Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need To Get Comfortable With "Not Owning Your Games"

thegamer.com:

Just like with music and television, the games industry has been slowly shifting towards the all-digital future for some time now, despite pushback from certain communities with concerns surrounding preservation and ownership. Unfortunately, it seems like the biggest publishers out there aren't concerned about the latter, as a Ubisoft executive recently stated that gamers need to get used to the feeling of not owning their games.

This statement was made by Ubisoft's director of subscriptions, Phillipe Tremblay, who recently spoke to Gamesindustry.biz about the digital future and Ubisoft Plus specifically. Tremblay states that people eventually "got comfortable" with not owning their CD or DVD collections, and that a similar shift in attitude "needs to happen" in gamers.

One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen.

He goes on to explain that not owning a game doesn't mean you lose your progress, and that you still keep the time you invested and what you've built, even though you don't have a physical copy to stick on your shelf. Tremblay also says that he "understands the gamers' perspective" when it comes to owning games, but claims that services like Ubisoft Plus will allow them to access their games "when you feel like."

Digital sales made up 90 percent of the games industry's total revenue in the UK last year, which also saw yet another drop in physical game sales.

Tremblay's view on physical games isn't that shocking, considering he's a director of subscriptions, but he does leave out some concerns shared by many when it comes to subscription services. For starters, games actually do come and go on these services right now, with the most recent example being Grand Theft Auto 5 leaving Xbox Game Pass. If you play games only via subscription services, you can very easily lose access to certain titles on a regular basis.

Secondly, games that are pulled from