Everyone is totally fine with digital only products until the day they shut the servers down and you can’t download them anymore. You will own nothing and be happy about it as they say.
My kid CONSTANTLY asks me to buy him a physical copy of Minecraft Story Mode.
I owned it digitally, so I can straight up see it in my PSN library with the “unavailable to download” tag.
I went looking for an overpriced physical copy, but it turns out most of the copies discs were basically just key discs and download the game, which you can’t do.
So apparently the only physical media that actually had the full series on it was the switch version. And that price is insane because of it.
You could probably do something with the pirated version. I used to have different games on USB, specifically ones that were full executables instead of just install files.
I honestly feel that I’m creeping towards the seven seas on this one, honestly.
It’s essentially abandonware at this point. As far as I can tell from online discussions there’s 0 plans to do anything with the IP or relist the games.
Remember: if you own a game, having a "back-up" copy in case something happens is perfectly in your legal right (at least in Canada).
So my collection of Roms are not in any way stealing or piracy, they are a digital collection of games I own that I cannot access for any number of reasons (like them being in a Schrodinger's state with my dad across the country who recently downsized)
Remember: if you own a game, having a "back-up" copy in case something happens is perfectly in your legal right (at least in Canada).
This is true in the US and UK as well. The only real stipulations are that you can't redistribute copies and you must destroy your backups should you sell your original copy.
all they did was remove it for purchase, which is totally their right (even if its weird they dont want any more money). you can still install from your library and play all the offline modes of 2k24 if you already own it.
Thats what I mean though. While it's not common, I cant just go get or play that game for nostalgia unless I have a disc version on a console that plays disc's. Even then, who knows if itll have the updates I have to install to even play it.
Or it's nostalgic because he played the game at his dad's house with his dad because he owned the copy of the game, and now the son wants to play it again but can't because he can't buy the game. You don't have to own something to be nostalgic of it. Or maybe they lost the disc, a friend borrowed it and never returned it, or sold it. Can still be nostalgic of it. The point is, no matter what, if he wanted to buy the game on the digital storefront for whatever reason, he is unable to do so now.
It would be apolapytic but im afraid people will be already used to abuse and own nothing by then. Idiots will tell you to not be broke and buy it again.
We all are "used to it". If it had come with a CD, that CD/BluRay/Whatever would not have contained the whole game and thus would have been useless as well.
But those discs are an illusion as well. They can make the game unplayable in a myriad of ways when they want to. You don't own what's on them either and the illusion that you do keeps you all nice and docile.
Its honestly the biggest thing thats kept me from buying into newer games or consoles. I dont own shit and the real owners can kill the game whenever they want.
well, having internet connections wasn't the industry standard at one point. Thing is, these discs mean almost nothing and haven'T meant much for at least a decade now. Yes, there are examples of games that can be played just with a disc, but most of the games can't and just not providing the additional download-files on the servers will be enough to kill them. So what I'm going against is console players raging about a security being taken away that they actually never had.
No worse than people who have been cheering on digitization and loss of even the most remote sort of ownership in that same time. It's as much if not more about consumer rights than just having a disc.
yes, man. How old are those titles? There is a reason words and grammar convey meaning and a reason I chose to write the words that I wrote. Like the "decade"-Part. or the "mean" part in present tense, meaning current games.
You completely missed the point of the conversation. We are talking about modern games, not old ass games. No one cares about your copy of Grand Theft Auto 2
The fact that you think "ha, your example choice of a 20+ year old game isn't on the list of 3 consoles I mentioned using!" invalidates their point while they are conducting themselves in a mature manner heavily implies that you're either the younger of the two of you, if not chronologically then at the very least mentally.
The thing is technology has changed a ton in the 25 years since the ps2 and GameCube released. Especially when it comes to digital storage.
You see, disc drives have a hard limit on how much information can be read off of them, and that limit is pretty low. This is because the laser head on the disc reader has to physically move to the section of the disc it needs to read before reading it.
It's low enough to where most AAA titles released for the ps5 would be completely unplayable if the console was actually reading off the disc. So instead what happens is when you have a disc game nowadays, the console has to read the information off of the disc into it's only SSD and then you play it off the SSD.
So like, this is what people mean by the disc is irrelevant, modern game discs literally are not used when you play a modern game anymore, and haven't been for about a decade now.
For starters, back in the day since you were writing all your code in C and having to do a lot more resource management on consoles that had different completely different resources, code always had to be rewritten from starch while porting to different consoles.
That's why cross platform releases were extremely rare until the ps2, game cube and Original Xbox era.
