this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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What even are physical games in this day and age? Sure, you can buy a disk but if you still need to download a zero day patch that takes approximately a buttload of time to finish before you can actually start playing, then it isn't a physical game. Don't even get me started on Nintendo's links in a box. Perhaps we should start calling them physical DRM.
This is also about the second hand market.
weren't there a few titles where the disc was effectively nothing and the whole game just downloads anyway?
Call of Duty was one of them. Disc contained less than 100mb of data. You still had to download the entire game. If you bought it to only play a campaign offline, too bad.
Honestly makes sense since you can then produce the boxes much earlier and ship them and go through all that physical distribution nonsense without worrying about patching from whatever is on disk to the actual finished product. Especially since I bet physical gamers want the game on day one too.
Eh, Nintendo games are still pretty complete on the cartridge.
But the real value of physical games is that you can resell them. So even if they're essentially just "links in a box," you can still sell/loan that to someone else and they can play. You can't do that with digital-only media.
You can if it's DRM-free.
Not legally AFAIK.
GOG's EULA allows you to legally transfer any games as long as you destroy all not transferred copies.
How does that work with the licence grant in their systems? Is the burden of proof on you, or do they have a mechanism to transfer that?
It works on the honor system, which is just a fancy way of saying it doesn't. Mainly because nobody wants it. Turns out reselling, as a concept, doesn't really make sense when games go on sale all the time.
It certainly does, or at least trading does. There have been times when I want a friend to try a game, but they're not willing to buy it. If I could swap a game with them (or just gift one), then they could.
Why would I swap a game for my friend to try it out when the next sale will probably happen in a couple of weeks? Literally yesterday I bought The Master Chief collection for a fiend for 10 USD. The second-hand market only really applies to anti-consumer companies like Nintendo where several years old games still retail for launch price.
Because $0 is less than $10.
And 1 copy is also less than 2 copies.
Yeah seriously, physical media has been dead for awhile now. Last time I bought a physical game was 2008 (The Orange Box).
I understand why people are upset, but it's time to move on. If the server that is hosting the zero day patches shuts down, then your physical copy is as useful as a brick anyway.
I'm sure not many people care about physical vs digital per se. It's the arbitrary locks by servers, digital storefront, DRM etc. So that when you pay your money you have no idea what you are getting and what your rights are. Physical game media was a simpler time from that perspective (play in perpetuity, don't redistribute, cool cool that seems like a fair trade) and resulted in better pricing and experience for consumers.
I'd accept "move on" if the argument was just "muh pretty box" (god knows there are plenty of ways to buy pretty boxes of vidya IP) but consumer rights are surely worth fighting for, or we get needlessly bled for ever more dollars.
Yeah, the fact that everyone's fighting for physical media instead of DRM-free makes me skeptical that the argument is anything more than muh pretty box
Couldn't find a good primary source to dig into it. But from Ipsos:
"I believe the preference for physical discs amongst next gen gamers reflects the potential value they derive from the pre-owned market," commented Ipsos director Ian Bramley to MCV, "which is holding up the preference for physical - this is unlike the music and film markets."
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/64-percent-prefer-physical-media-to-digital-distribution
I'm sure there's a lot of generational and market segment differences. I never really understood "collecting" games. But I guess people do that in digital too with their huge steam sale backlogs!
I don't have an Xbox, but on my Switch I can play the game without updating the game. I may not be able to utilize any online features, but if that server is gone I wouldn't be using them anyway.
Nintendo is a major exception to everything. This is about PC, XBOX and Playstation.
There are Playstation games you can play without needing to update the game. Or you can update the game, store the game on an external drive, and restore them when you want to play in the future.