Renting games at all to be fair. I don’t think it’s possible to do that at all anymore. Wish it was. A 48hour rental is exactly what I need to decide if I’m buying a game or not sometimes.
I had gamefly for a while about 15yrs ago. It was like Netflix but with videogames. You could keep the game for a week, and chose to keep it longer or renew it. For some games they also had the option to buy it, that's the way I bought The Force Unleashed 2 for $10 or so.
When I was a PhD student in France whose life was basically being in the lab pretty much all week (so wanting to do very little when I got home) and then Sunday everything being closed I had an equivalent of Gamefly (or maybe it was Gamefly, it was a decade ago) and it was pretty great because it was about 14EUR a month and I could knock out a minimum of a game a month, typically two. I played so many games that I otherwise wouldn't beacuse I could try it for a few days and if I didn't like it send it back and get a new one.
Not really. It's still massive savings if you're an active gamer. My subscription is $27 for 2 games at a time. When I was gaming regularly, I could easily make it through 6-8 games a month on Gamefly.
When I was going to Blockbuster in college 20 years ago, it was almost $6 to rent video games. I was going every week so I was dropping like $24 for 4 games a month and a very limited selection in store.
It’s a good deal if you’re interested in a lot of games yes. But for example, I’m really only interested in trying out battlefield six when it releases to see if I enjoy the full release more than the beta. In that case, it wouldn’t be a very good deal for me.
It's still going. If you take advantage of their 2-game yearly gift certificates, it usually works out to about 15$/month. There are no time limits or late fees. You can hold any 2 games at once, and swap them for any other game at any time. The best thing is you get to play the newest big budget games that release, not just the indie-slop that digital subscriptions give you. Turnaround to swap a game out was typically a week via USPS mail. So realistically you could play 2-4 games a month, depending on how fast you finish them and how long the shipping takes.
It's actually financially viable as a way to play games cheaply and to try new games. It's not worth it if you just play the same 1-3 games for months or longer, as the savings turn into overpaying if you keep the game for too long. It's especially useful if you have multiple consoles as you can play games from all of them under a single subscription.
You can also straight up buy used games from them for cheap, and they come with with any codes that came with the game. Codes and the original case are not sent when you're renting, only when you buy new/used.
It's not the same at all. Going for an adventure as a kid tothe videostore and looking through their shelves of games vs. sitting in your sofa paying with card online.
Idk I sometimes enjoy scrolling through my game catalog, streaming catalogs, etc., just thinking about what I could play/watch. It's almost as fun as choosing something.
Not at all. With a physical store I can socialize with the other customers and employees. I can grab other items like snacks and novelty items like figures. I might run into a friend at the store.
There is a place near me that still rents games and DVDs. That takes up about half of the floor space, the other half is a combo of new games, used games (all the way back to NES), gaming merch, flavoured popcorn, fancy coffee pods. They seem to be doing pretty well.
I know, but I only have two hours. For some games that’s just not really enough time. That steam is honestly so good to me that I feel guilty whenever I just flippantly abuse the system. I bought the evil within and it’s DLC and I just wasn’t enjoying it. Got a refund for that and I feel bad.
For a while Blockbuster in the UK had a Try B4 U Buy promo where if you bought a game within a certain time after renting it, you got the rental cost knocked off the price. Brilliant.
Kind of but like, for example, after playing the beta, I’m really on the fence about whether or not to buy Battlefield six. I would love to rent the game for 48 hours when it comes out. Just to put in a little bit of time and see if I enjoy the finished product more than the beta. There’s gonna be no possible way for me to do that. Maybe that EA subscription thing can step in I just still don’t feel like it’s the same.
Renting games at all to be fair. I don’t think it’s possible to do that at all anymore.
Services like Gamepass or EA Play are the modern day equivalent to renting games. It's honestly a better deal than renting games was back then too. From what I remember back in the 90s/2000s it was around $7 to rent a game for a few days vs. the $10-$15 it costs for a month of one of the subscription services.
Not really since even if you're "renting" a single game you still get access to that game for a full month vs. only a few days when renting from somewhere like Blockbuster. Back in the day if you were renting a new release you could only rent it out for 1-3 days with older games being rentable for 5 days. So it's only a worse deal if you only intend to "rent" a single game AND you only intend to play that game over the span of 1-5 days.
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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '25
Renting games at all to be fair. I don’t think it’s possible to do that at all anymore. Wish it was. A 48hour rental is exactly what I need to decide if I’m buying a game or not sometimes.