14 ms·

It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

• sim04ful 2mo ago
  Actual digital ownership is what i hoped from NFTs.
• Departed7405 2mo ago
  I don't get this article. Physical medium are by design control-free. You will be forever be to watch any movie you buy in a DVD or Blu-Ray format. That's not the case in digital format. Talking about pipe dreams about companies/government forcing companies to somehow allow digital key or more precisely accounts associated with keys to be maintained forever (or at least for the next 100 years) is a pipe dream. Physicam games are a way to ensure you still own your games.[1] [1] A lot of caveats to what I said, mainly due to the fact that gaming consoles are now Internet-connected so the console-maker could technically revoke access to any game at any time if you connect it to the internet. Still, it would be a huge huge breach of trust, and as such very unlikely.
• jdw64 2mo ago
  >Everyone wants to be Netflix This is the most perfect sentence about this situation
  • wxw 2mo ago
    Yep, agreed. Recurring, consistent revenue is the ultimately a common-sense business best interest. It can be extremely unfortunate for consumers as there's an unaligned incentive here.
    • kakacik 2mo ago
      This can still be acceptable if they give HW for free. but paying up to 1k for console and then full price for games which often have their own paid loot boxes/whatever... yeah good luck no thank you, I can afford it trivially, but its like paying say 20 bucks for a standard bread or bottle of milk. Insulting
    • afroboy 2mo ago
      I mean making something and selling the same thing millions times is good business model too, this is how Microsoft become rich. The problem is the model that chase infinite growth which is impossible to achieve and can't coexist with normal business models.
• superkuh 2mo ago
  Video game companies still remember when they owned the arcade machines and players were required to constantly insert money into the machines to keep playing. They've been chasing that high ever since. The key to owning modern multiplayer online games is to have private servers run by human persons on their own owned computers. But except for TF2 no one has been able to (or cared enough) allow private servers alongside the much much more important microtransactions. This is what is killing ownership.
  • leprechaun1066 2mo ago
    It's not just the arcade machine implementation. The owners of these companies want to go all the way and move everything to data centers so they can rent compute time, similar to the idea of the time-sharing days of the 60s.
  • toast0 2mo ago
    > Video game companies still remember when they owned the arcade machines and players were required to constantly insert money into the machines to keep playing. I know Sega and Namco operated some arcades, but mostly companies sold arcade machines and operators ran them. Coin boxes didn't connect to the developer except that games with good earnings sold well.
    • hx8 2mo ago
      A per-play revenue share is not uncommon in some markets, especially for games with frequent updates or more complicated network features.
      • JoshTriplett 2mo ago
        This is why so many machines now have accounts and global saved progress. It provides actual value for the player, to be able to pick up their saved progress (e.g. on a rhythm game with thousands of songs on it), but it also means the arcade is beholden to the game manufacturer for an expected feature, and pays for that on an ongoing basis.
  • 2mo ago
• trescenzi 2mo ago
  This is a large part of why I went with a Retroid Pocket over buying a Switch 2. It’s not nearly as powerful but it’ll run Linux and most indie games I buy on GOG. It’s more work of course but knowing that the games I buy I’ll be able to play into the future on any number of devices is worth it.
  • ethagnawl 2mo ago
    I'll second this approach. I've been using my Miyoo Mini+ quite a bit recently and the complete lack of this sort of bullshit has been very refreshing. No multi-GB game or system updates to download before you can start playing or nags to sign into online services. I can just pick it up and start playing. I will have to look into the Retroid Pocket. Thanks for the plug.
  • dominicrose 2mo ago
    I reckon the Switch 2 still has cartridges although not all of them actually contain the game.
• password4321 2mo ago
  Ownership as in resale-able. Eventually someone important enough will force digital resales to become reality, changing everything to require KYC.
  • Avicebron 2mo ago
    Resale-able maybe, unable to be revoked I think is more important. As in you can't wake up one morning and your game is gone overnight because copyright around in-game music changed.
    • kakacik 2mo ago
      Thats easy to do (on paper). Dont let copyright owners revoke/expire their licenses (or if its revokable mark and price it clearly). Once a product containing it is purchased, its owned till product ceases to exist (or similar). All these music behemoths are way too powerful and they twist entire society globally to dance as they want. Not a fraction of a worry for pirates of course, just for decent paying fools. Abhorable business.
