Technology

So... they're taking advantage of one of the selling-features of streaming services, that being the ability to scale your spend pending your own personal preferences. In the early days of streaming services, they had enough content to justify paying a monthly subscription each month -- it's not the customer's fault that streaming got enshitified. Hell, a bunch of them switching to 'weekly episodes' was just a very poorly disguised attempt to drag out how many months they thought their one flagship show could capture audiences. The old practice of dumping a whole season all at once in one month, because you knew you'd have another season of some other good show the next month, is practically gone -- with streaming reverting back to the old network practices they'd usurped.

Same with games. Tons of titles are just shitty early access things, things that get abandoned mid-development, things that rely on a live-service platform that companies'll shut down a month or two later, and so on. And some titles are askin like $80+ for their shitty offerings. Yeah, that's not the customers fault in the slightest. They're right to look for discounted offers, what sane person wouldn't?

I think the screwup started when companies stopped rewarding loyalty and instead aimed for capitalizing on laziness and lockin, giving the discounts up front to attract subscribers in the hopes of keeping them in a more expensive subscription afterwards.

I think the streaming sites could turn it around by instead offering a discounted rate after you've been subscribing for x months.

wHy Do MiLlEnNiAlS hAtE tHe EcOnOmY

They probably would do those things if they could afford to live comfortably and had a little extra disposable income but in today's world every time you turn around someone is screwing you out of money. There isn't anything left for fun stuff. Especially when the fun stuff company is doing some of the screwing lol

One issue with video games now is that there are so many and they all take so much time to play now. And since companies push out games so quickly there's no point buying anything before they push out a patch to fix all the bugs in the initial release, might as well use that time to play some of the games I already have and then pick up what I want on sale.

I'll happily pay full price for a short, creative indie game, but that's already probably much cheaper than a big budget game anyways

Looks like my gen X ass is just an gen Z in disguise…

If a streaming company is greedy and lets you use the same card each sign up, you can indefinitely use their service for free using an endless supply of free emails.

I had Foxtel Go, an online pay tv service in Australia, for free for 2 years before I got bored of it, I think I fucked up like 3 times and had to pay, but as long as you cancel it a day or 2 before, you'll be fine.

I cancelled my YouTube subscription when they increased the price by 50%, and I'm never subscribing again.

I haven't bought a full price game in decades, unless it's an indie/under €30.

I'm finally building up my PS4 game collection, for ages I had 2 games - RD2 and FFXV. Yesterday I got this in the mail, I paid less for those 4 used games than what Sony is asking for a digital copy of FFVII Remake in their store...

it aint just gen z

And these services are mad cause it's so cheap for us to do that. Subscribe when the full seasons are out, binge watch what you want, leave.

Ha; finally realizing we're a bunch of cheap bastards too? Took em long enough, they will not see the connection to the job market yet.

It's not just gen z.

I'm old enough to have seen VHS come and go, and I do this. What financial sense does it make to keep steady rent on a service you don't need all the time?

Also there’s more than enough quality content that exists already. This week I’m still happy watching Dr who or Star Trek from the 80s and 90s, Alfred Hitchcock films from the 60s and playing pc games from the 90s. There’s more than enough for me to chew through and time does the job of sorting the classic material from the forgettable dross for me.