Well now you’ve also heard: I thought it an unapologetically heartfelt show, and I really enjoyed it despite expecting saccharine bullshit. It didn’t hold the quality all three seasons, but that’s not because it’s bad, but rather because the first season (and even the second,) is so good. I enjoyed it completely. But hey, it’s not for everyone.

Game Pass obviously and absolutely affects game sales. At the same time this conversation only happens because we’re comparing “the industry with Game Pass” to “games at face value”. That second one only lasted 10-15-ish years. Before that, there was “the industry with game rentals”. Blockbuster was also absolutely eating up some sales.

But game rentals were often seen as a “try before you buy” case to many, as you may want to play a game more than 3-5 days. So maybe the answer is don’t lease your game to Game Pass for a year at a time. Just offer it for a month or three. (Also make an easy way for the non-technical to export/import saves.) This also would let Microsoft make more deals for more games in their rotation. Seems like a shorter time helps everyone out.

I think your response is coming off as kinda “oh just do it different”. But that still means an entire industry of people are going to have to change how they make things. (And still spend time and money evaluating things at the end, just to be sure nothing slipped through.) I’m in favor of this at least being looked at and honest conversations happening, (which will not happen without this.) But there will certainly be an adjustment period where people on ground level learn and develop new “best practices”. And invariably someone will screw up. The companies are obviously only worried about money. They’ll get over it, is my opinion. But I think it’s worth communicating that we all understand new government regulation is likely going to be a pain in the ass. We just think it’s worth the pain/money. And that’s open sourcing or just creating a new mode for offline play in everything.