      • Avicebron 2mo ago
        Can you download and resell a digital copy of a game you purchase? If not, this doesn't seem to fix all of the issues it just feels like finger pointing at "evil copyright laws". Yeah maybe we can change those to, but what about making it so if you pay for something you can do whatever you like with it. Say if I buy a copy of a movie from Amazon I should be able to sell it to my friend who doesn't have an amazon account..
  • benj111 2mo ago
    KYC? The only context I know it from is 'Know your customer' in banking.
    • eks391 2mo ago
      This is the correct KYC. Plenty of apps use it besides banking. Depending on the perspective, this is either the perfect solution to a lot of digital legal problems, or the distopian solution because of the numerous ways this can and will be abused when it is expected by many vendors outside of banking.
• ojr 2mo ago
  the resale market for disk has been on a downtrend for years, you can sign into someone's else psn account too and share games, you are a washed up gamer, its okay I am washed up too.
• me551ah 2mo ago
  If you think in terms of ownership, even then digital is not that bad. I’ve owned digital games since Xbox 360 and I can still play them to this day on my Xbox series X. But not all of my physical games CD/DVDs are in mint condition and some have scratches.
  • criddell 2mo ago
    You can play them, but the license gives you no right to transfer ownership. This feels like a huge problem to me, especially with ebooks. I’d love to see regulation around guaranteeing consumers the ability to transfer ownership of digital goods in a similar way to the analog counterpart.
  • downrightmike 2mo ago
    Sure, but they keep raising the price of everything. And in a world where ram and STORAGE are at a multiple premium, deleting high density discs is completely outside of reality
    • jrmg 2mo ago
      they keep raising the price of everything Games are much cheaper in real terms (even in terms of percentage of wages/income, if you don’t believe that’s kept up with inflation generally) than they’ve ever been.
  • Humorist2290 2mo ago
    To take a different perspective than ownership as "right to re-sell" or ownership as "the right to use in perpetuity," I think there is also value in considering ownership as responsibility to maintain those rights. When one owns property, they get benefits from it, but they also have the responsibility to maintain the property or else it wastes away. Sometimes this incurs costs you wouldn't get with leasing, and sometimes it makes ownership more expensive than renting. But still I think that responsibility is a virtue in itself. Not everything should be consumable.
  • jrmg 2mo ago
    I think this is a big element. I’ve been feeling this a bit too. I’ve been a physical-game buyer in the past - usually saving money by buying used games. But I’m not going to keep a collection of old consoles in my living room, so at this point it feels more likely that I will be able to actually play games further into the future if I buy digitally. This is the opposite of what proponents of physical media heavily argue - indeed, many here are making it their only argument - but I suspect it’s how lots of ‘regular people’ that aren’t saturated in digital rights politics feel.
• hx8 2mo ago
  Absolutely this. Fifteen years ago World of Warcraft was at its peak. You had 12 million people paying a monthly fee, plus buying the occasional expansion pack. No other gaming company had seen reoccurring revenue numbers like that before and it changed the industry. One aspect of this was that if you stopped paying you lost access to the game. The industry has been looking for the next way to level up this subscription model on gaming. Battle Passes, Xbox Live, Game Pass, Playstation Plus, Stadia, Game Fly, and a ton of other ideas. Sony is now using the stick to directly attack ownership instead of the carrot to entice subscriptions. We'll see how this plays in the PS6, but I think they are overplaying their position, especially with how underwhelming the PS5 has been received by gamers. I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles. It's becoming a larger and larger player in the non-mobile gaming market, and it's too big to be treated like a second class citizen anymore. The open platform prevents anyone from acting as a gatekeeper between game developers and players. For me personally, I began losing interest in consoles the first time I had to install a console game to a hard drive. The plug and play magic just fell apart.
  • thfuran 2mo ago
    I’m not nearly so optimistic. I think we have a generation of kids now who mostly never owned any physical media, having grown up with Netflix instead of vhs/dvd, Spotify instead of CDs, steam instead of retail games, etc.
    • hx8 2mo ago
      I'm pessimistic about physical media yes. That's a legacy technology at this point.
