Speaking at the “Il Cinema in Piazza” Film Festival in Italy (translated by Genki), the Death Stranding and Metal Gear director said that at least with digital games, users have the data on their systems, something that isn’t the case with cloud gaming.
“Since production is ending in 2028, this is about video games, but I grew up with physical media, so I find it really sad,” he said. “Currently, I’ve been buying up a lot of Blu-rays, such as various movies, and CDs too.
“The situation is different for games [than movies], as they are downloaded to the hard drive, that means the game data remains on your own hardware. However, if things shift to streaming in the future, that won’t be the case anymore.”
That sounds nice at first, but if you think about it, the logical conclusion is that: rather than an artist making a sale per person who wants to experience their work, they would make sales proportional to the maximum number of simultaneous viewers. With digital ownership, it would be trivial to instantly transfer ownership, so the moment someone is done playing a game or watching a movie, they’ll sell it instantly to someone else.
The only content that could benefit in such an economy is low production value slop that seeks to go instantly viral and issue licenses while there’s still demand. Then by the time it dies down they’re on to their next slop hit. That and live-service titles that try to keep people holding their licenses. Short single-player experiences, and games from small creators who rely on passive income from a few new people finding their game over time would sell a few copies at first, and then the licenses out there would just always undercut the purchase of any new license.
Also the exchanges would make a bunch of money by taking a cut of each sale. Which is arguably better than just Sony or Valve taking their cut.
I don’t like it either, but we can’t act like right of first sale for digital licenses would solve all problems and not create any new ones.
The shorter version I’ve used to describe this concern is: Imagine game resale could happen through a script kiddy’s Python program. Rather than individuals arranging sales over chat, anticipate that most sales would be arranged by online sites that are copying the model of GameStop, and twice as scummy as CSGO skin gamblers.
You sell your copy of a game you bought for $50, down to $20. It’s bought instantly by an AI algorithm, and then relisted for $34.99. Then that one’s bought instantly to resell for $39.98.