What subscription finally gave you "subscription fatigue"?
Learned the term recently and really enjoy it, subscription fatigue is the feeling we all have had now where we are just over how everything is subscription based.
Which one was the last straw or most annoying/frustrating to you?
When my paid Paramount+ subscription included unskippable ads.
I loathe the trend where I pay money and they still expect me to sit through ads. That's why we all left cable to start with.
What’ll really aggravate you is that way back when cable was first rolling out, it was billed as paid TV service without ads (as opposed to the ad-supported OTA local networks). Obviously that promise didn’t last long.
It’s a tale as old as time. Its happened before, it’s happening now, and it’ll happen again.
by the time I had my own money I didn't even think of getting pay tv because it was already running more ads than free to air.
Never had subscription fatigue because paid services have never been better than the free option in my experience.
What's the point of paying for a subscription if you still get ads 🤷🏻
Marvelous strategy model.
Luckily I did the 6 month free trial and learned. 6 months is generous, ads are not.
I'm still refusing to pay for P+ in the UK. They nicked us about so much with Discovery, Picard and Lower Decks all being on Netflix and Amazon, then started pulling the rug from under us with Dis S3 and it appears maybe LD S4 this year. I'm not paying for a whole new service for one franchise no matter how much I love it. At least Disney got Marvel, Star Wars and all the Fox content before trying D+.
Imagine how we feel over here in NZ when we wanted to watch S2E1 of GH we actually got S1E3 of DOOL instead! Boy when the NPD were told about this I bet they ASAP'd their pants!
I hate acronyms.
Adobe Reader needing a 5€ subscription for rotating pages. Fuck techno feudalism.
Oh my god I didn't even know about that one. Why?? Browsers read them fine
The default Preview app on Macs can rotate PDFs by default...but if your PDF is a fillable form, it'll fuck it all up.
Yeah, Mac preview is surprisingly one of the best PDF viewing applications available on the market, it’s nearly as good as Acrobat. That’s really strange to me
This might be a cop-out, but I'm absolutely sick of paying rent, and the open source alternatives aren't great
Alarm clock apps that require a subscription. Basically any app that doesn’t require backend server infrastructure to function should not be subscription based.
There are alarm clock apps requiring a subscription now? Good heavens.
It started with the Netflix enshittification. I have had a Spotify and Netflix account essentially since these services were available, and that was great. Now only the Spotify sub is worth it, though I started to loathe that one as well because it at some point deleted all my local files or replaced them with what it thought matched them in their database.
Also every fucking app, no matter how mundane, wants to sell me a subscription. I have a web based game boy emulator on my phone, it works fine but everything beyond the absolute basic functions is paywalled behind a subscription. Not even a one time purchase.
Bro. RetroArch, gambatte or MGBA core. Thank me later.
if you truly need something web based, eclipse is completely free.
This
Enshittification didn't kill Netflix. What killed it was all the studios pulling their content licenses so they could start their own Netflix. Enshittification happened afterwards as Netflix desperately tried to make itself constantly profitable. They killed a lot of good shows and messed with the algorithm that showed people what they actually wanted to see.
Netflix, and when they said I'd have to pay for password sharing for my stepkids, because they use my account when they're at their dad's.
That was the last straw. I cracked the shits, bought a couple of ex-enterprise servers, and setup ... something different. I then cancelled all streaming services (I got wind of the second Disney hike coming).
The cool thing is they now email me with cheap rejoin offers, telling me about all the cool shows I need to be aware of. ;)
How are your kids coping with, uh, something different? I imagine it's a tad less convenient, even with your server. Also, I haven't done something different since the rise of Netflix. Is the quality of something different generally higher with streaming services just putting their content on the internet themselves?
I admit, last time I tried something different years ago, it wasn't that good, but thought I'd give it another go. I'd bought a lifetime pass way back, so had nothing to lose by trying.