    • Hoodedcrow 2mo ago
      I see nothing wrong with abandoning physical media - as storage got larger and internet faster, being limited by clunky disks has become kinda pointless unless you're specifically into collecting. I see nothing wrong with moving on from them as long as it's towards local DRMless files.
• pitched 2mo ago
  We rent time at a football field. We buy tickets to watch a single match. There are parallels here to not owning video games. I don’t really understand why one is so heinous. Let’s say there’s a new rule implemented by the NBA that no one likes (similar to a fear of live service games changing). How is that resolved there and why can’t that solution work for video games? I think a big thing we’re currently missing here is something like a community field or park. Why are there no open-source, community-run Diablo projects for example? If no one cares enough to do that, maybe this isn’t so big of an issue.
  • garciansmith 2mo ago
    Video games are far more alike to other media like books, not live sports.
    • pitched 2mo ago
      For single-player games, those are definitely media. For multiplayer games, that feels a lot closer to a sport.
    • krzyk 2mo ago
      Video games ar software, this has only digital form. And AFAIR all software is sold as a license since way back.
  • traverseda 2mo ago
    With a video game it's not clear that you're purchasing a revocable license. That's why it's called "buying" a video game. If online stores were clear that you were actually leasing a game, I don't think this would be a problem. Publishers and storefronts need to be clear that what you're doing isn't buying, or start selling tickets (season passes) that have a clear end date, or use some other mechanism that isn't "buying". The fundamental problem is that it's unclear what you're buying, and the contract can change at any time. Are you buying an item, a ticket, leasing, a subscription like an MMO, etc. These are all different things, and it misleads consumers when they're conflated. The terms are also very one-sided, and your "purchase" can be ended by one party at will with very limited notice. Even basic consumer protection like requiring six months notice before ending your software lease would help.
• aaron695 2mo ago
  [dead]
• calvinmorrison 2mo ago
  There's another story about a game that died and was resurrected, Runescape. It launched with a big fanfare of version 3.0 back in 2008 and was met with total disaster. Fans were quitting, private servers of the pre-EOC update, etc. Jagex heard this and stuck a solo dev onto re-launching an instance of '2007 scape' which was basically an old backup they found and a few server instances. They incorporated features of the platform like voting, where votes require strong consent (75% in some cases) to get new features, and it's a seriously community driven game where both sides have something to gain. Now branded "old school runescape" the game has more players than the "runescape 3" that still exists today as Runescape. A win all around.
• jbombadil 2mo ago
  I am generally not in favor of adding regulation, but this is a place where I would support it. Anything that you BUY needs to be your property. This means you must have the ability to: 1. Transfer ownership of it (either temporarily as a loan or permanently as a sale). Digital-only doesn't preclude this: the store can have a "transfer" functionality. 2. (Within reason) use it at your discretion at any point after the sale. This means that a company cannot "revoke" your access at a later time. Specifically for content that is DRM locked, if they decide to sunset that service (store, DRM server, whatever), no problem! just offer DRM free (or generally lock-free copies). I have no problem with Sony not offering DRM free versions of games that I can still download and play with the store. But if that goes away -> you must give me a path to local ownership. (Multiplayer games that require server infrastructure are a bit more complex, and I'd leave aside for now). This should apply equally to video games, movies, books, music. Any digital content.
  • norome 2mo ago
    I bought a bunch of games on google stadia when that was a thing, and when they closed the service down i was fully refunded on all games. pretty cool
    • abustamam 2mo ago
      While I agree it is pretty cool, I think they probably did that to avoid a class action lawsuit. But that does also beg the question, if we do eventually regulate this better, do you own streamed products? IE with Google stadia (and I think Amazon Luna) you buy a game but the game data is streamed to your device. If they shut the service down (like Stadia did) then what happens to your game collection? It's a hypothetical, but interesting to think about nonetheless
    • akimbostrawman 2mo ago
      >pretty cool Is it? It's the bare minimum and if you replace games with anything else it might not look so "pretty cool" anymore. My hairdresser forcefully bleached/uncut my hair but pretty cool that i got my money back. Ford forcefully impounded my car without my consent but pretty cool that i got my money back Realtor kicked me out of my house but pretty cool that i got my money back
• sublinear 2mo ago
  I question how much of this discussion is really being driven by gamers. Those who wanted change made it happen. There are indie games and remakes without these restrictions. Most of classic gaming preservation has been successful with its goals apart from some legal gray areas and chasing rarities. These discussions then fixate on the cutoff year for classic gaming and whether everything beyond that is even worth saving. The conclusion is always the same. Nobody really cares about the slop. All that remains to discuss is politics. That's always the most vocal part drowning out everyone else. Who keeps banging this drum?
