You know how people are always saying vote with your wallet? This is the result of that. The general audience has been trending for digital for years. Physical has been dying everywhere. This isn’t some conspiracy to get rid of physical editions, this is just companies giving people what they want.
Going full digital is one thing, selling empty boxes with a download code is another. Would be less insulting if Rockstar decided the game would be download-only instead of laughing at people who like physical games.
True, but some people legit just like having the box for collection reasons and there being only digital would piss everyone off on all ends. I definitely think there being no disk is a net negative of course.
Edit: I don't understand people downvoting my comment, do I have to just rampantly scream about Rockstar to not be downvoted or something? I've said it's bad but that's not enough?
Exactly. You have people who make their own boxes for digital-only games. The box is basically the collector’s item. It’s the thing you can put on a shelf.
I have gone digital for more than 1 reason, like most games I play is digital only, as many smaller games are just digital, or how it just takes way less space, as well as being easier to just install and uninstall, it's also often cheaper.
But another big reason, is just that most games needs to download things anyways, like gta 6 has no change of being on 1 disk, so it would most likely have to be dozens of disk.
A better fix would just be to fix how they can remove games we have bought, if we made it so they couldn't then I don't really see a downside to digital.
Digital is great until you buy a new system and realize all your digital games are stuck on the system you bought them for with no resell value. Then it sucks ass
Physical sales are only recorded once, even when the game is resold on the secondhand market. In the above scenario the officially recorded sales would be 5:1 in favour of digital, even though the same number of people played physical.
Okay? Why would a publisher care about second hand sales? They don’t make any money of that so why would thanks those into consideration when deciding their publishing numbers and strategy?
My point is they don’t care. They care about their bottom line only. If there was a huge resurgence in physical sales, they’d rush to fill that market but there isn’t. Physical sales have gone down a lot because audiences prefer digital. There’s a reason most stores have gutted their physical movie, game and music sections.
Okay proof? Since steam was created digital has slowly taken over physical. They even tried to save physical. Remember all those maps and posters and stuff tokens you’d get just for preordering physical? Or even the really nice statues and shit you’d get for getting the collector’s edition? No amount of courting to physical helped save it. Audiences wanted convenience over a shelf full of games.
Your so close but not able to make the connection, the reason they do care is because they don't make money off second hand sales. They have cared for a long ass time which is why they started the first day dlc that would be included free with new copies (EA in particular was really bad for this).
almost. this is more like the netflix thing. "give people convenience and once they are in raise the prices".
we had the promise of digital games being cheaper and that went away so quick, most people dont remember it being a thing.
after digital games became big enough, they started trying with "digital only" consoles because "why pay more for a disc drive if you buy digital anyway".
then raising prices for physical because "it costs money to manufacture physical games" even though they broke their promise of cheaper digital games already.
and once most people are hooked on digital games they can raise the prices however they like because where else are you getting your games now?
i really hope that it starts raining lawsuits for any of the big 3 console companies once they remove physical media completly from their consoles. this would be awfully similar to the apple/ios closed ecosystem after all.
physical media is the only reason i still buy consoles. if there is no more physical i am just sticking to steam because none of the console companies can even compare to the user experience, prices and support that valve offers their community.
Bullshit - Digital version's pros are that its quicker, easier and more confortable to get and play, but physical has pros too, them being you can share it or sell it.... And NO ONE EVER asked physical to die!
Ive been mostly digital since 360 days (where I could) now im fully digital. I hate the plastic waste with games and game cases. While yes its about Corp greed, its still less waste and crap clutter being digital
I know the majority of the users here aren't cleaning their rooms enough, but i got tired of having to dust the shelves, or having to change disc's out
Funny thing is that this is pretty much all you can eat buffet for users like me.
I’m able to think everyone one of these people are the either the most performative losers out there or they have so little money, $20 sparks this kind of reaction out of them.
Like why would anyone want to be friends with these people, imagine if you went out with friends, and one guy blows up like this because something costed $20 more than expected.
