Ubisoft director says gamers will get more comfortable 'not owning' games, and he's not wrong

A comment from Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay caused mild upset this week—«pirate everything from Ubisoft,» one response demanded—but the hostile reaction might have more to do with general anxiety over the future of game ownership than his actual point, which didn't strike me as surprising or untrue.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Tremblay said that, for videogame subscription plans like Ubisoft+ and Game Pass to expand, gamers will need to become more comfortable with not owning games, and he implied that this is likely to happen.

"[Consumers] got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection," said Tremblay. «That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect … you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.»

Based on the negative response to that comment (which some framed as a demand from Ubisoft rather than an observation), we can safely guess that most gamers currently feel very uncomfortable with the idea of not owning the games they play. I think we're probably all fatigued by subscriptions in general—for games, movies, TV shows, music—which incentivize constant grazing, often remove stuff, and are a terrible value in cases where we just want perpetual access to a small collection of our favorite things.

And yet, I can't claim that I haven't grown comfortable relying on streaming services like Netflix and Spotify over the past 15 years, whatever my objections to them may be. (Physical media revivalists might prefer the word «complacent,» but the point stands.) I don't see any reason to doubt that some larger portion of gamers will be comfortable with game library subscriptions in the future, especially those who are growing up with