The kids are coping fine - the apps for something different are all pretty rock-solid now - macOS, iOS, Android, Chromecast GTV. Plus I'm on a decent fibre internet connection, so even full high quality things work just fine when they're not at home. Honestly, there's not a lot of difference, except my catalogue of things is better than any single service.
Plus I take requests. :D Actually, I allow automated processing of requests, within certain limits.
I started again since a year or so. And decided to set up a home server (from an old pc) with the whole *arr suite this summer. Automation these days really is marvelous. You just tell it once which show you want to watch. It fetches you all the shows that are already out and also fetches you each new episode every week. And it's all in good quality. And you can set automatic subtitles straight from the app's interface.
It doesn’t compress video more on mobile devices, that’s all I need to know. When I connect an iPad or iPhone to the home cinema setup, the compression is much worse then on an old laptop.
If you have kids, the PBS Kids video app is pretty alright. And free (in the US of course)
I think the one that did it for me was Xbox game pass. I've never been much of a fan of digital games, but Xbox game pass made me see what the future of games will be.
You will pay an ever increasing amount per month to play whatever Microsoft or whoever decides you can be allowed to play. You will own nothing you play and if you cancel your subscription, your console is worthless. Meanwhile the service will be crammed with ads, the games themselves crammed with ads, and your data harvested and sold for "personalized" ads.
I only buy physical games now.
Man, I already had subscription fatigue with the very first thing I subscribed to with my own money as a kid. Ultima Online. My friend recommended the game to me, not telling me it required a subscription. I bought a boxed copy at the store, not seeing the super tiny print where it mentioned the subscription. I was then upset when I was installing it and it asked for a CC#. I was 12. I didn't have a credit card. I had to ask my dad to set it up and give up my allowance for it.
As soon as I found out about emulated shards (shards being what servers were called) that were totally free, I started playing on those. And having way more fun because they kept the game the way I liked it, while EA kept trying to make it more like WoW.
Man I can't imagine getting a game that young and finding out after the fact that I'd had to give all my allowance to play it.
Similar story here, but it was EverQuest.
Yeah I briefly did eq. Ugh
Around the time when netflix started to suck, and new subacription services popped up everywhere.
Then a lot of other things that shouldnt rely on a aubscription started getting it. Random apps with a pro mode. The pro mode was now a subscription... its dreadful.
I refuse to get a subscription i would "need" to keep around fpr years.
Here we have 1 video streaming service for a month or two every once in a while. Never two at the same time.
i cancelled youtube premium when they removed dislike count from view, i felt that i was getting a inferior product once they removed that tool from me, it wasn't worth paying
revanced is better ofc
Netflix saturating their service with self produced garbage with zero entertainment value to the point I'm looking for a needle in a haystack
I never made it past Netflix. Once the quality started sliding and prices went up, it was back to the high seas for me. I guess I still have to pay for a VPN service though 🤷
This is basically my experience as well.
Tho I won’t be paying for a vpn service anymore now that PIA sold out, I’m going to set up the automated stuff and subscribe to Usenet indexers or whatever (I haven’t had a lot of time to look into it yet, but I have a bunch of info saved from a very kind person who helped me) instead because they will do what I want a lot better, automatically, and less risky apparently - no uploading and no seed ratio to maintain.
Beyond that, I do have a ps+ premium account because I will easily play $86 worth of games in a year (already have in the 2 months I’ve had it, with no effort of going to a place and hoping to find the games used. Im a collector, but I’m also not well off financially) but I otherwise go out of my way to avoid subscriptions and recurring payments.
If I need to pay for it more than once to have a better experience than FOSS, piracy, or just not having it, I’m not interested.
I paid $100 for a Plex lifetime subscription 10 years ago, not a penny since. I rave about the service to people, and get friends to sign up to use mine - and I always tell them if they like it, buy it outright. It’s stable and worth it, and if it dies tomorrow, I’d still be pleased with my purchase. If that hadn’t been an option I probably would have switched a long time ago when I learned there were FOSS options.