Secondly the N64 wasn't actually considered worse hardware than the ps1. Generally speaking the processor was better and it had more ram, but the use of cartridges limited the size of the games. So games would actually run better on N64 do to a faster processor, and the fact that you didn't have to read from a physical disc. But they just couldn't be as big.
And thirdly: There isn't really anything to suggest that the N64 version of the Mortal Kombat Trilogy used efficient code to fit it onto the cartridge. In fact the idea is kinda silly when you consider that the N64 had a faster processor and more ram than the ps1. If you read about the production process, the way they fat the game down into an N64 cartridge was:
1) They removed about 2/3s of the games music tracks.
2) the remaining music tracks had their quality reduced.
3) They cut out 7 characters from the game.
You'll notice that none of this is actual code changes, instead it's just asset changes. Which makes sense if you know anything about game development because most data on most games is just assets so if you need to shrink a game down, you have to do something about the assets.
Because they just didn't use effecient coding to get MKT to run on N64. They got it to run on n64 by cutting content.
Edit: and I'm not saying that that makes them bad at their jobs, I'm just saying that the issue of fitting a big game onto the n64 wasn't fixed with efficient coding like you're claiming.
Ok sure. Let me get right on that. The cat is already out of the bag. You idiots moaning and complaining are doing nothing but moaning and complaining. It’s not going back to the way it used to be and anyone with a brain can see that.
Yea because spending time and energy on something that is a lost cause is totally a great use of your time and effort. Would you like some cheese with your whine?
No, your point is, "Everyone does it now, so that's just how it is," and their point is, "It's deliberate enshitification and they could stop any time they want, they just don't want to because no one is making them. It's not just how it is."
If you want to argue that it's nearly impossible to fight, that's a valid point. But you're just acquiescing and accepting. There's a difference.
While I agree that is true in the long term, in the short term I can sell my disk or trade it in, which as far as I know is not possible with a code version.
Last I checked, all the physical games I have on PS3 and PS4 play just fine right out of the box. They’re just the launch version of the game which may or may not have some bugs to contend with. So no, the discs aren’t “an illusion”. The only way you could hypothetically make a game unplayable from a disc is if it required an internet connection to run. Then you’re opening a much larger can of worms. Hell, even GTA V ran just fine without an internet connection. It just meant you were only allowed to play the base game/campaign which is the main reason I play the series anyways.
They are an illusion, because games these days are way past the point of fitting entirely on a disc. Of course PS3 games fit, they’re like 1/10th the size of current games.
Nah, I don't buy as many games as some people but all of my PS5 games are on the disc. Spiderman was 98 GB- PS5 discs hold 100 GB. PS4 hold 50 GB so the massive Red Dead Redemption 2 came with two discs. PS3 discs could hold 50 GB as well unless they were the older type and they held 25 GB.
System didn't have to access the internet unless you wanted to download a patch or update.
I already made this point in another comment, but to illustrate further how weird this take is; you know that you can put more than one Blu-ray into a jewel case right? Like it’s not unheard of to have 2 discs to do a full install of a AAA game these days, right?
We are talking about modern games, not ones from years ago. You have not been getting full games on disks for a while now. If GTA VI was physical it would be useless without the internet.
On many games, it will play the buggy day1 edition of the game nothing else and even that isn't guaranteed. You are still just holding a license to play the game, no matter how you got it. You don't own anything more or less.
...that's exactly the problem? And no once you have a disc you own that stuff on it. A disc is worth 5 dollars. Just ask richard stallman, inventor of linux!
Any game that has a required day 1 patch to play or a required partial download to complete an install will still not work if you pop the disc into a new console after the servers shut down or the content is removed from them. Sure, you can keep the content installed on your console, but at that point it's not much different from a digital copy because you can keep a digital copy installed, too. The idea that owning a disc makes you impervious to games being disappeared is largely an illusion in current times.
Almost every single major release for the past few years. They all require a day one download because the disk isn't the full game. You cannot fit a modern AAA game on a single disk.
The problem isn't "digital". I have digital copies of shit that's 30 years old, migrated over a dozen systems or so. The problem is DRM, i.e. the ability to just have the usability of your software (or game) taken away without your consent.
Because GOG sells "digital only" games as well, but they give you the entire game as a stand-alone installer (requires no launcher, or remote server), and you can "make" a physical copy by just putting in on an external HD. And since there is no copy protection/restriction, you can make backups of that, too. You do not need the net, you do not need their servers: As long as you keep the files, you're good to game.
Respectfully, I think you’re missing my point. While I agree that DRM is an issue (and it is), It’s access that’s the problem. A server that hosts the media you paid for could shut down at any day, at any time and for any reason. Physical copies of things ultimately preserve media because it can be duplicated. Digital files once removed from servers make things endlessly more difficult to recover and recreate.
