When I was a kid in high school, the economy wasn’t nearly as bad as it is right now. People are very very concerned right now with having enough money to pay their bills, housing has skyrocketed, cost of living dramatically up, salaries stagnating… Almost every single friend I have, I asked them why they no longer play World of Warcraft or similar games and the answer was the same. “I cannot justify paying a subscription monthly, I have way too many subscriptions right now like Netflix Hulu HBO max some that I’m even canceling”. This was pretty much the same exact response I heard from most of my friend community on discord. It seems that people find it a horrible value to buy a game and play it when it requires repeated purchases, but you also have to pay to subscribe to the game as well. That amount of money really, honestly adds up to a lot…
Simple example: playing Elder scrolls online and World of Warcraft for 2 years
World of Warcraft:
$15/month x 24 months = $360
$50 expansion every 2 years = $50
Total WoW cost: $410
Elder Scrolls Online:
$15/month x 24 months = $360
$90 expansion per year x 2 years = $180
Total ESO cost: $540
Combined total for both games over 2 years:
$410 + $540 = $950
Investing this money
Investment Breakdown:
Initial Investment: $950
Monthly Contribution: $200
Annual Interest Rate: 8.5% (compounded monthly)
Investment Period: 2 years (24 months)
Results:
Total Amount Invested: $950 (initial) + $4,800 (monthly contributions) = $5,750
Total Accrued Interest: $587.45
Total After 2 Years: $6,337.45
So in short, you are actually spending a huge sum of money on these games, about $950 a year at least by this very very rough estimate, and if you simply invested this money, you could see huge, monstrous returns on this money that could change your damn life. It’s for that reason that I cannot justify playing these games anymore. That’s just a subscription cost!! So astronomically high it’s unbelievable to me.
TLDR:
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Economic struggles make gaming subscriptions harder to justify.
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Rising living costs and stagnant wages have led people to cancel non-essential subscriptions.
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Many friends quit games like World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online due to high subscription costs.
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Example costs over two years: – WoW: $410 – ESO: $540 – Total: $950
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Investing this amount with $200 monthly contributions at 8.5% interest could grow to $6,337.45 in two years. Overall, game subscription fees seem less worthwhile given the potential for financial growth.
If you did a simple search for poverty and How much people struggled back in 2004 when World of Warcraft released versus now, you would see that families are having a lot harder time than ever before. It has not improved at all for most people. Wealth inequality has grown massively in the past 20 years that World of Warcraft has been around. So yeah a lot of people do have different priorities, And now, the price of playing a live service game that required a subscription can definitely impact you. The same thing can be said though with other subscriptions like Netflix and Hulu. It really fucking destroys your monthly income. Alone they don’t, but added up they definitely do
A World of Warcraft subscription is not a human right. Everyone makes a cost-benefit decision about whether they can afford it.
And again, like I said, if you can’t afford it then you should rethink your priorities. It’s a luxury product, not a basic needs product.
And like I also said, these game subscriptions have barely changed in price compared to many other things in the past 20 years. They’re not that expensive.
Considering you’re talking about multiple game subscriptions and streaming subscriptions in your post, I don’t think you have it that bad anyway. You’d also require a console or gaming PC or both, a lot of people don’t have all that. Subscriptions are easily the cheapest part of the hobby.
You’re just bad with organising your subscriptions and should change how to get the most out of it.