On Paying for Nothing and Paying for Ads

So we were all dreading any news regarding the PSN pay service. We didn't know if it meant that normal users would get cock-blocked like Xbox does for it's non-gold members. Thankfully, it's just an optional service.

I was browsing IGN this morning and stumbled across the details of the "Playstation+" subscription service. It's priced about the same as a Gold Membership yearly, and it includes a few neat amenities, such as free games, and also free episodes of the Playstation Network show Qore.

And this would be all fine and dandy. Free games? Sure, I'd love em! Playstation news? Sure, that's cool too. Paying money and then if you unsubscribe you get nothing?

Wait what?

That's right, if you stop your subscription for any reason, all of the games/content you got through the subscription is frozen (read: unable to be played) until you resubscribe.

That's fucking bullshit. That's like subscribing to a magazine, and then canceling your subscription and having the company tell you to give them back all the issues you ordered up until that point.

I'd be 100% interested in this service if after I canceled the subscription I could keep the games.

You know what else is bullshit? Paying a subscription fee to a game that is making money through in-game advertising.

Jervan just told me about how the new MMO All-points Bulletin (APB for short) will be making money off of commercial broadcasts during loading screens once every 3 hours. So naturally, I hunted down an article talking about it.

According to Bit-Tech, it's a deal between Realtime Worlds (the creators of the game) and Vivox, who provides the VOIP for the game. Now the voice quality is pretty good for the game (though hearing people mouth breathing and dogs barking in the background while you're designing clothes is pretty annoying), but I'm sorry, if I'm paying a subscription fee for a game, I'd like to remain ad-free. I already bought your game (most games that are bought don't have advertisements, unless you count EA Sports games), but I'm also paying a promise that I'm going to play the game for the allotted time.

Ads were already all over the place during the beta, having advertisements for the Suicide Girls, and I can only imagine that there's going to be a lot more in-game marketing once the game is live.

I won't be getting this game. I'll just continue to sit here with my cup of haterade and World of Warcraft, and just wait for TOR to come out.