Last Friday SOE announced changes for SOE All Access and Gold subscribers. Come February SOE was going to take away the 500 Station Cash stipend for those accounts, replacing it with the ability to purchase a single Station Cash Store item with a value up to 2,000 SC per month.
Once known as Station Access…
This did not get a lot of positive response. The loudest group of people appear to like to accrue Station Cash, not be given a single “use it or lose it” purchase. And there was the usual concern that nobody would buy anything small with the 2,000 SC single buy because that would “waste” SC.
Smed went on Reddit and talked about why they did this and what else they might do. The most interesting among the reasons for me was this:
Second – it helps us deal with some internal issues regarding accrual of balances of SC for people who aren’t playing or spending. There are a lot of people who play and have SC in their wallets and don’t spend it ever.. this accrues over time and it’s a problem.
Now, he said that was not the most important reason, but it was a driving factor for this move. However, the fact that the first reason he gave, that people feel that 500 SC a month isn’t enough to buy anything, turned out to be largely incorrect based on feedback might be seen to move the second reason up to first place.
You might reasonably think that, especially since SOE has been working hard to dig themselves out of their Station Cash monetary problems. They weren’t exactly Greece-like in scale, but SOE certainly wasn’t anywhere as sound as Germany either, to push a metaphor.
He also mentioned that they were thinking of making SOE All Access, formerly Station Access, available for just $14.99 a month. At least the All Access Subscribers would be happy.
Then, late yesterday, the latest revision broke. It is described as “not baked yet” but where SOE’s “head is at” on the subject. Full details over at EQ2Wire, but the basics are:
- SOE All Access is $14.99, gives you access to all SOE games. All subscriptions will be converted to SOE All Access
- The 500 SC monthly stipend is back, though you have to log in to collect
- Something vague about European players and PS3/PS4 titles
So that is where we stand today.
This is one of those things where, if SOE had started with this deal, they would have been heroes. But now, a couple of iterations in… and with things still not set in stone… I sort of want to say “SOE WTF?” Being a responsive company is good… but tossing out plans that appear not to have been thought through fully and then changing your mind in public after your user base complains loudly? That seems to be just a way to train players to complain early and often. As we saw in EVE Online after Incarna, every dolt with a gripe against CCP now goes straight to “shoot the monument in Jita!” because that worked once. Loudly complaining about SOE has worked… how many times now? (Note the graphic Feldon chose to use for the EQ2 Wire post linked above.)
Clearly SOE’s stated primary premise for the change was wrong for at least the loudest portion of their audience. I know I would rather accrue 500 SC a month than be given a “use it or lose it” monthly purchase, which came with its own set of terms and restrictions. (No Player Studio items at one point.) This strikes me as the sort of option that seems like a good idea after a couple of hours in a conference room; what I call the “sensory deprivation chamber” decision. Seems fine until you show it to the first person who wasn’t in the room, who should immediately point out the state of the emperor’s casual wear.
Their so-called secondary reason, that people accruing Station Cash is a problem for SOE, still strikes me as the only business reason for this move, and thus more important than Smed made out. And I guess making people log in to collect once a month will slow down some people who just leave their accounts active but don’t play. It won’t stop obsessives like me… I log into LOTRO once a month when not active just to get my 500 Turbine Points… but it will serve to punish a class of people who give SOE money for nothing.
And it is interesting to see where SOE All Access has landed in pricing. It started out as Station Access, a $21.99 option, way back in 2004, jumping to $24.99 as time went on. Station Access peaked in price in 2007 when the price was jacked up to $29.99 a month. That made it a penny more expensive than just having subscriptions to two SOE games on the face of it, and you could widen that gap considerably with the 3, 6, or 12 month subscription options, which were discounted for individual games but not for Station Access. Complaints about the price change then didn’t seem to register with SOE.
Then, about two and a half years back, SOE renamed the package to SOE All Access and dropped the price to $19.99 a month, making it a good deal again for people who play multiple SOE games. Of course, in the age of Free to Play, $30 a month was not a tenable position to hold.
And now here we are, about to say farewell to individual subscriptions to SOE games as SOE All Access drops in price to $14.99 a month.
In the end, I think this could be SOE stepping into the future of PC online gaming. As Micosoft has their Xbox Live and PlayStation has… whatever it has… I own a PS3 and couldn’t tell you… so the PC online gaming market seems likely to move towards similar deals, where a monthly fee will give players access to bundles of games and benefits.
Actually, SOE lead on that, with Station Access back in 2004, then lost their way for a bit.
And I suspect we will see other companies that focus on online games follow suit. Blizzard already offers benefits across games when you pre-order or go for the collector’s edition of one of their titles. And one of my predictions for 2014 is that Blizz will give WoW subscribers some tangible benefit in Hearthstone. That could lead the way to a Blizzard-wide subscription plan that gave you access and benefits across their Battle.net titles.
How about you? SOE’s stumbles aside, do you think XBox-live like cross-catalog subscriptions are a coming thing in the PC online gaming world?
Addendum: This looks like it might be the topic of the day, so I’ll link out to others commenting on it.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 