I'm with Windscribe and as far as I know they're pretty secure?
Yeah I'm doing a mix of torrents and Usenet at the moment, cos I only started learning about usenet a month ago. It's not as complicated as I thought it would be, but it does take a couple of hours to sit down and nut it out. It's definitely not cheaper than a VPN though.
I have been thinking about building a server too, if only for the fun of it. I like learning more about computers. I'd probably just go with Jellyfin though, it seems to have a good reputation plus I'm a big fan of FOSS software.
I feel like I have to beg my friends to use my Plex server. Like what the hell? I'm offering you ~1000 movies free, and all you have to do is register for a Plex account, but for some reason registering for Plex is way too hard and confusing (even though it's the same process as any other service).
Whatever, guess I'll enjoy my movies myself then. 🤷
I've observed how these streaming services engage in borderline elder abuse. They make it extremely easy to sign up, and then to cancel, they require clicking through five different settings pages with tiny buttons and dark patterns. They obscure what each charge is on billing statements, and they are constantly increasing price, merging with each other, which creates confusion. I've had to help elder family and friends get out of subscriptions so many times, and each time, I essentially have to audit what they're paying for. I think the Feds should mandate that every website has a giant red "Cancel subscription" button in the corner. The FTC is working on something like that, but it is unclear what it will look like in the final version.
Old school runescape charging $120 a year. I get that they make new content but that's the cost of a AAA game each year.
It's only $80 USD if you buy the full year at once but yeah it's definitely on the expensive side. I get more fun out of some $20 games than I do out of RS.
I would be happy paying $60 a year for my main and then I could justify paying some extra for my ironman to be members.
When I couldn't just purchase a season of a tv show (Drag Race). You should just be able to buy a show or movie if you want to watch it.
The most recent season was exclusively on Paramount +. I guess they had exclusive right because it wasn't available anywhere else. It was 3.99/month with a discount so I figured I'd keep it as long as the season aired. I was fucking amazed that there could be twenty fucking commercials in an hour show. If I wanted to skip backward or forward I had to watch three more ads first. Two weeks before the season finale they raised the price to 5.99 so I cancelled it. I didn't need to watch it that badly. Their other content was shit, all nineties MTV and made for tv movies. When I signed up they advertised Yellowjackets so I was going to watch that. But no, that's another subscription to Showtime.
It was the cheapest subscription I've had but the most aggravating experience, because it's not about the money. It's about feeling like I'm getting fucked over with every goddamn thing I buy lately.
I really want to watch Mike judge's tales from the tour bus but it is only on cinemax. I would have no problem just buying the seasons but you can't, the only way is to ad cinemax to my already paid sub of Hulu. Fuck that
Not really a discovery, bug when Disney Plus made their base subscription have adds like Hulu and then made the add free version double the price. The "Disney bundle" was $12 a month when it released. Now it's $20 just to get Hulu and D+ without adds. I hold the star wars franchise pretty close, but I'm gonna have wait to see Ahsoka.
Either that or it's time to get the paper hat out 🏴☠️
I had it when Adobe started it with their suite. Let me just buy access to a major version and all patches and minor upgrades.
Definitely Netflix with the password sharing lockdown garbage. Then I looked closely at my Spotify. I realized my yearly rewind was almost always the same artists at the top, so I pay over $100 a year to listen to the same music every year. I bought the album's I like and I feel so at peace now that Spotify can no longer tnrow shitty podcast recommendations in my face.
Oh I'm the opposite. I listen to so much music I'd be spending so much money on it.
My dad is the same and he spent thousands on CDs and later on iTunes for his music collection. Spotify and other subscriptions definitely saved him money.
I’m the same. I think Spotify is a great service if you constantly seek new music and listen to a variety of artists and genres. However, I still find it shitty that they constantly remove tracks, especially from smaller relatively unknown artists. Half of my playlists I made 10 years ago have their tracks disabled.
The important part is that people have options, and as long as these options exist, I can't complain. But if some day in the future, everything becomes a subscription, then I will riot.
