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submitted 1 year ago by tuckerm@feddit.online to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

Like many people, I've been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items -- movies, albums, books -- used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, "Hey I like this thing on your shelf."

PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I've scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents' houses to see if they still work.

Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn't the Steam version?

For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn't get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.

I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.

What were (are?) some of your favorites?

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[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

Bruh I haven't had a computer with a disc drive in like...15 years.

Last game I played with a disc was disc golf.

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 3 points 1 year ago

I almost went that route, but kept moving my disc drive from one PC to the next just for Morrowind. I didn't have room for it in my latest build, though (I put in a tower cooler for the first time), so I bought an external DVD drive.

So, how far can you throw those DVDs?

[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I haven't had a disk drive in my PC for over 10 years now. It's a PITA even finding an inexpensive case that has front bays these days.

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, they definitely aren't seen as a necessity anymore.

However, the Silverstone FLP01 was mentioned in another community around here and I was so tempted to get one. At $150, it's not exactly inexpensive, and I already have a perfectly good case (Fractal Design Core 500), but man I want one. The "floppy disk drives" are doors that flip down: the top one reveals an optical drive, and the bottom one reveals the USB ports.

[-] jinwk00@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Why not USB-based disk reader?

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Guild Wars 2 was on disc for me.

[-] lunarul@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have that disk too. But I don't need it if I want to install and play the game today. Same with my Elder Scrolls Online disk or my Assassin's Creed Unity disk. Neither GW2 nor ESO will even play with just the data on the original disks, forcing updates before becoming playable. Not sure about ACU though.

[-] MITM0@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
[-] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

Last one must have been GTA 4 (I've meanwhile bought this on Steam so I can play it without) or Crazy Taxi (came with a cereal box in my childhood).

[-] warbond@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I bought GTA4 for like $8 during a Steam Sale shortly after it came out, back when Steam Sales were crazy good. An absolute steal for such a great game.

[-] lordnikon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

installed from disc starfleet academy and mechwarrior 2 last week with lutrus.

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[-] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I think the last disc-based game I played was Neverwinter Nights 2. Either that or the Command and Conquer Collection. That was probably around 2014.

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[-] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I buy and play a bunch of old games from an EBay seller who sends both the original disc and a disc with a copy of the game that loads dosbox stuff or whatever else to make it work easily on a modern system without fiddling around. It's pretty great.

I have a bunch of strategy and sim games.

[-] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I finally just threw out my Diablo 2 and xpac discs. None of the computers in my home have optical drives anymore. I only keep the Blu-ray player around for my collectibles, and I rarely risk wearing them out just for a watch

[-] calamitycastle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I remember finally building a new PC that was halfway decent and wanting to play some quake 3 mods. So this would have been around 2005??

Broadband was here so I wanted to take advantage of that sweet low ping but needed a physical copy of the game for the mods to work.

Even then it was hard to source a game disc but I got it and had a few years of fun playing urban terror... I can't really be bothered with online shooters now but back then it was simple, quick and fun. There's too much going on in things like Apex and Overwatch for me.

Also my PC basically has a console setup in the living room and I play with a switch controller, so I'd get destroyed anyway!

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 year ago

I still have some floppies in working order, even.

But no, I don't play them regularly. It's just easier to make a backup that doesn't need a disk in the drive. Even most of my retro PCs these days run out of a large-ish hard drive replacement, so keeping games outside their unreliable original media and the original media elsewhere is a better alternative.

It's a bit different on consoles where carts are harder to duplicate and ingest, as well as being more reliable and loading faster. Floppies and optical media, particularly when you can access the files, less so.

[-] Whostosay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago
[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 year ago

I should still have that somewhere as well. That was one I didn't find, but it should be around.

Do you need a battle.net account to play Diablo 2, or can you just install and play offline if you only want to play singleplayer? I haven't been able to find a clear answer about this, since everyone talking about it these days is talking about the download-only version.

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[-] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2 points 1 year ago

I literally cannot remember the last time. This PC doesn't have any optical drives and I've had it for like 7 years now. I did use a USB optical drive once to install a driver for something. I can't even remember the last game I purchased that had a physical disc, honestly. I haven't bought a game requiring a disc since living in Japan so that's definitely a decade. Probably around 15 years, if I had to guess, and maybe even longer than that.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Morrowind was also my last. I actually ripped the files from the disk and that's what I'm using with OpenMW now...

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 year ago

Nice. I haven't tried OpenMW yet, but I definitely want to. Are you running a bunch of mods with it?

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I haven't looked into modding yet, but from what I understand, most Morrowind mods should work seamlessly. It's only those that need the Morrowind Script Extender, which don't work in OpenMW.

Also, I've seen this website recommended before: https://modding-openmw.com/

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

Probably Crysis.

Long enough ago that my DVD drive had sealed shut since then and I had to use a paperclip to open it.

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 year ago

Nice. I had borrowed a friend's physical copy of Crysis, and that's how I played it back in the day.

[-] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Half Life orange box, the last physical media I ever bought. 2009-10 ish. Still have the cosmetics for tf2

[-] Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I recently checked my box with old game CDs and DVDs, just out of curiosity, not because I wanted to play something. Most of the stuff is just sentimental value/nostalgia, but there's one promo disc/game, I tried to archive because I found nothing about it on the net, but I couldn't even read it. Others also have read errors, but I don't know if a better drive could still work (just have a cheap external one).

