Going full horse armour
Horse armour. Needed in the middle-ages, perhaps, not in computer games.
This was the first paid downloadable content for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and it got hammered by gamers for being a stupid waste of money. It was armour for a horse you could ride. That was it.
What gamers hated more were later games where the so called DLC was on the disc of the original games, meaning that it could have been released as part of the game, but was instead something you had to pay extra for. And ever since we've seen a move to subscription models in TV, film and music. We can see it in software like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud. And we can see it in DAM or related systems where companies no longer own software they're dependent on every day of the week.
But two bodies have now gone full horse armour.
Image courtesy of UESPWiki
First is BMW. They've decided to charge subscriptions for using heated seats. So you pay for the car which contains the heated seats. Then you're expected to pay again, monthly, to be able to use something you already own.
Second is Venice. Visiting Venice will require a fee as of 16 January 2023. At first one explanation sounds like it might be starting to make sense when it's mentioned that most people only visit the city for one day. Maybe at first this could lead us to think that they're missing out on tourist spending from those day visitors and want to recoup that. However, overnight visitors pay a tourist tax.
Given how embedded subscription models are in our lives now, it's scary to think of just how much of our day to day life could be carved up into subscription models. Every smart device could be software locked. Everything with a processor in it could be.
One of the reasons the no income no job or ninja loans, which contributed to the 2008 collapse, took hold was because the market was saturated. The only way to grow the loans market was by offering loans to people who couldn't afford them. Of course, there's a nice spin to be put on it. But what are subscription models for heated seats if not extracting more money out of a market?
And extraction is exactly the right word. We've paid them, but they just want more because screw you give them your money.