Game library subscription

What you're actually buying

Temporary access to a rotating library of games for as long as you keep paying. Games can leave the catalogue, nothing is yours to keep, and some tiers add online play, cloud saves or streaming. Apple Arcade is the cleanest version: its games are barred from running ads, in-app purchases or data-tracking.

How it works

Publishers borrowed two templates: Netflix's library and World of Warcraft's monthly fee. Microsoft traded a guaranteed £60 sale for a slice of a monthly fee, putting its own studios' games inside Game Pass on day one. Studios are paid Spotify-style, by engagement rather than per copy, which rewards games that people keep coming back to over games people simply buy once. The brief changes from 'sell a copy' to 'give them a reason to keep paying'. The library itself becomes marketing, and browsing can feel like playing.

When it's fine

When you would genuinely play enough different games to beat buying them, and you treat it as a rental. The ad-free, purchase-free services are the cleanest form.

Where it came from

EA Access launched on Xbox One in August 2014, renting a rotating vault of EA's back catalogue. Xbox Game Pass launched on 1 June 2017 as an all-you-can-play storefront across any publisher willing to sign, and on 23 January 2018 Microsoft announced that its own studios' games would ship inside the subscription on the same day as retail, starting with Sea of Thieves on 20 March 2018. Apple Arcade (19 September 2019, $4.99 a month) went the other way, banning ads, in-app purchases and data-tracking outright. PlayStation Plus relaunched as a three-tier service in 2022, and Netflix Games arrived on 2 November 2021, included in a Netflix subscription. Cloud streaming was then folded in as a bundled feature.

Historical prices and revenues are in US dollars at the time unless marked A$.