  • pitched 2mo ago
    This is the exact kind of cause that triggers the social media algorithms. Part nostalgia, part underdog battle, and no problematic elements.
• garciansmith 2mo ago
  I view the killing of physical game media as having two aspects that, while intertwined, are separate in some ways. The first is the loss of the physical item. I like organizing carts and discs, looking at them on my shelves, reminiscing, easily putting one in a console to replay. Same with other media for me: I buy books, only read physical ones. I listen to digital music (generally downloaded from sites like Bandcamp) but for albums and artists I like the most I buy vinyl. I get that this isn't a big deal for most people, but it is something that is permanently lost when you get rid of physical media. The second aspect is control and ownership. This is indeed intertwined with the physical aspect, since you can do things like resell a cartridge or disc and let someone easily borrow it. But control is possible with purely digital games, they just need to not be locked down with DRM. And companies like Sony want to kill physical games because it allows them to keep those DRM locks on digital-only copies so you cannot resell your games, which is connected to the second point, control. I also agree that the issue of control is more important. How do we continue to make sure our games, that we bought, aren't just taken away from us? What happens if you lose your account with Sony/MS/Nintendo? What happens if your old console that you downloaded a game on breaks? The death of physical games is also a step on the way to subscription-only services, where you won't even be able to play something unless you are actively giving money to a company regardless of how much you gave them before. The ways forward that I see are legislation that would do things like force companies to allow people to always download games they bought in perpetuity, regardless of account status, and if the company dies the successor company must do the same or release the game into the public domain. But given the power of large corporations and current intellectual property laws, this isn't happening anytime soon. Practically, then, the only way I see is to either have a console that is hacked in some way, or only play games on an open platform like PC. And there you can only buy DRM-free games or, at worse, if you lose access to game in some service (e.g., Steam) you can still pirate it (which I'd feel morally fine doing if I bought it already of course, but that does bring legal risks depending on where you live). And the later option still doesn't address the larger issue of preservation, as the OP's blog post notes: games will be made for locked-down consoles in the future and will be lost forever unless the hardware is hacked or a law demands the game's preservation.
  • ethagnawl 2mo ago
• phendrenad2 2mo ago
  Physical media was always one of the selling points for consoles. While PC has essentially been digital-only for a long time (with NONE of the wish list the author here wants, mind you - you can't sell or lend games to random people on Steam, besides a limited "family sharing" feature), consoles were where you go when you want to play a game and then sell it quickly if you don't like it. Physical media accounts for 50% of Switch game sales. I feel that Sony is in panic mode because they released a bunch of stinker first-party games and now they think that removing the disc drive from the PS6 will save them some money. It'll probably lose them a lot of customers.
  • pitched 2mo ago
    Sony removing the disc drive from PS6 will save them a lot of money if Xbox also removes it. I wonder if they’re back channel colluding on that right now?
    • downrightmike 2mo ago
      There is no next xbox. They are killing the brand while they wait for ARM to get better
• mattgreenrocks 2mo ago
  The question I'm left with: in the past, the uproar over these types of changes seemed to make companies change their mind when considering very anti-consumer decisions. Now, they just go ahead anyway. What's different? How do we get back to how it was before? I know the current political climate is one that enables this sort of thing. There are parallels with the current movement also WRT to the employer/employee relationship. Beyond that, there's still more at play. In tech, and specifically on this site, I see a lot more complicity and fatigue when discussing these issues. I can't help but think that also contributes. I'm not saying everyone should always be mad at everything. But it does seem like there's a generational component to this where we haven't passed down an essential feature of a hacker, namely the anti-establishment bent. I suppose that's collateral damage of a culture tolerating lots of people rushing in to grab their bag of cash and then get out.
  • Nicholas_C 2mo ago
    We’ve been boiled in water like frogs, or however the saying goes. Even cars these days have subscription pricing for features which is insane to me but the average consumer is accustomed to this garbage. If they tried this 20 years ago it wouldn’t fly. Someone once said that if libraries were invented today they would be illegal and that feels more true every day.