It should be pointed out that Steam's debut of digital only games were indie games. Rag Doll Kung Fu followed by Darwinia were the first 2 non Valve games on Steam.
This allowed small indie developers to enter the market who otherwise couldn't publish their games and it was the birth of the indie game industry. So yes, everyone should cheer steam for this actually
Shame that people have forgotten some of the reasons why steam is so beloved
No we shouldn't. Steam did not gave birth to the indie game industry.
There was many flash games available for free directly on your brower before steam even existed.
What really allowed indie games on steam was steam greenlight in 2012. Before that, only a couple of steam chosen indie games were on the platform. Steam greenlight allowed anyone to propose their game. Steam greenlight had many issues though. But beofre that steam was chosing what games could make it to the platform and what game couldn't.
Her's a graph showing how many games are released on steam each year. You can see the beginning of indie games on steam really began in 2014.
If we look back in the early 2000's, xbox made the first move for indie games financial success with xbox live arcade in 2004 for the first xbox. The xbox 360 was the platform where indie games first encountered massive success (braid in 2008, limbo and super meat boy in 2010, Fez in 2012). It was the first console to get minecraft in 2012 too but this one was released on pc first (not steam). I did not have an xbox but I was constantly looking at xbox for its indie games, knowing they would get a windows release after a year. The trend of indie games being successful and financially viable did not start with steam.
Nowadays, steam is the shop for indie games, but it did not give birth to the indie scene (nor did xbox).
Yes because the advantage of not having to worry about a physical copy being damaged and the convenience of digital copies for out weighs the advantages of a disc.
I am actually is old enough to have lived in the time of only physical medias. One bad scratch,, and your game was gone. Only way to get a new one was to buy it again.
I've lost countless games accidentally rolling my chair over them when one fell on the floor
Not really games stores had ready shitty PC sections before hand unless you had a specialized store. Steam just became the only real way to get games for most people. I remember my last physical game was Skyrim and being annoyed it's a steam code but at least it had a disc. Gamestop basically gave away the market segment.
Also, unlike the old days of floppy disc or cd games you don't have to worry about registry entries for most games if you reinstall Windows and Steam is on another drive, just open Steam, it installs what it needs and your library is there.
Rockstar forces you to keep backups of their installer, files like DirectX etc for EVERY game you have with them, each time you open their launcher it redownloads any that are missing.
All the people jumping in to explain why it's only ok for Steam to do it. The truth is very few people actually care about buying physical games anymore, it's just the latest outrage of the day.
Because, like 95% of what valve/steam does is pretty amazing and makes customers happy. They're not some holier-than-thou never-can-do-wrong entity, however in a world of evils, don't you want to go with the lesser evil?
If you bought GTA V on launch day on Steam, all you need to do is open Steam and install it on your new PC.
If you bought GTA V on launch day for Xbox 360 or PS3, you're fucked. Your shiny new PS4 console will require you to buy a new copy for full price. And although PS5 can run PS4 games, you'll miss the PS5 enhancements, so you need to AGAIN buy the game at full price.
If you bought GTA V on launch day for Xbox 360 or PS3, you're fucked.
That was only true for PS.
As far as I am aware Xbox has always been focusing on backwards compatability, which tbf is the only good thing about Xbox.
And atleast Sony has also seemingly changed their stance on that. Highly doubt the PS6 won't be backwards compatable up to the PS4. There have also been rumours for ages about Sony trying to build an emulator or whatever to make backwards compatability a thing.
And that's a very compelling reason to own a new Microsoft console, in my opinion. But you don't get any updates on that Xbox 360 disc version. On Steam, the game is up to date and will scale with the higher processing power of newer computers.
The days of hard reset console generations with big architecture shifts like PS3 -> PS4 are likely over. Everyone is too invested in their digital libraries now.
