Players can only access the lowest rank of competitive gameplay for free, and access to any higher levels costs a subscription fee of $2.50 a month. That's right, you'll need a subscription to play GeoGuessr on Steam, for some reason.

Not only is this price point bizarre for a game that you can literally just hop into similar browser versions and play for free, but [...]

GeoGuessr has required a subscription to actually play for a while now. I think they had a very limited Free tier until 2024, but it was not a great experience. The developers claim that they need to charge a subscription fee because they need to pay Google for the Streetview API access. To me, that seems plausible and would justify a subscription model (as opposed to a one-time purchase).

On the other hand, OpenGuessr seems to be a free alternative that offers a very similar game. That certainly seems like a better alternative if it's sustainable.

I'm assuming it has to do with paying for the Google map api calls. If that's what it is they should say so if that's not what it is they are scummy

I think it was obvious that it was never going to be a free game again. The problem is making it look like it's free to play and then hitting the player with a paywall after a few games. Also, the subscription model is shitty. I would readily put down a onetime payment for something that works as least as good as the web version, which is a lot more polished than the free alternatives I've seen. But I refuse to buy into this subscription model.

I had to look way too hard just to figure out what the fuck the monetization scheme is on that article that kept repeating the headline 3 times, holy shit

Blame Google, that's what it costs to use their api. Once upon a time geoguessr was free but Google and their infinite money took it away from the few people who even played the game back then

Haven't looked into this but if steam is the exact same game as the web version then it's worth the subscription fee. In fact geoguessr and tidal are the only two subscription services I pay for. Studying the map makes you way smarter

I've been starting to use Geostatic instead, it looks like a really nice alternative to Geoguesser, their economic model looks a lot nicer.

A flat subscription fee is blameless.

Don't make it sound like they added $50 hats.

I always thought that given that personal use of google street maps os free for the user. It would be really easy to just make a copy of that game for free relying on scrapping instead of api calls.

Insert chad scrapper vs virgin API user meme.

Geoguesser is way too proud of their product to be charging money for it.