  • teamonkey 2mo ago
    There’s indeed quite an uproar and I’m not unsympathetic to it, but only 3% of Sony’s 2025 revenue came from physical game sales. https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/corporatereport/CorporateReport2025_E.pdf https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/corporatereport/... (page 37)
    • zythyx 2mo ago
      The problem with this argument is that while digital sales are 7x more, it doesn't break down the digital portion into purely games, online-DLC, or online-exclusive content. I buy most of my games physically, but then all the DLC I buy from the PS Store because retailers don't have it. And I also buy digital games too, because the games literally don't have a disc, if it did, I would buy it physically. I would say that my ratio of digital purchases to physical ones (by dollar amount) is 7:1. I would buy 90% of my content physically if I could, but I can't. And now with the upcoming changes, I'm going to end up buying 0% physically and 0% digitally.
• shmerl 2mo ago
  Exactly. Let them sell games on GOG DRM-free. You buy it, it's yours as long as you back it up. No one stops you from storing it on any physical media you want. Just use an HDD. When things on the other are presented as rent only, it's very bad.
• erelong 2mo ago
  or, of getting rid of "intellectual property" legally so information is just shared more freely and widely
• deadbabe 2mo ago
  I’ve come to realize there are definitely people out there who have no interest in playing games, they just want to own them. A child doesn’t think about ownership, he picks up a controller and plays a game. And when the child has grown bored of the game, one day they just never touch it again like a discarded toy, moving on to something else. It is adults, reminded of their own feeble mortality and impermanence in the world who try to grasp at things like permanent ownership, they long for something that can’t just be torn away from them on a whim. But in life, everything is ultimately torn away from you, there is nothing you can do about it. Some try to disguise their hoarding as “preservation”. Nobody cares. Even if you had some carefully curated museum, these old games would just be exhibits people look at for a bit with passing curiosity. Nothing more. You didn’t even make these games, why do you care so much? Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
  • nfw2 2mo ago
    The vast majority of consumers don't care or think about this at all. It's a loud and tiny minority who imagine this great injustice will lead to some groundswell of rallied consumer support if they just write more blog posts about it. In reality, if people get continual access to a digital game, the hypothetical case where they might lose access to it isn't all that troubling. And even if the license was specifically a year-term rental or something, most people wouldn't flinch because they go on with their lives after finishing a game. It's also so convenient to ignore all the reasons the current system is the way it is. 1. Digital goods are just bits and free to copy and distribute online. Publishers use DRM because piracy is otherwise prevent, and they have a right to protect their IP. 2. Publishers can distribute the content that they develop however they see fit. Gamers who didn't make the game aren't owed something by right. Don't purchase the game if the license terms aren't amenable to you. It's a game, not a vital good. 3. Disk drives are a pointless pain-in-the-ass to manufacture if most people don't want them anyway.
    • skotobaza 2mo ago
      > Don't purchase the game if the license terms aren't amenable to you Unfortunately, terms can change. Publisher can promise 10-year support for the game and then drop it after 1 year. So when we purchase the game, we don't know what will happen in the future.
• ChrisArchitect 2mo ago
  Related: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456
• HiPhish 2mo ago
  Unfortunately ownership on console has been down the drain for a long time. Even if you have the disc you still have mandatory downloads, patches, one-time download codes that tie the content to your account and of course DLC. What is even the point of having the disc anymore? Might as well go full digital and avoid the plastic waste. I do own a PS4 and I have to do research every time I want to play a game. The website https://www.doesitplay.org/ https://www.doesitplay.org/ is quite useful. But it's all so tiresome, it really makes me want to just check out of console gaming altogether. With full-on digital at least there won't be any ambiguity. It's not what I wanted, but all it means for me is that they won't be getting any of my money anymore.