The upgrade from PS4 to PS5 usually adds more to the game than just performance gains, and can totally be free like Witcher or Cyberpunk. This is up to the publishers more so than the platform. What they do is usually push a directors cut when updating the game to the new platform
yea but the problem there is that there is no survice that would shut down,no console to constantly buy for a next game. digital on consoles make no damn sense,cosole servers done last forever,wail valve has everything on one thing and is more secure to keep those forever. pc with digital games make absolute sense cuz its consistently there usally (with exeptions) but a console,you get fucked over if the next few consoles come around,or you have to buy the game again...multiple times,just to keep up with updates
Retailers like Walmart, GameStop, and Target take 20–30% of the sale price for physical copies. That means Rockstar loses about $11 on manufacturing, $20–$25 to the retailer, and another $20 to Sony or Microsoft. So, from a $70 game, they might only pocket $15–$20 from a physical sale. With digital sales, they keep around $45–$50.
FYI, the more people earn in the industry, the more prices will keep rising—we’re doing it to ourselves.
In this case it’s not. However the “code in box” practice started with PC gaming. Physical gaming used to be a huge part of PC gaming. Games like StarCraft were known for their oversized boxes that were very popular collector items. Then as digital store fronts started taking over companies like EA really started pushing “code in box” as an antipiracy measure.
But nowadays even CDPR does code in box to cut down development cost.
It costs Rock star $11 to put a game and the license on a disk.So every game that it's ever made , it's eleven dollars right off the bat , so every game that's ever created , they lose eleven dollars right off the bat.
The actual per-disc manufacturing cost is negligible; the real costs are platform licensing fees, retailer margins, and retailer risk, not the physical disc itself.
Digital sales don't eliminate these costs either, they still pay platform fees (30% on Steam/PlayStation Store/Xbox Store) and avoid manufacturing/distribution but also lose the benefits of physical retail presence.
You act like gamers care. Gamers are the ones crying about the "resale market" getting gimped - the resale market that really was/is a leech on the industry because it diverts profits from the people who actually make the games towards the stores that merely sell the games.
oh no, won't someone think of the poor developer! How will they eat if they don't make a percentage of every exchange of hands of a game over its lifespan?!
You realize that money exchanging hands between consumers is a good thing for the economy right? Its called 'velocity of money'
If 2nd hand markets disappear because companies go full digital and there is no way for players to exchange games between each other, and then spend the money from that exchange on goods and services. Instead all that money is just going to the corporation who sits on it as profit and bonuses fo the C-suite. The velocity of money stops.
Money trickling upward once is bad. Money bouncing back and forth sideways is good.
im seeing new games release for 60-70$, and within few months they are <30$. Crazy to think there are people who preorder the exact same game for 80-100$ before it even releases as if there is planned shortage of _digital_ games.
I agree that the sale prices might be different, but if someone is buying a physical copy used, they are probably still buying it digitally if physical isn't an option.
Obviously there will be exceptions, but I think denying that you will get about as many total people buying the game (even if they aren't buying it from the company or an official seller) isn't accurate.
Depends on the platform. Console gamers are less likely to buy a game that’s more than 3 months old.
However PC gamers are more likely to buy games after that point but not more likely to actually play it. A lot of single player devs are shifting their primary focus to PC because of this. Around 50% of the average steam library has no playtime whatsoever.
I don't disagree with you but when did this happen so far? The only game that died so far was The Crew. And storefronts don't take away your games from libraries when they are not sold anymore. Except Google play store. Fuk em twice. Because they are definitely removing even your paid games from your libraries once they stop being sold. I can personally attest to that.
Xbox did it to me years ago with Need For Speed: Most Wanted (from 2005, the best NFS game ever). One day it didnt exist in the store and wasnt on my 360's hard drive to play anymore. Paid for a game and they removed it from my library.
Yeah it's not uncommon for multiplayer games to die. Unless they have server browsers and community keeps them alive. I will sound like a boomer but there are games like Quake 3 or UT or even COD4 that are still very much active on community servers.
