What we want is DRM-free games, not your bullshit
Fucking morons
Digital games are nice. There was a good chunk of time during the ps4/xbone era where I bought a lot of digital games. But in recent years as I have watched how these companies have acted, I have switched back to buying physical as much as possible. I realized I actually prefer having the thing in my hands. Being able to look at it on the shelf with the rest of my collection. Now I only buy digital as a secondary more convenient copy when there is a good sale. Otherwise, I want to own my game and feel it in my hands as I insert a cart or a disk.
For me, improving digital rights is only a partial compromise, when we should continue to have choices. Losing secondhand copies and hurting that part of the industry is unforgivable to me. My choice is not for digital, and these companies moving away from it is a dealbreaker for me. If this is the route all of them go, I will no longer play modern games. Fuck it’s not like most of them are actually worth buying and playing these days when it’s all designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible.
I have hundreds of physical games, and there are so many more I can still collect and play. I feel comfortable enough with my old games that I could never touch a new game again and have plenty to play for the rest of my life. If this is where the companies choose to try to force us to go, then I’m out. I’ve managed to live my whole life without playing a PS6 or GTA 6. I’m not going to be strongarmed into losing my choice.
People have been buying more and more physical media recently due to the enshittification of streaming. I’ve been buying blu-rays for movies I really want to ‘own’.
It just clearly not up to some people’s standards. Imagine how much more $$$ valve would make if they published physical copies for their steam machine.
People have been buying more and more physical media recently due to the enshittification of streaming.
Have they? More and more, really?
I guess I must have missed the memo, because I no longer have the giant storage cases full of plastic discs or tapes. I’m hard pressed to name anyone else in my social circle who still does.
I’ve been buying blu-rays for movies I really want to ‘own’.
I just pirate that shit. Why on earth do I want a hard copy of something, plus a device to play it, when a 2-TB hard drive can host more media than I could watch continuously for a month. That’s before you get into degraded quality of older discs and machines. Or my increased appetite for foreign media - shit that was never on offer in the states without knowing a boutique distributor or a friend traveling overseas or someone with a subbed copy.
Imagine how much more $$$ valve would make if they published physical copies for their steam machine.
Getting this from Valve is absolutely mind-bending, given how much of their library is exclusively digital.
Which is really depressing as the only time I buy digital is when the games are 60% off or more.
I like Valve but stfu dude.
Physical discs was the only thing that was a plus side of consoles compared to PC gaming (you could trade and resell it).
This is so clearly a company employee portraying a certain sentiment that the company stands to profit from and acting like that is what consumers chose.
Sony, chose this. I didn’t chose this. And valve knows that now 30- 40% or better of PlayStation players will be making their way over to them in the next 5 years with this very sentiment of “oh well its what consumers chose”
I know it wasn’t the company of valve that said this and just an employee but still fuck this dudes opinion on the topic. Of course he shills for the end of discs that was the only thing that set consoles apart from Steam.
I like digital games on PC, not gonna lie.
But the only money I’m spending on the consoles I have is on used games. That’s what makes them worthwhile for me. I spent stupid money on the ps5 and psvr2 because my library of games could be built at a discount, and maybe every now and then I’ll get a new game that looks interesting because I have the system already. I bought the disc version of the ps5 specifically, not right at launch but close enough to it that I had to look around to find one (and said no thanks to the driveless ones that were available). Can’t remember if it was for the ps5 or psvr2 but for one of them I even held my nose and got it from walmart, which I try to avoid when possible.
Though the writing is already on the wall with these things. So many games are already just download codes even if they are on a disc or card, which means they require active support just to install and once that’s gone (either by Sony or publisher’s choice), then that game is gone. And I know you assholes think that’s a good thing because it means someone who would otherwise be playing that game needs to find something else to do and that something else might be buying another new game. So ultimately it doesn’t really matter if you (Sony) use discs or not, since removing them entirely is really just slamming that final nail in the coffin, but it’s already there just waiting for the hammer. I probably won’t get the next PlayStation either way.
Hey guess what. Companies retain less popular options all the time because it makes them more attractive as businesses.
Can we stop spreading the propaganda for them? Sony lied about digital sales by including digital-only games in their figures.
Every game with a physical release, according to their developers, makes most of their sales on disc. It’s literally always a 70/30 split every single time (give or take 10%). I cannot find any evidence of a game that sold more in its digital form than physical
Where can I learn more about this. Frankly, I will not just take your word for it on such a bold claim.
That’s fair, but it’s ubiquitous. Search Twitter and Bluesky for official game studio and personal developer accounts. They almost always post about their sales soon after a launch. I don’t have any on hand, sorry. I do remember suckerpunch and insomniac doing so all the time.
My claim would be very easily disproven if it wasn’t true
I believe you, and im sure it’s because I’ve lost passion for just about everything at this point, but if the disk doesnt hold the game what really is the point anymore. If we bought the entire game on hard drive and the console had a hot swappable port so we used them like cartridges that would be great. I shouldn’t need internet access to play a game by myself. But with the current fuckery, the disc just holds part of the game right, and you have to download the rest of the game when you put it in the console.
You can also use that license thatvomes on that disc and transfer it and sell it or trade it to someone else if you choose.
That choice is being taken away.
Ah that makes sense. I wonder if there are people who create accounts for each game they digitally purchase. Then sell the sign in creds when they are done playing. Talk about a giant pain in the ass that would be
Sony and Microsoft’s Xbox will ban you immediately for this but because Steam is a lot more consumer friendly people do sell whole accounts with a game or two tied to them. There’s a site (that’s kind of shady ish so look out for that) that I have used called G2A that you can buy whole steam accounts with games on.
