Former Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications for Bethesda Softworks, Pete Hines, recently stated that he believes that gaming subscription services like Xbox Game Pass are “worth jack s**t” if the developers who create their content for them are not supported properly.
The ex-figurehead of the masterful FPS and RPG creators at Bethesda announced his retirement a couple of years ago after 24 years with the company. Enjoying the freedom of retirement, Hines has gone on record to share how he feels about the state of the gaming industry in a recent interview with DBLTAP.
Not only did he briefly speak on the early days of the company back when the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series were really coming into their own as global gaming sensations, but he also shared his insights and predictions for the future of the gaming industry and the many services provided to players.
With that said, he clarified that after retiring from the now Microsoft Game Studio Bethesda, his views may not be as up to date as he’d prefer, but after digging into this, he at least seems thoughtful in his approach to the subject. Hines stated that he observed what he “considered to be some short-sighted decision making several years ago” that currently seems to be “bearing out the way I said.”
“Subscriptions have become the new four-letter word, right? You can’t buy a product anymore,” he continued. “When you talk about a subscription that relies on content, if you don’t figure out how to balance the needs of the service and the people running the service with the people who are providing the content, without which your subscription is worth jack s**t, then you have a real problem.”
Hines later shared that the pressure and unrewarding nature of ongoing gaming subscription services are directly affecting the same developers needed to allow for their existence to begin with. It’s a heavy and seemingly unwavering reliance on this relatively new business model that he feels is “hurting a lot of people.”
“You need to properly acknowledge, compensate and recognize what it takes to create that content and not just make a game, but make a product,” he explained. “That tension is hurting a lot of people, including the content creators themselves, because they’re fitting into an ecosystem that is not properly valuing and rewarding what they’re making.”
Pivoting from one former higher-up to another, Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio described Game Pass as the “elephant in the room” and an “unsustainable model.” He later added, “I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models… they’ll either kill everyone else or give up.” This was in the wake of two Bethesda studios, Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, being shuttered, with the latter eventually being rescued when PUBG publisher Krafton bought it from Xbox.
The gaming community has been discussing the importance, value, and necessity of subscription platforms like Game Pass since launch, and while the services are consistently updated with hundreds of games for subscribers to get their hands on sounds like a sweet deal for the players, many developers have had mixed feelings over the lifespan of the evolving services.
There isn’t a true consensus on the topic as some developers, especially smaller teams, have praised Game Pass as the reason their game got so much traction and helped them to sell the sequel or other titles from the studio and so on. Other developers have claimed that their games would have made far more money had they not put them on the service on launch. I’m just happy I get to play so many great games at an affordable price.
After Game Pass was proving to be a success in the early 2020s, PlayStation eventually followed suit and created a PS Plus-centric competitor service and former President and CEO of Sony Interactive, Shawn Layden, is another harsh critic of the video game subscription service models, stating that the “Netflix of gaming idea” is a “danger” that led him to question, “is it healthy for the developer?”
More to the Xbox angle, back in July Microsoft shared the success of Game Pass having achieved over $5 billion in revenue over the last year, though the timing was poor as the gaming giant had just laid off hundreds of employees across a handful of studios and departments earlier that month.
I’m optimistic that Microsoft will begin to realize the pressures they are imposing and the strain it is having on the gaming industry and will hopefully change their approach to the service. It’s a great service that has provided millions of players with nearly unlimited fun and new virtual adventures to undertake, so I hate to see it crumble under the weight of their hubris. Time will tell.