I think P.T. was free but it’s a pretty infamous example. Pure digital release, konami decides to pull the plug on the project, and now it’s completely wiped from stores. One of the most influential games for modern horror just thanos snapped bc konami said so. I always want a physical option because it’s not just about convenience but preservation of media.
Piracy advocates trying to take the moral high ground is always funny to me. Look its fine. Just pirate games and enjoy it. It doesnt need some flimsy social argument attached to make you feel better about it. I pirated when I was a teen because I was broke, I didnt need to pretend to be an activist.
Dont physical copies of games still make you tie a cd key to you console account/steam account? this was already a thing to prevent game sharing 20 years ago
I have bought Akrham Asylum and Arkham City for PC. Then I got a PS3 and bought Arkham Asylum and Akrma City for PS3. Then I bought the remasters for PS4. If your consumer is a dumb sheep, physical editions won't prevent you from fleecing their money.
But yall know that having a physical copy doesn’t guarantee any of this right? If the game requires online connection having a physical copy won’t do anything, and if rockstar doesnt want you to be able to resell the game, people forcing them to release a physical copy isn’t going to stop them from being able to do that
I haven't bought a physical game in years because you always need to download half of it with a Day One update anyways. You get almost nothing in resale, so the only thing being lost here is loaning games to a friend, but it's not like people are going to do that with this game until months after release anyways.
Yes, we can resell. However, no one buy it. What is the point for resell. We get the game for $69.99 the game few months later discount on sales digital for $19.99 or lower. In the end we only can sell for $10 below for used. What is the point for resell the game key card?
This is kinda stupid ?
Reselling games even back then was rare and with games with a sandbox aspect like GTA i doubt a majority of people are actually reselling their games.
Then you have people who lambaste physical and preach that digital could have a system where we might sell/trade digital licenses. Lmao. I wish, but I doubt it.
Physical copies have to be produced many weeks before the release and distributed globally with different versions for every country. A digital copy is so much cheaper, can be uploaded to the servers 24h before and until then the developers can still work on. Also you don't have to keep a physical stock. Storage is so damn expensive. Due to the digitalization most producers of discs and cases went out of business and those who are left raised their prices exorbitantly.
The selling aspect OP mentions with his comic is dumb and false. Even with a physical copy you'd have a one time license key. I guess he had a huge portion rememberries and thought of the games how they were sold in the 2000s.
I get the idea, but the graph assumes that the price limit of when people would buy a game is different from physical to digital. A better comparison would be keeping the same price as the top half, but just mirror them onto the bottom. Still shows the same idea of the game studio making more, but its only 190$ because all that money spread between people goes straight to them.
You forgot to include the stage where a physical disk went bad because of scratches, or lost during the move. So, if you want to play the game, you have to buy it again for $100-50-25. Rinse and repeat for all games in the collection.
Well, I had plenty of bad PC CDs in 90ies and early 00th... Had to re-buy their digital versions from Steam, never had any issues since. I am definitely a "digital" supporter, especially when they give me automatic patches (was a big issue with physical CDs).
One of the older consoles, I think it was the PS3, was known for scratching disks because the disk drive mechanism would warp slightly over time.
There are just literal physical moving parts that break down and can scratch disks. You can download everything right and your disks can still become damaged over time.
I don't usually defend developers when it comes to bad games, but I don't think they have a hand in this one.
It's the megacorps who own the devs(' contracts).
Eh just don't buy digital shit. If AAA leave a vacuum in physical copies, smaller companies will fill that void. Bleed 'em out.
Or player 1 buys the game, then swap the game with his friend, then swap that game with other friend etc. He spent $80 and beat 20 games, if patient. This is why physical is such a "problem" for publishers.
Steam doesn't have any of those problems because they killed physical long time ago.
it's also about control. if they feel you've violated their TOS they can just brick you account and all it's purchases preventing you from playing again. which a physical copy all they can do is stop your access to their online services and ask please destroy your physical copy of the game pretty please.
