chips love sexually harassing people. The point is, making the right choice is easy when I’m in control of my options. But when options I didn’t ask for just appear in my games library, it will be a bit harder to say no. And making it even harder is that me, as a conscientious consumer, must work to keep educated on the various ethical stances of these companies. There is no federally required Nutritional Information label equivalent on a video game. Maybe there should be.
Music credits
- Bossa Antigua by Kevin MacLeod, Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3454-bossa-antigua, License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Pump Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Zigzag by Kevin MacLeod, Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5020-zigzag, License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
