I do wish there was more pushback against Apple Arcade which has never had the option for buying. I get the impression to even be on the service you have to agree not to sell the game anywhere.
My understanding is that Apple mandates iOS exclusivity for Arcade games (meaning no Android release, but other platforms are fine). One other thing they mandate is that there should be no extra monetization in any game that is on Arcade. Meaning no in-app purchases, no subscriptions, no gacha, no dlc, nothing. This is very significant in the context of the mobile gaming market where all the profit is earned from free/extremely cheap games with continuous monetization and the 'premium games' which you only pay for once do quite poorly in comparison. Sometimes a game that's already in the app store with loads of premium currencies and such appears in Arcade with all of that stuff stripped out and is a much better experience. Disney Dreamlight Valley released an expansion a few weeks ago that cost money on every platform except Arcade where it was 'free (with the subscription)'. In these cases I feel like Arcade actually adds value to the games.
In general I have no issues with subscription services. They are a godsend to people who live in poor countries like mine. A few weeks ago I saw a reddit post where someone was blown away that they could play the entire Yakuza series for just the price of a Gamepass subscription instead of having to buy 7 or 8 games now. And if someone wants to own the games they can still buy them anyway. What's the harm in this option existing for people who can't or don't want to pay more to own the license? Realistically, most people only ever play a game through once, which means owning it is really not that practically important. It happened in music where everyone listens on Spotify and just buys the albums they want to own. It happened in movies where everyone watches on Netflix and buys the blu-rays they want to own. I would not be surprised if it happened in games as well down the line.
As long as we still have the option to buy the games we want to buy. Which I cannot see going away. Most of the downsides people mention about gaming subscriptions are hypotheticals. What if they started making only live service games to prolong subscriptions? You think live service games won't happen without subscription services? They'll do exclusivity deals. They'll raise prices. Already happening. Feel stressed to finish a game before it leaves the service? Then buy it. They're just video games. You cannot let these things bother you.
I think it's important to stop thinking of services as perpetual costs. Don't subscribe to a service that you are not getting active value from. Do it when there's something there you want to play. A friend of mine is paying for a month of Ubisoft+ and is planning to play through AC Mirage, Crew 3 and the new Prince of Persia. All that for 15 euros is an objectively good deal. Even if it takes him 2 months, it's still only 30 euros. Still a good deal right? What's the downside here? He won't own the games he doesn't care to own anyway?
It did start as small insignificant thing. Then it evolved in entire economy where devs were more focused to create as much cosmetics as they could and ignoring rest of the game (how it plays).
Again, nobody pays for cosmetics in a game they do not want to play. There has never been an unsuccessful game where they somehow managed to monetize it successfully. This notion that "they only care about the money and don't care about the game" is, frankly, childish. A more realistic thought would be that "they care about the money and also understand that they only get that money if people want to play their game". If you think there's some bad game out there which has successfully managed to sell cosmetics then all that means is that there are enough people who actually think it's a good game and are ok with paying for costumes or gun skins or whatever.