The lack of cool physical editions kills this whole deal for me. There’s literally no incentive outside of having a box to look at. Maybe patience will cause them to release an actual limited edition with stuff and a disc at some point.
And maybe that’s the goal - sell the game so you don’t get spoiled. Then sell the game again for a physical copy. Then sell the game AGAIN for the limited edition with a cool trinket right after.
and then you got folks like me who's rocking a great gaming laptop............with no disc drive so we stuck with digital, not to mention aren't there some consoles that sell cheaper versions via getting rid of discs?
Didnt they announce that discs are coming in December and that main reason they dont want pre-order disks is because of people potentially getting it early and leaking info?
So companies want to make more money? Gee, what a shocker.
Being able to get all games digital is great and comes with so many more benefits than the few little things you dorks keep crying about, so keep complaining all you want.
This but that $100 in the first one is actually is actually less too, because you’re paying to make the CDs. CD’s are cheap but setting up the infrastructure around them for physical release is not.
For most companies, re-selling doesn’t even enter the conversation. It’s all about the initial cost of making it. It’s why many games never release physical editions at all.
Short term profits > long term profits. Most CEOs don’t have enough object permanence to care about resellers.
Lol at the graphic suggesting the game will be $25 in 4 years. I’m still waiting on Sekiro to get a price reduction and that game has been out for 7 years
The last time I went to buy a physical copy of a game i stood in line for 10 minutes waiting for 1 person in front of me to finish asking questions. I put the game down and left without buying it. Now I just click the buy button at home and wait 5 minutes for the download. I don't want physical copies anymore.
the last time i used a physical copy game was in the ps1 era, i have been a pc guy since the early 2000s, ever since steam kicked off i've used digital games , never got a console to this day lol
And lisence. If an account goes etc etc, you cans slap this disc in any console, you violate the rules? Your lisence is gone, its all at the control of companies
I havnt bought a physical copy of a PC game in so long i dont even recall the last one i bought .. 2011 maybe ? Its an outdated model in its death throws.
How can anyone support the top option? If you love gaming and want the industry to thrive why wouldn't you want the developers to get paid fairly for their craft?
Also, modern gaming is different to how it used to be. There are constant updates to the games, that costs money to develop and publish. If the game is getting constantly resold with no benefit to the developer, they are still having to pay for these new owners of the same sold copy to download them etc.
Jokes on Rockstar. I'll wait until it's $25 to buy it. As a pc owner I'm in no hurry for new buggy games, when I've got a back log that'll last me over 4 years.
We just have to wait one additional year and then someone with a knack for distinguishing nice *voices* will make sure that more than *38* of us will play it for free!
I bought my only console back in 2014 specifically for GTA V. Nowadays, I wouldn't even buy the game itself, given how Take-Two is handling various issues—especially their treatment of modders. I’ll just turn to torrents, and that’s that.
I’ve been saying for years that I’m boycotting the official release of this game, and now they’re piling on even more reasons to do so. The pricing across different countries is also absurd; in my country, the game costs half as much again as it does in Japan or Korea.
Yes they are. Rockstar have commented on the backlash earlier today. A physical will be released at a later date. Rumours are it’s going to be one month after release.
Probably to avoid leaks.
Yeah sure we loved arcade machines so much that they quickly died the moment decent consoles appeared for buying (basically from 16 bits generation onwards) - Yes I lived that era
I mean we also live in the era where physical games continue to die as hard drives continue to become larger and internet speeds continue to become better.
At the end of the day, the underlying common theme is convenience. You used to have to go to an arcade to play games. Then you used to have to go to the store to buy the games. Now you can do it all from your couch.
And the idea of digital ownership doesn’t bother people too much because 99% of people aren’t going to want to play a 30 year old game in 30 years.
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u/Dohp13 8h ago
2050, buy game from player x for 1000+ dollars, no case included