Subscriptions are a sustainable way to do it, or so it seems from the games that have lasted 20+ years with decent player bases. I get where you’re going though, cash grabs are common in games nowadays and making a game a live service is a great way to do more monetizing, but it isn’t necessary.

I agree that it’s bittersweet to see a game change over time, and that is definitely a trade off of MMOs, but imo it’s not a total negative, a game having visible history in the world, when done well, can be a benefit.

Live service games aren’t all bad, imo mmos are a good example of a good live service game, I would never have the same enjoyment for RuneScape for example if it were not a live service game, there is a level of authenticity to achievements given by it being a live service. Also it’s a little disingenuous to say non-live games get updates too implying its equal when a good live service game can put hundreds of hours of content per year into the product without worrying about when they would need to release a new game or paid expansion to continue being profitable.

Could say the same for apple in that case, honestly imo windows is worse since the business model for windows anymore is all about collecting data (I mean have you seen edge)

I have been feeling the same! It’s so hard to justify leaving macos though when it’s Unix already, so I have another old laptop I tinker with Linux on (plus a homelab)

The more important part is after the highlighted part, I was thinking the same thing

Idk with ca but with lemmygrad you may just want to make an account there if you really want in