Not that the harm hasn't already been done, but I did just see this: https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/microsoft-pulls-azure-services-from-israeli-military/

To be fair it‘s as absurd as it was inevitable. Gamepass was always meant as this temporary thing you can try out to play some new games until everyone jumps ship because of increased prices. It has been preached for years. No one could‘ve seriously thought this was a long term alternative to buying games or at least buying licenses to games on Steam. All online subscriptions are scams in the process.

"watch playthroughs of new games on Twitch of YouTube"

welcome to my life for the last couple of many years lol. Not that I've been boycotting per se, but I haven't bought a new game in years cuz my laptop is over a decade old so the best I can play is minecraft, or just use my xbox one for battlefield 4. the corporate greed from the last decade has caused me to never buy this crap again. I love videogames so much, thank god for emulators.

I don't need any trash EsaudiaA dishes out. People need to go play old/vintage games, get back to the roots, before games were nothing but meaningless cash grabs.

Why watch playthroughs at all? Just wait till the games are on sale. And only a year isn't that long, wait more and get better deals with more complete games. There's nothing saying you need to hurry in any way, and several things saying it's a good idea to wait. There are more than enough games available for anyone to not have to constantly claw at the newest releases in any way.

silksong isn't on sale.

Once upon a time, the idea with subscriptions like this was to have customers set it and forget it. Charge them a small/reasonable amount and they'll keep giving you money forever. Giving people a reason to think about - or worse, evaluate the merits of - the monthly deposit they're giving you used to be a sin for companies.

But here we are, seeing the difference between "companies" and "corpos".

The missus and I sat down about a year ago and tabulated up how much all of the various streaming subscriptions were costing us per year (it was close to $1,000 when including YouTube Premium).

We cancelled every single one, and put that money towards building a home NAS and filling that up with downloaded media. No more ads, stupidly low bitrates, or TV shows & movies disappearing because a license expired.

The server has more than paid for itself at this point, and every additional spare dollar is being put aside for our kids’ tuition.

ETA: Consider doing the same, your kid’ll likely thank you in the long run!

PS: Never too late to introduce them to all of your favourite classic games, either - though that one may be a bit harder to get them onboard 🤣

it WAS a good deal early on. Also when they introduced their partnership with RIOT and it would allow you to unlock all the characters in LoL that was a very good deal if you were a League player.

but the price increases and what have you...meh. it was good to get access to some games and not have to pay full retail for them. I'm thankful I didn't pay full price for Starfield and just played it on gamepass but there would be months on end where there was nothing on there worth playing.

Between that, this, and Disney+ cancellation page "accidentally" going down during that fiasco, this is exactly why I've switched to using only virtual cards for subscriptions. Pause/Cancel the virtual card, voila, no more subscription.