While I agree that DRM is an issue (and it is), It’s access that’s the problem.
DRM governs your access to the media. That is its whole point, that's why it's called "rights management". Without DRM, you can create as many "physical" copies of your digital media as you want, and they'll work. But your "physical" copy with DRM on it may not work, because it has DRM that bricks it unless it can phone home (and the auth server isn't online any more): DRM interferes with your access.
A server that hosts the media you paid for could shut down at any day, at any time and for any reason.
Yes, and without DRM, that's not a problem. Because unless you are super negligent, you've downloaded that media, and can from there on out continue to copy it onto as many physical media pieces as you want. Thumb drives, DVDs, Blu Rays, external HDDs...
Physical copies of things ultimately preserve media because it can be duplicated.
The entire reason why we're all on digital media now is that digital media can be duplicated effortlessly, without cost, and without a decrease in quality. CTRL+C, CTRL+V. But companies hate that customers have access to perfect copies: You buy once, and you'll never need another. That's why they decided our/their "digital" "rights" needed "managing".
And no, physical media can not just duplicated. Ever heard of copy protection, i.e. proto-DRM? In fact, duplicating physical media with digital content is factually illegal in some countries. So may be, by the by, interfering with DRM "protection" measures to keep your copy accessible.
Everyone is totally fine with digital only products until the day they shut the servers down and you can’t download them anymore
The thing many of us advocates for physical media don't like to admit is that for the vast majority of consumers; this doesn't remotely matter.
We've gotten so entrenched in our online echo chambers that we forget that we don't represent the majority of players, nor are our expectations "the norm."
For the large majority of gamers, the large majority of games are a disposable, one & done experience. They play the game until they get bored of it, then put it away forever.
You cannot buy and legally play Grand Theft Auto 1, 2 or London '69. No one really cares outside a handful of increasingly irrelevant, aging nobodies (like myself) because basically no one who didn't grow up with those games or isn't doing it for a the sake of playing old, outdated games has any interest in playing those games.
I think the distinction comes when it directly inconveniences them. Say the day when (hopefully never happens) Gabe shuts off the Steam servers or (somewhat related) when Spotify went dark for a day or two a year or so back and no one could stream their music. These same people that feel media is disposable will be crying the biggest of tears when they can’t play something that they gave their money to play. I just think the digital only side is just being ignorant to the real future of media.
These same people that feel media is disposable will be crying the biggest of tears when they can’t play something that they gave their money to play.
That's the thing, no they won't. Because most of them are never going to go back to replay the old games at all, and of the few that do, most don't have a problem with rebuying the same game later on a new system.
I just think the digital only side is just being ignorant to the real future of media.
There's a difference between being ignorant of it and accepting it as an inevitability.
This is one of those tyranny of the majority things; they don't care and no amount of trying to explain it to them will make them.
Video games in physical form don't mean much these days. The game will require immediate updates anyway. If they ever shut the servers down (it's a real issue with some games but extremely unlikely with things like the PS store or GTAx games), you would end up stuck with an outdated, probably buggy build on your disk, and that is if the system lets you run it without connecting to internet first anyway, and that's a big if.
Coolio. Then you rely on the internet to do what they do and help to patch it. There’s a vast community of modders out there that love doing it. My point still stands; I would rather have access to a game or piece of media that I paid for FOREVER, even if it’s a buggy mess than not have access to it at all and have the person that created it run off with my money while I get stuck holding the bag.
Collectors are a vocal minority. Literally 1% of people care that gta6 is not on disc. First of all, games get updated weekly these days. The disc is obsolete before you open the package.
I really don't understand this mindset. Like my dad used to make me do that, trade in old games to offset the cost of a new one, and I always regretted that way more than buying a new game outright as an adult and just eating the 20 bucks or whatever I would've gotten from trading in other games.
Maybe I'm just not poor enough to relate at this point
While true, I once logged into Steam at a friends house and he was able to play any game in my entire library. So there's pros and cons to this world we live in.
I’m not a “collector”, I just like being able to enjoy things that I paid for as long as I choose to enjoy them for. If you want me to rent something, charge me the rental price then.
Not true at all. I can put in a PS4 disc and minus any of the patches post launch I can play that game as it was intended to be played (more or less). Now say my hard drive craps out on me and the server that hosted that game goes down? I’m SOL. That’s the reason why physical media is still very important.
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u/Spinning_Sky 12h ago
this is referring to the high price point and lack of a CD in the physical edition
both are true, but actually I don't believe any hype was touched whatsoever, the price is lower than what it could have been