The German manufacturer BMW is selling subscriptions for various functions in the car. Particularly nasty about it: The features are already built into the car. The community is anything but thrilled about this.
Buying a car is usually an expensive affair. For a car with numerous functions, you often pay many thousands of euros and usually, you have to decide right away whether you want to pay an additional price for certain features.
The manufacturer BMW has now come up with something special. Because certain functions can only be used if you pay a subscription fee. This is likely to remind some of you of your nightmares about MMORPGs. Pay2Win like in Diablo Immortal is particularly hated among gamers, and soon you can at least gain a nasty advantage over your “opponents” in traffic with your seat heating.
The dream of every gamer in the car: A subscription is required for functions in the car
Where can you find this at all? The new offers from BMW are now available in the manufacturer’s digital store. In countries like the UK, Germany, New Zealand, or South Africa, you can now subscribe for your BMW. You can find the offer directly on the BMW website.
By the way, the subscription feature is not entirely new: According to TheVerge, BMW has been relying on such microtransactions since 2020 and is gradually expanding the portfolio behind the “paywall.” With its latest update in the shop, BMW has added the subscription for the seat heating. And many users are upset about this. Because the function is already built into the car and only unlocked through the subscription.
How does it work exactly? The manufacturer has built a software lock into its cars. This lock prevents you from using certain functions. Game developers do this too: You first have to pay a certain amount to access a special merchant or a crafting bag.
If you now want to use the seat heating or a driving assistant, you have to pay a subscription of 17 euros per month in BMW’s store. For other functions, fees between 9 and 20 euros are also due.
What is currently unclear? Neither from the store nor from the comments of the angry users is it clear how the price of the subscription is composed. Some at least hope that the base price of the car will decrease when they have to pay for a subscription.
The community is angry with BMW: “Hopefully the airbag subscription doesn’t expire before the accident!”
Why are so many users upset about this? Functions like seat heating are already built into many cars. In theory, you have therefore paid for the hardware with the car purchase, but cannot use the function because it is locked behind software. A user writes on reddit:
Imagine spending more than 50,000 US dollars on a car, only for them to cheat you with microtransactions for a damn seat heater.
Others see it even more drastically and no longer consider it a microtransaction, but rather a common method to squeeze money out of customers:
It is no longer a microtransaction. That’s about 216 dollars before taxes per year. What if you drive conservatively and keep the car for about 13 years? That’s almost 3,000 dollars just to warm your butt for half a year.
There is certainly understanding that manufacturers want to charge a fee for the use of current GPS data or maps. Because the effort involved in the updated data should also be compensated.
What do you think? Do you find it acceptable to have to pay for additional functions in your car, or do you want to buy the entire package directly? Tell us in the comments and discuss with other users.
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