And it sure seems like more and more services are going that route. I want to ditch Adobe for example and use Affinity instead, but if they ever move to a subsciption model too, I'll change careers and become a garbageman.
Probably pays better than any design agency anyway.
YouTube premium raised their prices. I had got it back when Google music was the thing. Then they raised the price. Then they raised the price again. Then they raised the price again. The last price raise gave me the motivation to check out Spotify and newpipe.
I haven't looked back.
Check out InnerTune on Android or https://beatbump.io , you can listen to yt music gratis thanks to free/libre software!
I did exactly the same thing. I miss Google Music. I also miss Songza which they bought, integrated into Google Music and then killed it off anyway.
I'm still grandfathered in from the Google Play Music days, paying $7.99/mo for YT Music + YT Premium. I will never interrupt that subscription and lose that price, haha.
You likely lose that price in December. I got an email telling me so and I believe it applies to all of us grandfathered in. Here's the relevant part of the email:
As a long-standing and valued member, you are currently paying a lower rate for Premium than the rate available to new subscribers. To show our appreciation for your loyalty, we're giving you at least three extra months at your current price before the price increase will impact your plan. Your price will not increase before your December billing date. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to notify you again at least 30 days before the new price is effective.
I am also in that tier. They are raising the prices weather you like it or not.
Weather apps.
omg even weather apps now? 🤣😭
They’re one of my exceptions. The API/data needed for weather apps to function is not free (at least in the US), with the possible exception of NOAA, though I’m not sure if they offer an API for apps to use.
That’s why the developers have to pass the cost on. If you’ve got a free weather app, you’re probably paying for it with ad views. I’m personally not interested in doing that, so I chose an app I liked that lets me choose which source I want to use and customise the display.
Another thing I have a subscription for is a flight tracker. Operating ADS-B receivers is also not free, nor is additional data some apps get about delays and the like.
I also have a WoW subscription because servers are an ongoing cost (not factoring in continual development and new features even within a single expansion) but won’t keep paying for single player games. My purchase should cover development costs and the cost of fixing bugs.
Other stuff? Nope. I’ll spend a few dollars for useful utilities, but everything seems to be free with in-app purchases now, so most of the stuff I’ve got is grandfathered in from when you paid a reasonable fee that covered development costs and you weren’t hounded.
Official NOAA app is $1.99 a year. Worth every penny. Only subscription I'm happy to pay.
While many weather apps use published NOAA/NWS data, there's no official app. Not sure who you're paying lol
I feel like I've avoided subscriptions for the most part, except for basics like rent, energy, telephony, a travel card. The software I use is mostly open-source (some of which I voluntary support on a monthly basis). I don't need paid streaming because public TV streaming is good enough for shows/movies and YouTube with ad-block is good enough for music. I don't game.
Energy and telephony are at least actual services that someone is actually performing.
Pro-tip if you're sick of paying for streaming: Stremio (app--I run on NVIDIA Shield) + Torrentio. Totally free and will have everything you ever need. For a few dollars, Real-Debrid adds more/faster stream options, but it's purely optional/nice-to-have.
I would counter-argue for Jellyfin + Radarr-suite. I just like better Jellyfin's interface.
I'm subbed to YT premium, Spotify, and Amazon Prime. I primarily use Steam. I pirate via torrents for movies and series. No streaming services interest me. I've used a free trial for Netflix way back when and I was disappointed that some content was not available to download for offline viewing. With torrenting I can watch content in a better quality, I don't have to worry about buffering, I don't have to worry about discs and menus, etc. All I really want is just the mkv file and that's it.
Be sure to set up a Plex/Jellyfin server so you can stream your content to your devices
I've heard about Plex, but Jellyfin is new to me. I'll check both of those out, thanks.
I got to the point where I was downloading shows to put on Plex that I already had access to via a streaming service just to avoid using their app. I eventually decided to drop the service too.