• numpad0 2mo ago
  I think an oft-forgotten possible major driver for the moves away from discs[1] must be scary legal warnings universally seen in paid contents during 2010s. None of currently popular platforms have those stern unrelatable messages that customers looking for relaxing contents were forced to observe. It didn't took hard data for anyone to see disc sales disappearing in sync with DRMs and tones progressively more obnoxious and harsh in the period. Sony is likely not shutting down physical discs to tighten control over consumers, but it's more likely that they just don't see disc manufacturing as a viable business as a hardware factory that it always was. That goes beyond games or movies, and it should be discussed more often as to why they didn't take actions but to quietly watch the golden goose slaughtered. 1: https://support.apple.com/en-us/100749 https://support.apple.com/en-us/100749
• Waterluvian 2mo ago
  I want the most minimum amount of regulation that doesn’t reason much about the type of media or transport method. Require clear communication of meaning of words like “purchase” and require software “licenses” to indicate “access for at least 5 years” or whatever. Basically, “you don’t own this. You’re buying the right to access it for least x years” vs. “You are purchasing a key that is fully transferable and provides indefinite access to this product.” Then let the market sort out the rest, including buyer sentiment.
• lofaszvanitt 2mo ago
  And "people" seemingly hated NFT so much, but the basic idea of it, like in this case, would've given sony an opportunity to cash in on every resale of the given physical disc. But, oooh the underlying forces that steer our society towards a dead end didn't like that idea. Same applies to graphics artists. They sell a painting and if it ever changes hands it would've netted them X percent from the given transactions. But NO, that's not the way this should be handled. The elite doesn't want people to earn easily. Digital vs physical is the same bs just from a different angle.
  • Macha 2mo ago
    I mean of course. If the person who sold you something is able to enforce terms on it, that's not ownership. The prospective NFT-sellers in your example are on the side of Sony, not the customers. Not to mention all the other failures of NFTs at achieving the goal. The NFT can't know that you've handed over the physical object, or copied/screenshotted the PNG or whatever. It can't enforce that a transfer of the object is paired with a transfer of the NFT - you'd need a contract for that. And once you have a contract, what good does the NFT do for you?
    • lofaszvanitt 2mo ago
      It could be woven into existing - and crumbling - legal systems.
• y1n0 2mo ago
  I know this is a topic de jour for submitters lately, but it seems weird for hacker news, a website for and by founders who primarily offer software-as-a-service. I also think it seems weird for a website whose patrons are seemingly predominantly against private property / property ownership. At least the vocal ones seem to feel that way. I get that HN is made up of a variety of people with a variety of opinions, and different confluences of events lead to different groups being more or less vocal at different times. So maybe this is just that in action.
  • abeyer 2mo ago
    > a website for and by founders who primarily offer software-as-a-service Liking the Everything as a Subscription model when you get to be the rentier but not when you don't seems perfectly apropos.
  • sublinear 2mo ago
    Most of HN has rarely had anything but hateful comments for SaaS business models. The majority of people commenting are never interested in the business side of anything unless they see a chance to wedge their politics in. This submission is explicitly asking for a discussion against SaaS. This isn't "weird for HN" nor has there been a "variety of opinions" since around 2016.
• beloch 2mo ago
  "But most people use Steam anyway, I hear you say. That's true, but you can still own your games on Steam. Very easily, in fact! Steam doesn't apply a hard DRM for games on their platform, you can bypass it and play your games offline without the launcher if you know what you're doing." -------------- When it comes to PC games, the real peace of mind comes from cracks and piracy. Sure, a single player game that requires an online service to start up could become unplayable if the company running that online service decides to end it without providing a patch. If that happens, somebody will crack it so the game can be run. Sure, a game could be yanked from Steam without notice, but you can always pirate it. Sure, Steam could go under, but the internet is my backup drive. I know what I've paid for. I don't have actual legal ownership of the titles I buy, but I also have recourse if I feel I've been ripped off. That recourse may be abused by some, but game companies have no moral right to oppose it until they start respecting the rights of their paying customers. Taking away something that was paid for is theft. Ownership rights for downloaded titles is a critical stepping stone if game companies are serious about reducing piracy.
  • tjpnz 2mo ago
    >When it comes to PC games, the real peace of mind comes from cracks and piracy. I still have nocds for some of the old GTA and Warcraft games. Pretty sure you can't play the originals any other way now with all the "definitive" and "reforged" editions having taken their place.
    • beloch 2mo ago
      You might be able to mount an image of the original CD and let it detect that, depending on how schmancy their copy protection scheme is. To be fair though, I used nocd mods back when some of these games were released just so I wouldn't have to keep swapping CD's.