I think that some of those codes are stolen though or something of that nature but steam doesn’t do anything about it but that is 100% speculation on my part. I thought I heard a dev of a game say something like that one time though that they’d rather you pirate it than buy it off G2A.
Edit: thinking about it more I don’t think its stolen its just the simple fact that you can “trade” or “sell” the entire game that way by selling the whole account tied to it and the game developers don’t like that.
Valve, who ushered in the digital only landscape for PC, is like, “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this!”
Edit: this is a joke. Please Steam nerds put down your neck beards and chill.
Yes it is a conspiracy. Sony doesn’t want physical games for a whole bunch of reasons not least of which is control and greed. And if you think this is a new thing you would be wrong. They have been pushing this quietly for years. Second hand sales, game rentals, trading… these are all things that cut into Sony’s profits. If you ever want a reason follow the money.
What nonsense. What matters isn’t whether we use physical disks or not. And it’s all digital anyway, you don’t get many games on vinyl these days. The real issue is whether you own the games you buy. As GOG is proving, game ownership is something that publishers can easily offer, regardless of the delivery mechanism. If Sony would step up and do the same, killing physical discs wouldn’t be a problem. It’s a trust issue.
GOG doesn’t give you ownership of the game the way physical media does though. Unless they’ve added a feature to sell your used games?
Hard drives are physical you can even put it on tape or break out the floppies. No drm is the real winner and true ownership
No drm is the real winner and true ownership
Wish more people understood this, rather than fetishizing hardware.
Download the offline installer and now you have possession.
Further, because GOG enforces no DRM or mandatory sign-ins, so that means that you also have control over that copy of the game - you can install it and play it however and whenever you see fit.
For GOG games were you downloaded and kept the offline installer, the only way that the rightsholder has of stopping you from installing and playing that game is to sue you, which is:
- Almost certainly not worth it for then due to the cost of taking somebody to court for it versus what they would gain if they won.
- They actually have to have an actual legal basis for unilateraly changing the licensing agreement with you and hence be allowed to block you from continuing with the activity you have a license for (installing and running that game), which they almost certainly do not have in pretty much the whole World since EULAs aren’t valid there (they’re considered an attempt at, after a sale is completed, forcing unilateral changes to the implicit contract which is the sale, so have no legal validity)
With other stores they can just force the store to take down the game and now it’s up to YOU to sue THEM to get restitution and the “not worth it” is now something that goes against you (unless you have access to a Small Claims Court in the jurisdiction you’re in, are you really going to sue them for a 50 bucks game?)
In fact, physical media is worse than digital GOG games, because the former can have phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins so you have possession but not control.
PS: However if the point you were making was about resale, then it’s a valid point. Mind you, physical media with phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins can also be de facto unsellable if that’s what the game maker wants.
Good point, I’m guessing it probably falls short of physical media in that way. As I understand it, they let you download an install file for the games you purchase, which you can save and use offline. I doubt that publishers would put effort into enabling a second hand games market
Playstation was dead to me once they released the PS3 and did the bait and switch linux thing (again).
Why do you care what Sony does, just avoid them all together.
The only hope is governments deciding that you have a right (probably for a limited time, discs dont last forever) for you to have license Key that you can use, trade, barter or sell.
But who will manage a database of keys? I hate that I am going to say this: a blockchain of key/ownership? I cant think of any other decentralized method.
Or a home brew is going to happen that “rips” the hard drive on install and makes a copy on a USB or attached drive or something, but that brings us back to the problem: the hardware itself.
If you don’t own the machine, you don’t own the data. You DONT own the playstation because it is proprietary and you cant do anything with it.
I hate that I am going to say this: a blockchain of key/ownership?
Blockchain doesn’t necessarily need to have “Proof-of-Work” which is what makes Bitcoin and other cryptos so environmentally unfriendly.
It would be a fine method for tracking ownership from a trusted centralized source. And I mean “trusted” in the sense of “they probably won’t just make some shit up because they’d get wrecked in court”, not in terms of actual trust lol.
But you say “decentralized”, for most blockchain projects that’s just a buzzword lol, it’s very hard to actually pull off. Especially without a financial incentive ie operators taking a cut of every sale made.
Honestly, in my lifetime I’ve bought maybe 7 physical games, and that was the Myst series.
I was too poor when I was a kid so pirated, now I use Steam, and if that goes to shit, I’ll be sailing the seas again, just like with streaming.
People keep pre-ordering absolutely everthing no matter the price because they need to have it the moment it comes out. THIS means companies can do whatever the fuck they want because people will let them do it.
The solution is so easy stop buying their shit. Yes you won’t play on the second it comes out 6 months later its like 50% at least.
Nothing will change because people value convenience over change.
No, I made the choice for physical. I don’t own a single digital game on a Sony console. Don’t put this on me. I want to buy physical. I never wanted digital for myself. I always wanted choice.
Its just that I don’t matter. I’m a minority and Sony don’t give a fuck about me. It’s not my fault Sony is stopping physical production. Its still profitable, so Sony could keep on doing it. But they don’t because they want to fuck me over.
Damned be the man who blames the consumer and he can shove his worked at Valve credentials up his ass.
He’s right though. The consumer has chosen sure a small minority might buy physical but the majority don’t.
This person is saying that’s untrue https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26484937
It was shown that for PS5 exclusives the split was in favour of physical though. And that doesn’t even count the people that buy second hand
They don’t want you to buy second hand
I know, I’m just saying that their numbers already show that the physical “minority” aren’t actually that minor, but that their numbers also don’t even show the whole picture.