I think the last PC game I bought on disc was SC2: HotS, but I don't even know if I ever used them, since you can just download the game, after you've added it to your Battlenet account. Definitely haven't used game discs since 2014, because I remember building a PC then, putting in my old drive, but then I gave it away, because I just never needed it.

[-] wirelesswire@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

Starcraft 2 for me. I haven't had an optical drive in my pc for probably 10 years or so. The last "physical" game I bought was Mass Effect Andromeda, and it was just a box with a download code inside.

PC gamers were incentivized to move away from optical media asap, since optical drives read slowly compared to HDDs, and SSDs are even faster.

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I had forgotten how slow an optical drive was, and how that was usually the limiting factor. I installed Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear from the original CD a couple days ago, and it took about 20 minutes to install on my current PC. I'm pretty sure that's about how long it took in 1999, too.

Downloading it from Steam takes about 10 seconds.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

I've got a portable DVD player, and I'm going to use it to install the original Psychonauts onto my son's computer, so he can see what the meat circus was like before they softened it.

[-] the16bitgamer@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I get a lot of old oc games on disc from thrift stores all the time.

However once I confirm they work I back them up and continue to use them in a disc emulator.

Technically last week realistically a very long time ago.

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[-] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Peter Pan in Disney's Return to Never Land (2002).

A friend brought it over and, as was usually the case, I burned a copy to keep for myself. It was my first encounter with DRM, and for completely unrelated reasons, the last time I interacted with physical game media of any kind.

[-] Malgas@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Not sure what the last one was, but the last couple PC games I bought physical copies of could be installed from the disc, but also had Steam keys in the box and then didn't require the disc to play.

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[-] warbond@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

2007, I think. I had recently moved and didn't have internet hooked up yet, so I bought BioShock as a physical disc so that I wouldn't have to wait. Imagine my frustration when I learned about the online-only authentication bullshit it used for DRM, so having the disc didn't even matter; without Internet I couldn't play the damn thing at all.

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 year ago

Piracy hysteria was at an absolute fever pitch in 2007 -- those online activations are what make me think that much of my physical collection won't be playable anymore.

[-] freeman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Very few games were playable from a CD (thrash loading speed).Usually the CD was required after install for DRM purposes only.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

The last game that I remember that needed a disc to play was Battlefield 1942 and I made a virtual drive with an ISO so I didn't need to put the stupid disc in every time and listen to it spin up. Current PC doesn't have a drive at all.

While I think a lot of the old box art was neat and all, I don't miss the physical requirements that took up space and all the manual updates and whatnot. Absolutely love steam's digital store and if that ever shits the bed and there isn't an alternate I will just stop PC gaming because the effort to manage all that stuff isn't worth it any more. Music and movies are the same, the physical media was nice for its time but I don't need to interact with it to use it anymore.

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I have some small games on hard drive storage, do hard drive platters count as discs?

[-] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Now I want to install a game to a disk and run it from the disk drive, my dad’s old desktop has a drive. I wonder if it can burn dvds.

Maybe I could install stardew valley to the disk.

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 year ago

I've been wanting to do this, too, for games that I bought on Steam. Like, make a bootable Linux DVD that has Steam and the game preinstalled on it, with Steam already logged in as my account.

[-] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

I was thinking it would be easier with gog games.

You can just burn the install directory to a disk and then insert the disk and launch the game without launchers

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 year ago

Oh dang, that is a good idea.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Some Steam games can be played without Steam. Some require more and others less or none work to achieve that. GOG is the better choice for this task, but if you already have Steam game that could work for this, maybe no need to rebuy it on GOG. I was thinking of doing something similar to archive what can be archived, but never got around doing it. Here some resources:

[-] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t think cds and dvds hold data for too long. I guess it’s better than a hard drive.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

There were special long lived BlueRay format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC . I was thinking of getting into, but they were expensive when I looked at it years ago. With 100 GB per disc, this might be a good solution for longtime archive (but you need the reader too...).

As for the CDs and DVDs, the longevity also highly depends on the burner, the blank disc and maybe the software and settings you used at that time. A pressed CD that you buy and its not burned can hold data for very long time, and is much more durable than your burned ones. At least compared to a mechanical hard drive you don't need to reuse (rewrite) to not loose data. But a hard drive can hold so much data.

The last time i used physical media for apc game would have probably been to install WoW back in like 2012

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The last time I played a PC game on a physical disc? Can I cheat a little bit here? I found a self burned CD from old early 2008 or earlier days. There were a few RPG Maker 2000 games on it, which I downloaded from internet cafes, such as Vampires Dawn (back then, when only a German version was available for the first game in series). And I played a few of them last year with an open source RPG Maker player called EasyRPG, but with RetroArch.

So yes, I played PC games in 2024 from a physical disc. But I leave it to you, if you count that. :D

[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 year ago

I'd say that absolutely counts!

[-] over_clox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I have my own archive of games, lots of games actually.

I don't even usually play them though, but my rule of thumb is that if it requires an account, I won't play it, or even archive it.

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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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