this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
221 points (100.0% liked)
Gaming
30561 readers
99 users here now
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
not true all the time. Plenty of games once you have the files are easily able to run. KSP is one such example. I can just copy the KSP folder to any computer and play the game.
Its the devs choice to require things like Steam to validate the game etc.
This article is about consoles, not PCs. Good luck copying your console game to another folder on the HD.
Even disk-based games on newer consoles often don't include the full game; in many cases they're just an installer, really, which then requires downloading the bulk of the files from the net.
Funny enough that was already possible on the PS3, so it's a matter of control rather than technological limitation. They use the excuse of "technological progress" to close the walled garden even more.
I have backups of my games on a PS4, which is air gapped (because the USB interface took a shot of lighning and no longer works).
I have been able to restore them and play games/saves on this console.
Here: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps4-back-up-and-restore-with-external-storage/
FTA:
That's fair. It often is the case though, and I think many people don't consider that as being a problem because it just doesn't occur to them.
I think Valve is an example of a company that does it well, since you can download the game if Steam were ever to go under, etc. and you can add non-steam games to steam. It's almost unavoidable that they do it well, though, since steam is running on PCs (mostly).
But Nintendo does it badly. If Nintendo decides to stop supporting Switch downloads, my digital content will vanish (unless I root my switch, etc. but then I may as well just pirate everything). But, at least nintendo has a card reader for their games - if they got rid of it, I'd never truly own any Switch game and would also be forced to pay massively inflated priced for re-released old games, crappy switch ports, or Nintendo titles which almost never decrease in price or go on sale.
Would agree. Especially re:Nintendo.
One of my biggest annoyance is when you have multiple switches on a family account. If you use cartridges local co-op (or whatever it is called) requires two copies of the game (a cartridge in each). If you have the downloaded versions/digital download, then any device on the Nintendo account (ie: 2 switches for kids on a family account) can play against each other locally.
I don’t think you can cache/save a cartridge to a device to be able to do their local play feature (ie via ad-hoc connections in a car)
Other games i know that do this are factorio (you are able to download the game as a zip, and it doesnt stop you from making as many copies as you desire)