Pals, trading in, RIOT, and the death of the subscription service?

This is the 23rd of January's gaming roundup.

That’s right, there’s another new game that has the steam charts in a vice grip, the UK gaming retailer GAME announces the END of trading in used games, and are subscription services really working out in the gaming industry?

PALWORLD

That’s it, that’s the title. Palworld, a new addition to the ‘cutesy games with sinister undertones if you consider what you’re doing on a fundamental level’ lineup. The name itself strikes me as a little lacklustre, ‘Pal’ has to be the most lukewarm word I could imagine, akin to the word ‘nice’, which my school teachers felt very strongly should never be used in any essay presented to them for fear of an instant fail.

If you’re a Pokemon fan you may have noticed the elephant in the room here…

Still, the name persists despite my mild sneering, and moreso than just persist, the game has sold over 4 million copies at the time of writing in just over a week of being in early access. That’s uhh. That’s a lot. Especially considering those are Steam sales alone, Palworld is also available on Xbox Game Pass, though the Game Pass version came with some limitations if you’re looking to set up a private server, a feature that should be mostly standard by now for all survival games. Of which this is one, an intriguing blend between Monster Hunter: World, ARK and… well yes, obviously, Pokemon. Though the developers would deny this to be the case, complaining of ‘slanderous claims’, despite the extremely obvious comparison between all the monsters in the game and various beloved Pokemon. I mean, come on. It’s hardly subtle. The major difference is of course, the fact that Pokemon didn’t use guns last time I checked.

The denials in fact make the comparisons even more egregious, and there’s such similarity that there’s already a mod to make Palworld actually look like Pokemon, including introducing Ash Ketchum into the game.

Now there may be a question of whether Nintendo would respond to a game making bank that seems to occupy a corner of the popculture world cuddling closely in with their own IP, and that remains to be seen - Nintendo didn’t seem to do much of anything about TemTem, despite the fact TemTem was basically just an incredibly thinly-veiled Pokemon game brought to PC. The Lead Developer of Palworld reckons their game passes all checks and hurdles to free them from accusations of copyright infringement, and it seems since, while there are obvious similarities, the characters are technically distinct, so they pass. There is no hard evidence of Nintendo having anything to say about Palworld at this point, just speculation, and frankly it would be Nintendo’s style to just stay out of it altogether publically. It seems after a cursory google it would be a difficult thing to argue the potential consumer confusion between the franchises, but i’m not a lawyer.

So then the crux, in my opinion, is this. Palworld succeeds at least in part due to the similarities between characters in the game and Pokemon characters. There is a thirst, a deep, unquenchable thirst shared between many aged 20-40 for Pokemon games that scratch an itch that has existed since gaming moved away from the Gameboy and towards narrative driven, creative explorations. Because let’s face it, the rehashed same-old format with a new face-lift just doesn’t really satisfy when there could be a huge variety of genres of games using the Pokemon IP. It has surprised me for years how little the IP has been explored in the wider gaming space, the potential for RPG’s, exploration of extended universes, strategy, moba, mmorpg, there are endless possibilities for the franchise that just remain untapped. A waste. And it begs the question… why? Why aren’t we seeing a flurry of Pokemon games? Is there fear of sullying a beloved franchise? Is it a deliberate limitation (shirking the trends in a world that seeks to wring every dollar from fandoms) to preserve some form of integrity? Are those who sign off on the decisions unaware or unwilling to make those leaps? Is there just not enough cash to invest into risky projects? Because there’s almost certainly a ready market to receive any well-made entries to the Pokemon universe.

Regardless. Palworld succeeds not solely from the easy comparisons, though surely the discourse lends a helping hand on the rise, but because it does seem to blend the best of a few beloved games in the survival genre, and games that do that well do tend to succeed (Apex Legends for example). A fun game is a fun game at the end of the day, even if it does escalate concerns about the dubious morality of enslaving creatures to fight for you (and worse, since Palworld really leans into the whole slavery vibe, it’s just all cutesy), not that this is particularly novel to Palworld only, just that Palworld really does take it shamelessly to the next level.

Another flash in the pan? Or a survival game with legs? If they manage to bring consistent updates to the game to keep players interested it has the potential to be a mainstay in the survival landscape, at least for a little while.

GAME hates GAMERS?

Are these inflammatory headlines doing it for you? GAME, one of the major UK Gaming retailers, have announced they will be stopping Trade-ins.

We buy your stuff. Unless it’s games.

Trade-ins are of course a bit of a relic of an age that is slowly becoming bygone, an age of buying physical discs and forgetting they’re in the disc drive before you move your Xbox 360 Elite, leading to a scratched disc and a desperate run down to Blockbuster so you can actually play Halo 3 with your friends that night. Trade-ins were the life blood of the struggling poor (myself) who could only buy games at a heavy discount, who didn’t mind how crusty the box was so long as the game was playable. But we’ve slowly seen the introduction of the digital era, where games are largely purchased and held on an account to be downloaded, where subscription services mean you can have any game at your fingertips, so long as you don’t mind not actually owning it. Install, play, uninstall, done. No clutter. Not a solution for everyone, but a solution for some.

