You Should Own Your Games

The subscription service model has taken music, film, and more from us. Let’s keep our video games.

Image: blackroseMD1/TenForums.com (used with permission)

I put it to you that media has changed more in the last 30 years than any other period in human history. Earlier periods were no doubt innovative — the invention of writing, the dawn of printed text, the vinyl record and magnetic tape. But as these media changed drastically, becoming cheaper, advanced, and more accessible for creators, one thing always remained the same.

Consumers have always owned their media.

This quality, this one connecting virtue that runs from stone tablets to newspapers to ebooks, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. It has been replaced with the idea of the subscription service — Netflix and Kindle Unlimited and Spotify. You no longer pay once and download a song, you no longer borrow ownership of a movie one time; you pay for access to a huge database from which to stream. Even if you download the content, access is temporary. You own nothing.

Spotify and services like it changed music forever. But not without a cost.

Across the entire landscape of consumer media, there is only one industry in which this business model of non-ownership…