I just heard the phrase “games as a service” for the first time (apparently the president of Sega is all in on the concept) and fucking ew

maybe there are decent, worthwhile “as a service” apps but I am deeply suspicious of (if not totally hostile to) the entire business model of requiring a monthly subscription in order to use a piece of software. I think it creates a nasty requirement for the company to keep shoehorning in new “features” all the time (to justify the monthly cost) while their tech debt accumulates in the background. and of course sooner or later the investor money is going to dry up and they’re going to start actively enshittifying it

as a rule I don’t trust any software that partly runs on a publicly-traded company’s servers, and I want as little of my data on those servers as possible

to be honest I don’t even trust most closed-source desktop or phone apps that receive periodic updates. I’ve had to deal with so many rug-pull situations where updates make things worse and worse or break functionality that I’ve been relying on for years, while only introducing more scummy or gimmicky features

I’ve had a similar experience with Linux where updates keep breaking things that I’m relying on or causing my desktop manager to crash more and more often or otherwise accumulate problems that I didn’t have before. but at least with FOSS, the updates themselves are well-intentioned and it’s just the chaotic, highly-fragmented nature of the ecosystem that causes problems (or I assume that’s the problem? idk)

@kasdeya Yea. Something as a Service causes in me a visceral reaction. It will take a whole lot to convince a paid subscription out of me. Don't get me wrong, I am not strictly against them. But the expectations are high, and 90% of what wants me to do that do not even nearly meet those.