Check out torrentio + realdebrid. $3/month, no need for a VPN or local storage for all the torrents you used to download.
That's a sweet deal. I'll check it out, thanks.
💀
Ugh. Every Christmas they send me a catalogue.
Netflix. Price hikes with lesser content that no one in my house wants to watch. Subcriptions for occasional use stuff been purged since that.
Paramount +. I love Stat Trek, but I'm not paying for one service to watch 20 - 30 new eps a year of one franchise. Even more egregious is they were so slow rolling out in the UK, half their shows were spread across Netflix and Amazon already, if they pull them from there, I'm just torrenting.
Not to mention it's a paid subscription that still has commercials. Paramount+ has such little content it shouldn't cost money and it plays fucking commercials on everything. It's a travesty and is the perfect example of how we've reached endshitification in the streaming world. It's just cable with extra steps now. Hoist the Jolly Rodger.
Sublime Text 4 going subscription based instead of major release based. I downgraded back to ST3 and am keeping my lifetime license on that one. The alternative is a 3 year usage license which is trash for the price you need to pay
It does say you get to keep access to everything in the three year window.
this is correct, you get access to every update in that window, instead of everything in that major release. It is better than it could be but, it's rediculous to purchase a software that doesn't even give you the full release of it. It also doesn't alert you before upgrading/updating to a release outside your license window and relies on you figuring out how to downgrade after if you let it auto update.
it went subscription based starting with ST4, ST3 and lower had a lifetime sub to that major version
Spotify. It is a mirror of my Youtube Premium and Youtube gives me better value. So I ditched Spotify.
Yeah I stopped using Spotify when I got YouTube premium. Though I never paid for Spotify but still. Like what's the point of listening to music with Spotify when I only have to pay less than $10 to get both YouTube benefits but also YouTube music.
I do miss Spotify wrapped, but YouTube's wrapped isn't so bad.
I kept Spotify for way too long to listen to podcasts, not realizing I can listen to them for free with other apps
Evernote. I’m not sure why I even stayed with them for so long; probably the pain of moving after so many years. Switched to Joplin before they doubled their fees for zero new (useful) features.
Have you heard of our Lord and Savior, obsidian?
Tell me more!
Yeah, I dropped EN years ago, when they doubled (at the time) the fees after acquiring Skitch. I floated around trying to make other things work, then found Joplin in the past year or so. Haven't looked back.
America Online.
That was a 6 month fucking ordeal to cancel, and it ended up taking bank intervention and the changing credit cards for it to finally go away.
My aunt is still paying those leeches $20/month. Her excuse was that she didn't want to lose her email, but I've told her so many times that the email is free. I eventually just gave up trying to save her money that she'd rather burn.
AOL has always made its living not on providing a service worthy of the money, but by exploiting the technologically illiterate.
That said, I have a weird nostalgia about AOL since the early era of the internet was defined by my use of AOL, and AOL chatrooms, and "You've got mail" and all the various associated accoutrements, even if I'd love to stab Steve Case in the eye with a brick.
None, because I never subscribed in the first place.
Most of my media consumption is video games, and I often revisit decades-old games, so only temporarily having access to a game is not acceptable. Neither am I interested in paying more than once to retain access to content I already paid for; that's a scam. Perpetual license or GTFO.
I don't generally watch movies, but if that ever changes, I'll be buying them on disc, keeping them, and ripping them so I can play them on my Linux PC. If I can't rip a disc because available tools can't break the DRM, then the disc is defective as far as I'm concerned, so I'll most likely return it for a refund without watching the movie.
I'd like to credit early-2000s Slashdot for teaching me to think this way. If everyone did, a lot of today's problems wouldn't exist, including the subscription scam we're discussing in this thread. Shame what happened to that website and its community, but it was good while it lasted.
My first subscription was World of Warcraft, back in vanilla and when I was a dipshit high schooler only starting to get a feel for things like managing money.
