I think this is a long tail type issue, assuming publishers can find a way to get a profit sharing agreement from the service providers based on time played. In the short of things, publishers make some money on each sale and then monetize on micro transaction, season passes, etc. The clear push towards “games as a service” from all the big publishers reflects this line of thought, i.e. we want to keep making money from this forever (or as long as the company can be counted on to actually run the service). But, and I admit this part assumes some form of payment to the publisher based on continued play, if the game is played via streaming subscription (which would probably have tiers or some such for access to individual publisher’s libraries) then the publishers can in theory keep making money on a finished product over the long-term.

However, I agree that this system is very likely to NOT benefit developers, it will be the publishers that make the cash and it will become a haggling point in dev/pub contracts as to the amount, of any, the devs see from these continuing fee arrangements.

All said, I cannot see a time when I’m willing to go in for full game streaming as a stand alone product. I can imangine paying for Microsoft’s game network or something if I wanted a console this generation. But I have 7000+ DOS games, and a few external drives full of Windows games, and then emulators and ROMs, so I think I’m good for gaming and don’t fit the target for a streaming service.