What do you think of games as a service?

This whole "games as a service" tripe gives companies a pseudo-intellectual, lazy way of saying "We're going to put the absolute bare minimum effort into creating the game, ship it with bugs and incomplete/broken features, and let the community fix everything for us while we continue to line our pockets with "expansions" and "events". They get to put minimal effort and resources into what is essentially turning homework in late. "Don't worry about making sure a game is playable on launch, just hire a community manager with a big smile, big twitter presence, and create a discord server run by rabid fans and nobody will be able to do anything about about it" seems to be the general consensus on handling games (Most notably, Destiny 2 and R6S).

I'm not going to be a consumer of what is essentially buying fucking stock in a company and hoping that the value of the "service" I purchased increases over time. The only way these games make money is by releasing more and more content until the game is completely beginner unfriendly and riddled with toxic behavior. Siege provides a few operators and maps a year, and sometimes gets a holiday event, yet they charge up the ass for the content. Even the notion of a "premium" currency in full price video games is a slap in the face and a spit in the mouth. I bought your game for 60 dollars, that you didn't even finish, and now you're telling me that all of my hard work and effort into your product can be circumvented and surpassed by some idiot with a big enough credit card? That, even after paying 60 dollars for an unfinished game, that I have to pay even more money to have the privilege of enjoying myself? Siege is the most egregious of all with this tactic by making the grind for a single operator take upwards of 48 straight matches (unless you use a handy dandy renown booster!). You mean to tell me that, as a company that creates video games, you're not confident enough in your own product doing well that you have to offer pity points to players?

As you can probably tell, this whole concept makes my fucking blood boil, and I hope you can empathize. I have to have put nearly 400 hours into Destiny 2 so far after playing D1 for even longer. To see Bungie suddenly come down with fucking Amnesia and forget how to make their own game with the release of Destiny 2 was a right head-scratcher. And it's made even worse by the egregiously priced expansions that they promise fixes the mistakes they made. Why should I have to continue paying you money to help you remember how to make your own goddamn game again?

That was a bit of a tangent, but I firmly believe that this "games as a service" notion is a handy trick that developers/publishers have noticed seems to part idiots and their debit card quicker than essential oils and kombucha tea part cards of soccer moms and devout Christian mothers. And they don't even have to finish the games they create as long as they have friendly enough community faces that tell disgruntled customers "We're looking into it! Have a cat picture lol epic!". And people still eat it up! It threatens to completely pollute the quality of all AAA titles. Thank god for all the AA and Indie companies out there keeping the passion alive.

I won't even speak of Fallout 76

Another stepping stone along the path of companies wanting to own what you paid for. On top of what Heichou said about it being exploited for an easy scapegoat, I hate it.

I like it, and I'm going to use two examples of how it's done well to contrast to the mostly negative responses so far.

Kingdom of Loathing: KoL is a free browser game with stick figures and funny writing. I've been playing it (off and on) since 2006. I buy the item of the month each month for $10 so that the developers can keep making content and so that this thing that has been a part of my life for so long will continue.

Paradox Interactive: Developers of such Grand Strategy games as Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Stellaris, their model is to release a functional base game, and then provide significant expansions every few months. For the games I'm interested, I buy the expansions because I enjoyed the game as it was and I love learning more about things I'm good at. As such the ever-changing meta from the changes in the expansions continually tickle my interest.

These aren't "services", quite, but in both cases there is an understanding between the developers and the community that the game will continue to grow and change as long as people are interested (and show their interest by being willing to pay for development) and if the interest isn't there, the developers and players both will go off and do something else.

Honestly, I miss the days of plug and play gaming. Insert disc/cartridge and never, ever have to install a patch. Transfer said disc/cartridge to anyone at any time and never worry about the game becoming unavailable due to a company going under. Never have to spend potentially hours on a shitty internet connection waiting for a required patch to download just so you can continue playing (especially if you only intend to play offline).

Moreover, there are very few games that support local multiplayer, and seemingly none whatsoever that have LAN support, so you need to have a decent internet connection and enough hardware to play with multiple people. That's a serious hit below the belt for lower-income families who want to play together but have to save up just for the one console (basically the story of my childhood).

There's nothing inherently wrong with games as a service, but they've pretty much completely taken over and there's just not the same emphasis on offline reliability and playability that there used to be.

Maybe I'm just biased and viewing the days of four-player splitscreen on small CRT TVs and in-person trash-talking through rose-colored glasses.

To me, it depends a lot on how games are structured.

I started gaming on the PC when games came on a bunch of floppy disks in a box. If you had the misfortune of buying a game that needed to be patched, they might send you a disk with the patch for the cost of shipping and handling. Even though there were software licenses, the experience was much more like buying a packaged good. When you beat the game you were probably done with it. I think Civilization was the first game I ever owned up until that point that I played through more than once.

Today you'll find games where your involvement with the company is just beginning when you purchase it. They're keeping servers up, not only patching but tweaking the game, possibly releasing new content, etc. "Service" doesn't quite capture it but it is probably the closest model that you can translate from other industries.

I read your title and interpreted it entirely differently from how your description and the comments have it! Here's my slightly different perspective.

In my mind, games as a service are already what we have with Steam/Orgin/Battlenet/etc. If those platforms disappeared tomorrow, I would not know how to hold on to the titles I purchased through them. In most cases, I might not even have the legal right to the games I purchased if these platforms were gone or decided I shouldn't have them. Though overall, I think digital distribution is a godsend for gaming, the thought that if Valve shut down my games would be gone is disturbing to me.