And even then, right out the gate it felt like bullshit. Did it anyway cuz peer pressure, but back then and ever since, subscriptions almost all feel like blatant ripoffs.
I subscribe to that - servers and datacenters aren’t free to run. Stand-alone games, though, have to be a one-time fee for me to pick up.
They aren't free, but you can definitely do the model as a buy to play service with a cosmetic cash shop.
The phone game. Egg inc. It just updated offering a subscription for in game bonuses.
Completely agree, and I’ve paid this game for the upgraded storage and many piggy bank cracks over the last couple of years because I play often and appreciate them keeping the game running and updating stuff. I am not, however, paying a monthly fee to use it
The first subscription I turned off is my gym membership 10 years ago. That was the first time I realized I was paying for air. With a few hundred dollars spread over years, I've amassed a pretty stellar home gym with machines and weights. Granted, the trade off is space.
In the digital age, really nothing. The wife has Netflix but nothing on that service does shit for me. I get a screen of Max from a close friend and in return she has access to my Plex, and I let her make requests when I go sailing the seas. Max has some ok stuff.
Anyhow, I do everything not to have a subscription to anything, minus my VPN. I also still buy blurays. Conversely, I haven't bought a physical video game in at least 5 years - so I've succumbed to convenience in that regard.
I also still buy blurays.
I pay for gym just to force myself to go. Uni had a free gym and I used it a lot the first month, then nothing. I just don't have the discipline...
Not subscription, but the first service I thought "wtf is this money-making model?" was Plants vs Zombies 2. The game wasn't that good. And, oh, my most recent guilty pleasure is Monopoly Go; it's entertainingly boring?
Apart from that, I've tried to keep subscriptions that I really like or use constantly:
never heard of uberpass, is it like free food delivery?
Correction: The service I referred to was renamed to Ober One.
Kinda. Basically you pay for occasional coupons and credits on UberEats, and a (5%) discount for every Uber ride.
For 70 MNX (~3.5 USD) a month there is no delivery fee on anything you order. It's obvious their business model is to charge an obscene fee to then roll out a "better" option. But hey, it's been convenient nonetheless.
I end up ordering from the same few places when I'm on my lowest, so their system usually gives me 100-200 MXN (5-10 USD) discounts on those specific restaurants. The subtotal almost never exceeds 600 MXN (30 USD).
Succinctly, it's not free free. It's a 5% discount on Uber rides, and a variable 15-30% discount for two orders a month.
Netgear. Being told to "subscribe" for basic customer service made me get a whole new modem cause I'm not putting up with that bullshit
I used to pay for software subscriptions. I had a subscription to Substance 3D software and then they sold their company to Adobe 🤮 so now I 🏴☠️
also stopped paying for Spotify after the Rogan deal. I still use the free version for the "discover weekly" playlists, and I can't tolerate ads so I use an app called Mutify which mutes the ads as soon as they start playing which is a godsend
never paid for any streaming subscriptions and never will, VPN+piracy+Plex is an objectively better experience. no ads, no content removal, no paying $$$ to rich psychopathic ghouls
Cable TV.
This Google 1 shit. I love my Pixel phone, but they give shit for memory options so that you are forced to pay for the experience of Gmail and saving media. Pisses me off that I can't just save it to my phone.
2020 Design. The software costs $1500 a year.
I guess I’m in the minority because I don’t mind subscriptions much. If I think it’s unreasonable I just won’t pay for it. Nobody is forcing me to.
Yeah. I have no problem paying for products that I happily use. Especially when they are supporting independent developers.
While they might be bundled together sometimes, Microsoft Office never came with windows. They were always separate products.
Maybe he's thinking of WordPad
At one point I had
Spotify, Wow, Runescape, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney+, Amazon, and Doordash. I didnt even realize it but one day I was just like, why the fuck am I paying for all this. Cut it allllllll away. Now I just have Spotify and HBO. Not as bad and if I want to watch something on the other platforms I cancel HBO. One streaming service at a time.