Trade-ins felt like the inevitability publishers were forced to accept - you couldn’t stop somebody from letting a friend borrow a disc, but that meant a loss of a potential purchase. The un-tradeable nature of downloads was certainly a bonus for the digital age, as well as being able to ‘ship’ full priced games to a digital store without paying manufacturing costs for the physical item and more besides. For the sake of convenience, many would begrudingly pay more for their game on a digital store than go track down a second hand discounted copy elsewhere. And I feel like the last time I bought a pre-owned game was… 2016. But I wouldn’t use myself as the average user anymore, considering I work heavily in the streaming space and don’t scrutinise expenditure on gaming the way I once had to. Growing up, trade-ins were the only way I could play anything, perhaps I wouldn’t be here right now if I hadn’t had that option. Not to mention, the digital download age is so heavily dependant on the internet - meaning when you don’t have connection, it’s an out of reach system. You just don’t get to participate in gaming. That’s what lead me to buying a second hand disc back in 2016, moving house with no internet connection for a week and being forced to play in a more analogue way.

I digress (pointlessly, apologies), GAME have announced they will no longer offer trade-ins going forward, once their backstock sells out, that’s it. As GAME finds itself in much the same predicament it feels HMV were/are in with physical media sales and even retail shopping suffering from a change in consumer habits and culture. GAME was bought out in 2019 by the same company who own SPORTS DIRECT, and apparently, a result of this was GAME locations opening inside SPORTS DIRECT shops, which blows my mind - I haven’t seen one of these dual locations and it feels like a pretty funny juxtaposition to me. A large part of the ceasing of trade-ins is reportedly due to these locations simply not having the storage capacity to keep all of these second hand games any longer. That feels like a weird cop-out considering original physical locations of GAME still exist, but anyone who has tried to trade anything in over the last 5 years knows the value and demand for trade-ins has decreased, so removing the need for those systems to exist in their entirety is likely in the best interest of the company and staff overall.

It’s interesting to see news like this come in slowly, realising we are truly in a different age of gaming now, the tectonic shift occured and the plates are settling until the next major uprooting.

RIOT announces significant layoffs

RIOT Games, developers and publishers of League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Valorant and more, announced on Monday night the axing of over 500 employees across their worldwide divisions, citing a lack of payoff to significant investments requiring restructuring of the company. Their layoff package at least looks… well, incredibly generous, 6 months of severance pay, cash bonus, health benefits where applicable, the best possible way to set you up for a job search if you’re forced into it, but the response to the layoffs on twitter are certainly a symptom of how rough the gaming industry is looking across the board. Around two or so years ago when mass layoffs were (fairly rarely) announced, they were a shock to the system, there were rallying cries, mass spreadsheets created to highlight local games companies with open positions. The community came together to aid. Now however… hiring freezes across the board. Most big names have announced major layoffs, there are far fewer spare positions. The landscape has changed drastically in a short amount of time, blamed primarily on over-hiring during COVID, when profits boomed and companies decided they needed to bolster the workforce to meet the demand. When demand and profits inevitably fell… well, here we are.

Are subscriptions DYING?

Well, probably not. But numbers are certainly moving more towards a plateau, according to Forbes. Definitely worth a read (as are most Forbes articles, Tassi does a wonderful job) as we think about the future of gaming off the back of the slow death of trade-ins and physical copies of games and media in general.

What does critical mass for a subscription service like Xbox Game Pass look like? What would entice people to sign up long term? The obvious answer is: regular, hyped up first party title games being added to the service to encourage people to stick around between releases. But Xbox has struggled to gain a foothold in the market with their first party title offerings over the past few years, the formula just never seems to be quite right, the games are lacking a certain pizazz that draws gamers in long term. And even games like Palworld coming straight to the service, despite their virality, aren’t enough of a draw, because releases of such games are sporadic and inconsistent. Ther service cannot and will not ever satisfy on any metric involving consistency since Xbox have little control over when the games release. There is no schedule, there are too many moving parts to even facilitate promises like that for the service.

So then, even if Game Pass no longer ‘grows’ (and growth is a somewhat nebulous term here - Xbox have offered countless incentives and thrown a LOT of marketing budget into promoting Xbox Game Pass with partnerships spanning clothing, retail, sports, food and more), will Microsoft/Xbox consider it a worthwhile upkeep? The benefits of a subscription service are numerous, even if overarching profit isn’t one of them. Phil Spencer has insisted Game Pass is profitable, but would Microsoft be willing to absorb a loss long term to support a gamer friendly service if it wasn’t profitable? Are they already doing that?

I personally am optimistic about Xbox and their intentions for gaming consumers, I believe they have really pushed the market above and beyond in terms of what it can offer the players experience, in game and outside of the games, but whenever I think about Microsoft and their willing to support projects that might be looking like a loss leader, I think about Mixer and the untimely end of that streaming service to temper my expectations.

This weeks substack was bolstered by a new podcast type show myself and a good friend of mine are beginning to host weekly. If you’d like to hear more from us and our opinions on these topics and beyond, you can check out the VOD here! It’s a little rough around the edges, being an alpha test of sorts, but there are plans for consistency, and hope to push the episodes out to Spotify each week too, for a bit of fun listening.

Find that recording here: twitch.tv/myre

Otherwise, thanks for reading, see you next week!