Leaving LOVEFiLM: who, what, when, where, why & how

I used to rent video games through the post from this company called LoveFilm (they stylise it LOVEFiLM which really dicks around with the spellchecker, though so does LoveFilm as a single word to be fair). They decided to stop lending me video games so I decided to stop giving them money each month; a pretty fair compromise was reached. Today I received a series of questions attempting to ascertain exactly why I took this decision. As a conscientious member of society, I of course chose to oblige and answered all of their questions to the best of my ability.

By question two their curiosity had ramped up considerably and they approached the topic of my absconsion head on. I do feel in retrospect that they peaked a bit early with this one. The flow of the survey would have benefited if this had come closer to the end.

This is a ridiculous question.

This one, however, really got my creative juices flowing.

I had to choke back tears of guilt by the last question.

It struck me how insignificant LoveFilm had been in the bigger picture of my life; that I might have meant the world to them, but for me they were simply one of a pool of video streaming services that I used and discarded at will. Looking at all the ticked boxes made me feel dirty and monstrous, like I’d kept them all in my cellar for twenty years, abusing them daily for my singular pleasure and to maintain the facade that I am, in fact, still in control of myself.

So goodbye LoveFilm; you were once my prized possession, now you mean less than nothing to me. That unlocked door you dragged yourself through to reach ‘freedom’? That wasn’t left open by accident, I kept you for years why would I suddenly become careless? Enjoy your hard won ‘freedom’ LoveFilm, I’m sure you’ll be fine without me.

I'll certainly miss having the option of subscribing to the LoveFilm unlimited games package for a couple of months during the summer and gorging on a load of titles for what amounts to a pretty good value when you're clinical about it and cancel as soon as you're through.

I was pretty annoyed at lovefilm for discontinuing their games rental service. I cancelled too and have move to netflix for content it murders lovefilm.

@walkertr77 I had it rolling at all times but I still managed to get through a fair few titles a month, so the value was still rather good. I am kind of surprised anyone can turn a decent profit from rentals though, I'd imagine for love film that it was a lot more expensive to run than their disc-based film rentals. Netflix

@pedanticjase Netflix certainly does beat them hands down for content, especially if you can trick the internet into thinking you are in America. No one does terrible reality TV like the Americans! Do you still rent games? I moved over to Boomerang as soon as I could and while they aren't great with older games (3+ years) they are super reliable when it comes to new releases. It works out a bit cheaper as well as long as you can't get through more than four games a month.

I left them in 2009 after being with them for a year. No real complaints, but the sub was gift from my partner and whilst I made use of it, I tend to want to buy and keep the video games that I play. It did allow me to try out some stuff I wouldn't have normally, though.

I had to break up with LOVEFilm Germany because they only put German dubbed stuff on their VoD service. They never even had game rentals here.

I was in a similar position somewhat recently myself. The local Blockbuster store finally closed today, one of the last holdouts from the entire corporation imploding. We're one of those towns that is small enough (read: crappy cable) for Blockbuster and physical media in general to still be a viable option - but much like the Egyptian pharaohs of old, once the brand dies all the franchises must be buried with it.

It sucks because up until the start of this year you could get free rental vouchers in exchange for Tesco clubcard points. It was a moderately fair exchange rate too, so I managed to rent and beat a lot of £40 RRP ten hour long games (for free (legally)) in that time. I suppose I could always spend those points on a fairly decent Android tablet now. Those things have games that rival the AAA console stuff, right?