Doordash has a subscription?
Dashpass
When I had it, I was ordering from doordash every week. So paying for the monthly fee covers one orders delivery fee basically. Very worth if you use it a lot but I started cooking more after I canceled it.
Yeah, they call it dashpass.
I just deleted doordash entirely. Shit is too expensive and I am too obese.
There’s a Doordash+ option that takes away some delivery fees. I don’t normally pay for it but you get a year free with your Amazon Prime account.
I signed up for Netflix years ago. When they decided to make it cost more to let my parents share the sub I pulled the plug.
Everything kind of. Netflix, Dinsey, YouTube, Prime, HBO, Spotify, Apple Music and so much more. I rather sail the seas.
im sure it was just a typo but dinsey sounds like an insult to disney and im all for it lol
Gisnep
When Sony Plus became required for online play on the PS4. Xbox already had similar going on at that point. The last console I have ever bought was a PS3 as a direct result of this.
We PC gamers do not tolerate that nonsense. Join us!
Same, they removed one of the big reason I played on PS3, I've had a 360 too but never paid gold for the online, now I'm PC all the way, it wasn't too hard because I always preferred PC.
Literally when there was only netflix and then Disney+ came out
Same but "when there was only netflix, and Hulu got caught being cool so they had to go legit and became a subscription service instead of a pirate streaming site."
Held out on streaming until kissanime/kisscartoon started bugging me for my adblocker, then switched to downloads.
Sync for Lemmy. I was looking forward for the app, but the subscription to remove ads made me stick with Connect instead.
I dont see any ads. Or at least I dont notice then
My mobile plan. The standard is signing for 24 months. I can't really choose a plan that suits me, they stick virtually unlimited calls (which I barely use), and add mobile data that I can't use up either. Settling for less barely reduces my bill if at all for whatever reason. On top of this, despite me signing for a set fixed amount to pay, they decide to "index" an extra 10-15% every year due to "unforseen circumstances" like inflation. And every time I sign a new contract I get an extra 10% on top of my bill for the same features I don't use. Oh and they add a "happy call" where the call signal sounds like a piercing annoying very low quality melody, despite me denying the service. Switching to another telecom doesn't really remedy the problem, the other two on the market here seem worse than mine in every respect.
Looking at the prepaid features, we're looking at a 40-50% reduction in monthly fees, just paying for what I use, whenever I want to use it. It's needlessly annoying switching from a subscription to a prepaid plan. You'd have to switch telecoms for a month and switch back to the one you like the most if you want to keep your number.
So yeah, as soon as my contract expires, I'm done with renewing. I'm sick of this.
Just watching all these new subscription services for everything gave me the fatigue and started my self-hosting and actually-owning-things journey, even just paying for Netflix (when I still did) was too much for me, it didn't have everything I wanted, if it did it would remove it after a year or so, and every couple years the price would hike.
The BattleBotsRaw reddit community is still active, but you'll only get the edited fights-only versions. Those are good enough for me.
I bought a new PC in 2021 (because building was hard due to supply shortages) and it came with GamePass Ultimate. When I combined my existing Xbox Gold subscription, it gave me something like 1.5 years worth of GamePass Ultimate, which was really great! Once that subscription expired, I had saved up for a year worth of another subscription up front, but noticed they only offered month-to-month at that point. I realized I wasn't playing GamePass games enough to warrant the subscription (might have been different if I could install on my Steam Deck, not through a Windows install or streaming).
Once that GamePass subscription came up, and then Netflix started cracking down on password sharing that I was sharing with my sister in the next city over, it made me question a lot of recurring subscription. For streaming TV shows/movies, I think going forward we'll have one service subscribed to but bouncing around to catch up on shows that my wife and I may want to watch. For GamePass, I'll probably resubscribe once Starfield comes out.
Your idea for resubcribing to gamepass is an idea everyone should use for every subscription. Only pay for a subscription if there's something on it that you want and stop paying for it when there's nothing on it that you want.
