Recently a number of the big gaming sites have begun charging for their services. People seem to think they're "selling out." Others have dropped off the face of the earth, or severely throttled back their activities. Most of this seems to have started when the bottom "dropped out" of the advertising market over a year ago. Advertisers finally seem to have realized something that I, knowing exactly nothing about the entire business could have told them if only they had asked. People don't like popup ads. People don't really like banner ads. People don't like ads that aren't related to what they're looking at generally. I mean I'm reading a gaming news site, and here's a popup advert for a newspaper. You can't just spread your banner everywhere, on completely unrelated sites and have people pay attention to it. Hell, I don't even see banner ads anymore generally.

Anyhows, I'm getting off topic here. I really don't see the problem with paying for a service that you use. It seems to me that when I drive my car to the gas station, I don't expect to get free fuel. I don't expect the bank to give me a free house. I don't fix computers for free at my job. I'm sure you wouldn't be happy if I came into your house and expected you to put me up and feed me for free. You'd likely be less than amused if your boss informed you you'd be working an extra 40 hours a week for free. I don't seem to get my newspapers delivered to my house for free.

People need to make money. They're in business to make money. There's bills to be paid. Bandwidth and servers are expensive. Hiring people is expensive. Flying people around the country to arrange interviews is expensive. Renting office space is expensive. I run a computer store, I have some idea of what this stuff costs. I also run this news site and we have our own server and the company I work for invested in a local ISP, so I have an idea of what bandwidth, servers, routers etc actually cost. Surprise everyone! Bandwidth does not just come out of the ground like water, it comes from providers... Who again are in business to make money...

I think part of the problem is that people have been getting so much content and things for free on the Internet, and can't get used to the idea that the free ride just might be over, and that people have the right to get paid for their work. (And yes, I even buy my operating systems and all my software. If I use it everyday, you're damned right it's worth buying... Even if it's Microsoft.) Guys like Gamespot are going to a pay model. I don't have a problem with it. If you look at the content they're providing you... It's so much more than you're getting from your monthly magazine subscriptions. And hell, quite a number of the gamers I know buy two or three magazines a month... So they're spending around $16 a month. Gamespot is asking for a lousy $3 per month. THREE DOLLARS. And you're going to be getting MORE content. Current content. Constant updates. More screenshots. Better reviews. (Sorry guys, but I'm of the personal opinion that most magazine reviews suck ass.) More screenshots than you'll ever see in a magazine. No advertisements. Downloads. Videos. Interviews. I mean, come on! What more could you ask for? That's less than you'd spend on a cheap ass lunch. And people are upset? People are idiots who need to get their heads out of their asses and think.

Fileplanet recently started their "Personal Server" concept. Don't want to pay? No problem. Sit in line. Or pay a few bucks a month and download at screamingly fast speeds. People are bitching. Again people are idiots. For our server we're paying $250 a month for 15 gigs of bandwidth. Fileplanet has transferred 35,810 gigs in the last 7 days. That's something like $500,000 for hosting. Just for that site. In the last 7 days. (Now mind you, they're probably paying less just because they'll have their own high speed lines coming in... But not that much less.) Of course they're also paying for people to design and keep the site up, etc. I don't think $6 a month is much to ask, but that's just foolish me, who doesn't mind paying people for goods and services, even on the interweb.

Now all of this being said, if people want to give their services away for free, or they can get enough advertising to pay for them, GREAT! More power to them. But you might want to think twice the next time you scorn a great service that you use frequently... That is asking for a few measly dollars a month to keep providing you with the content you want. I think we're going to see more popular sites moving to a pay model as time goes on, just like gaming companies are starting to do for thier up and coming titles.

The only reason I don't worry about FRAGtopia is that we don't rely on advertising, and frankly I'm not too concerned about the server costs. We don't get a billion hits a month, so they're not high at all. Anyhows, watch for more pay stuff coming soon.. Don't say I didn't warn your cheap ass.