Hey everyone, there's recently been some discussion around how to handle digital subscriptions like PS Plus, Games With Gold, as well as cloud services like PS Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming (formerly XCloud).

I think I'm going to add a new Ownership Status called "Digital Subscriptions" that will allow you to separate these items out in your collection, if you so choose. A few things to note:

• By selecting this option, the "Digital" format radio button would automatically be selected with no option of changing it to "Physical". If you change your Ownership Status to either of the existing ones, then the radio buttons would be enabled again.
• The existing Provider dropdown would now include the various subscription options. I went back and forth with this or adding a separate Subscription dropdown, but this is the easier option, so I opted to start there. I would rename the default option to indicate it's providers and subscriptions.
• This might cause some issues with certain features that rely on things being in the "Owned" Ownership Status. They would need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, so please report any oddities you find when this is rolled out.

What do you all think? Any feedback here or does this sound like we'll hit the mark on handling these items?

It's a messy thing to handle.

You don't own any of these games, you lose access to them the moment your subscription lapses, or they get rotated out of the service, etc... It's hard to consider them part of your games collection from a purely pedantic point of view. Not to mention the ever-changing roster makes consistent tracking more "work."

I can see a situation where someone that uses completionator to check their games catalogue to avoid double-dipping on game purchases during sales:

• Game goes on sale
• Check completionator collection to verify game is part of a sub
• Choose not to buy game since they already "have" it
• time passes
• Go to play said game that is in collection only to find out it rotated out.
• Be sad they missed a good deal on a game they were soon losing access to without realizing it.

Yeah, that's a really good scenario to consider and it somewhat touches on the third bullet point in my original post. There are some options though, like highlighting (or "lowlighting") subscription games in your collection somehow, whether it's through color and / or some sort of icon. Another thing is we could exclude subscription games when showing the "in my collection" icon / link everywhere (which might already be the case if it's one of those spots that looks specifically for the "Owned" status).

@moho_00 I think this would be a great way to separate the subscription games.

I see the point @dhobo said. But I don't think this should be an issue.

I am already setting my subcription games ownership status as Previously Owned/Rented as I don't consider these subscription games as my own cause the games can leave the subscription anytime or I may unsubcribe the service.

Whenever I want to see my true collection, I filter only my Owned games, this way I don't see any subscription games.

But I agree that having some way to differentiate the subscription games would be great. This would allow us to easily identify those games without needing to use any filter.

On a second tought should we add these subscription games in our collection? What is the point in having them added to our collection? Can't we just track the playthrough and completion status without having the games in our collection?

@sergiotecnico - I was actually going to make a point about using playthroughs/completions to track the games that are from subscriptions as an alternative to creating a new Ownership status. The problem with that is it isn't really what those are features are intended for. It would make sense to track subscription games you're playing through or have already played through (I've done this myself during my 3 months of free gamepass with a couple of games that I played through) but it doesn't address the ones you haven't started on yet, but still have access to.

In a perfect world, somewhere in the site's database would be a table to track the up-to-date listings for the various subscription services. Then in your collection page, there could be a set of Subscription buttons you could toggle on/off for each of them so they'd show/hide the relevant games along with your collection list. However, that listing would require being maintained by someone, and likely contains a slew of other unforeseen issues/implementation challenges. For instance, I'm not sure if there are regional differences between subscription service games lists? I'm not familiar enough with how they're handled outside of North America.

I see what you mean @dhobo. This would work just like the JustWatch website, where you can toggle the video stremaing services you subscribe and you see an updated list of everything you have access to from those services. But I agree this would probably need a lot of maintenance.

Talking about our current situation, for me, I will not add to my collection the games for those services unless I am starting to play them. As I don't have time to play all of them and most of them will leave the services before I play them. So, when I am starting to play a subscription game, I will add it to my collection, as a subscription/rented game then start the playthrough.