I mean, it’s good to have a “legal” archive of things but there’s several lovely collections of box art and other things being archived across many services. I personally like how much Launchbox has collected, although I can’t use it anymore since going Linux. For PC, ExoDOS is also a great collection, too, as they actively seek out obscure DOS and Win 3.x games from the community.
At the end of the day, the only real way to archive gaming history is through emulation and piracy. Frankly the industry deserves as much.
Wonder if 3D printing game boxes is a viable way to store physical backups of your library…
Instead of a Blu-Ray or DVD it’s a flash drive XD
I’m not sure why you’d want to 3D-print in plastic a thing that was originally flat paperboard. All you really need is a regular 2D printer and some folding skills.
So in no way an actual response to Sony. No guarantee of ownership of digital media, just printable 3D models. Cool. Not seeing the point, but cool.
Before I get the response, DRM free isn’t the same as “you own this game from our store front in perpetuity” it’s just “we can’t take over your installed version of this game”
GoG provides downloadable, offline, DRM free installers. Put that on whatever physical media you want and put it in the box. It’s much more than they can’t take away your install, they can’t take away your installer, so go ham.
I’m curious why you think “you own this game from our store front in perpetuity” is required to rival the ownership of physical media. If I buy a game from Walmart am I allowed to go back there when my disc was damaged and get a new one? Of course not.
GOG allows you to download and backup the installers of the games themselves, if you back these up well you can use those installers in perpetuity to get your game back on any machine in the future.
The point of this is not to be a direct undoing of Sony’s decision. This about preservation, one of GOG’s big missions. The games listed as having this in the article are old games who already had physical media, and as part of the preservation effort they are trying to preserve the context of the physical media which is a very significant aspect of the game.
What about having a drm free digital copy on a personal hard drive isn’t ownership to you?
They want a percentage of sales to go directly into their bank account because clearly buying a copy of a game means they literally own it
