I’ve recently been getting ads on Facebook and BGG for a board game rental service whereby you pay a monthly fee to rent X number of games.
Would any of you consider using a service like this, or have you tried one? I think it’s an interesting idea. I have a tendency to buy games that I haven’t tried fairly regularly, with variable success, and a “try before you buy” option would be nice. On the other hand… I could just spend that monthly fee on games that I would then own 
I saw a similar thing, where you can hire a game for 1, 6 or 12 months.
It’s an odd thing, but I could see it being great for a game group who would all chip in, especially for something like Cthulhu Wars which is hugely expensive, but you could each pay 4 quid and have it for a month
I have enough games on my shelf that I own and haven’t played yet. I have no need to pay for a service to get me more games that I won’t get played 
I could see it being useful here and there, though. People who don’t purchase a ton of games but wanting to try out something new would certainly benefit from such a program. Or people who want to play the occasional big game like TI4 or something, where you know it’s only going to be played a couple times a year at best, so just rent it when you want it, and you don’t need to worry about storing it long term.
EDIT: Wow. Looking at their pricing model though, I don’t see why anyone would do a long term rental. One game for 12 months is £179! You can buy 3-4 good sized games for that amount and keep them as long as you want, then sell them if you don’t like them to recoup some of the cost! And the six game for 12 months subscription is £539!? Preposterous!
One game for 1 month at £15 is reasonable, I guess. Should give you plenty of time to figure out if you like it or not, doesn’t break the bank, and gives you a shot at a game that is much more expensive than that.
Having had a quick look at the costs, the base level is the same as me buying a game and selling it at a loss with the better outcome of I can keep it if I like it.
ie buy a game for £40, sell for £30 nets the same outcome.
I think the ‘rental’ thing would work better in a cafe.
There’s a board game café around here that rents games for 5€ a week, which I think is reasonable, in particular if everyone chips in for a game night. Also, the public libraries here in Berlin also have boardgames (and RPG books, occasionally), with some of the big ones having fairly impressive collections.
I am surprised that I haven’t rented/borrowed a game yet, considering how many books I lend from the library, but it’s maybe because I don’t really plan my game nights, I play games fairly casually, pulling a game out of the shelf when I have (had…) people over -and second hand games can be really, really cheap too, the vast majority of my games are pre-owned.
I have to say I see the appeal of game rental, in particular for big games of for just trying something new as COMaestro was saying. Also, there’s the advantage of not having to have extra shelf space, I live in tiny apartment and I’m very conscious the space my games take.
In normal times I do this by going to conventions, but if I played a lot with only one group it might be good to get their feelings on a game rather than just my own.
Conventions are also my preferred method for this, usually.
My FLGS has a game library from which you can borrow and they used to have game nights. We had made plans with a friend to start going regularly during his research semester… which was last year. If we were going to FLGS every week to play we would probably have checked out some games… Instead I bought more games…
No idea about pricing, I assume not expensive though. 5€ for a week sounds reasonable to me.
I know Spiele Offensive offers rentals but I haven’t tried that. I prefer not having to mail around stuff. It would have to be a local service for me.
It sounds reasonable unless the punching of cardboard and unravelling shrink is a large part of buying games for you.
I mean… not an enormous part… but…
And there’s the café model too: before everything stopped I was going to Thirsty Meeples in Oxford once a month to try out new games with some friends. Obviously not everything is susceptible to being played on a small table in a couple of hours but I’ve found many things I’ve enjoyed that way.
Unfortunately, our local games café is much more MtG focused (which I imagine pays the bills) and has a very limited board game library 