They already sell games, http://uk.xfirestore.com/

I highly doubt they'll force subscription fees on normal users.

NovemberDobby writes...

your wrong, they are going to make people pay £10 per month to use the service - I HAVE FORSEEN THIS

If they start charging that as a rate, I can see the amount of members going from 15 million, to 15 thousand very very quickly.

I stopped using Xfire about a year ago, mianly because Steam seemed to cover all my needs and the only reason for Xfire was to chat to friends, who had Steam.

Having said that, it was still very good at what it did and had a very strong team behind it with regular updates. It's a shame to hear that a good majority of the staff are leaving. They must see that the takeover can really only spell bad things for the service.

The only thing I use Xfire for now is to take screenshots in BC2... which I'm not even playing anymore.

I could flip Xfire off so easily and never miss it.

I don't see a subscription fee in their future for many reasons.

1. They would immediately lose 95% (conservative estimate) of their user base, which would negate any reason for buying the company.

2. They are primarily an advert-based company, so yeah they're going to be pushing the ads.

They may monetize it by adding a lot of useless, shiny window dressing and convince the younger generation that they just have to have them... for a fee... (**cough** FARMVILLE **cough**) which is the current trend but the base service should remain pretty much the same IMO.

Raven21633 writes...

Same, they've stuck with that old design for years that immediately distracts you - plus it's ad central.