  • monegator 2mo ago
    And then you have repacks. It's basically impossible to find any game that isn't on GOG that is not shared as a repack. You don't get the installer, you don't get the original media, you have to trust that the repack is not filled with malware. (and also the repack process somewhat confuses wine/lutris. More than once i couldn't make the repack run on my linux box, but if i managed to find the genuine install medium.. or if i ended up buying the game on sale, then no problem)
• user_of_the_wek 2mo ago
  I‘m wondering if there’s a better term to use than „digital games“. Those physical discs are just as digital as anything else.
  • incompatible 2mo ago
    Yeah, I was going to say that. Somebody has to pedantically state that it's a pretty silly terminology.
    • cubefox 2mo ago
      Maybe "virtual" games. Or simply "non-pysical" games.
      • incompatible 2mo ago
        Downloaded game? You can't download a disc.
        • cubefox 2mo ago
          Perfect!
  • jcft2 2mo ago
    And the "digital" versions rely on physics just as much as the versions on discs or cartridges. However, it's abundantly clear what is meant here so there is no need to clarify the language...
• cush 2mo ago
  imo GameStop ruined it for everyone. Nearly all their profits are from reselling games.
• jwpapi 2mo ago
  Most new games are worse than old games anyway
• ChimpWithHat 2mo ago
  [dead]
• sodafountan 2mo ago
  As hard as it is to admit, the used market hurts developers the most. If I buy a game and then resell it to a friend for more money than what the game store would offer, but less than what they'd pay at retail. The actual developer of the game sees no profit. It's a win-win for the gamers, not so much for the developers. Digital assets don't degrade like an appliance or a used car might, so the used market really cuts into the profits of game companies. I don't believe the solution to this is to go all digital and cut off access to physical media entirely. What we need are stronger digital economies that can grow organically with a community. Digital media needs the backing of cryptocurrency to remain viable. We need digital assets and economies that either grow or shrink in value based on demand. Rather than fake digital currencies that have no value outside of the world they're used in, we need real cryptocurrencies that are traded on open markets like stocks to bolster the digital economy and make the economics of building fun, lasting games a reality. I'm tired of spending money on digital points for games that have no real value. Everything should be a cryptocurrency at this point.
• shevy-java 2mo ago
  He has a point; it makes sense for greedy corporations to try to eliminate second sale markets. But to me this is a much more fundamental attack that is going here. I also can't help but notice the age sniffing attack vector right now, but probably these two issues are not directly related. Companies try to make it illegal to have physical copies. This is very similar to those who oppose the right-to-repair movement. They don't want you to control anything - they want to control everything. By not producing physical copies, they force you into their control. Now I am not the target audience, because these companies do not get any money from me anyway, but after the digital-only dictatorship I would be even less inclined to give them any MORE money now. Because I would support this new mafia scheme and that goes against my ethics - even though this is hypothetical as they already don't get me money anyway. I think it is time to forbid certain practices by companies. They should be REQUIRED to yield physical copies too. What the format is, how, and so forth is secondary, though they also may not abuse this for driving up outrageous prices either.
  • stevefan1999 2mo ago
    That's corpo-technofeudalism, it is unfortunately on the rise. They want to get rid of your control and opinion and strip your freedom away, forever enslaved to their system and pay rents In some sense it is comparable to religions but under different corpo-warbanner
• stevefan1999 2mo ago
  I would argue further: it's not just about ownership only, but about control on a different level, that the industry can dictate what you can play by mass revoking the license, in order to force a next "hype" by getting rid of your independence.
• 999900000999 2mo ago
  At the core of this customers have a right to choose what they spin money on. Access to an online based experience which will be discontinued in the future, that's what Roblox or Fortnite is. When I spend money in a F2P game, I understand I don't have any rights outside of using it after the publisher ends support. I don't want the government to tell me how to spend my money. I do want all these gamers making noise to spend a fraction of the effort making community driven open source games. I dream often of high quality open source games. The community would raise funds for development with an understanding of everything being released under MIT or GPL later. FOSS is ownership. Everything else is a temporary license to use which can be terminated without cause at any time. I just brought Marathon and it's fun. But because Sony only sold me a license , they have a right to switch off the servers and make it useless tomorrow. The only regulation I'd support here is a minimum service commitment at purchase. Something like " Your access to this product will terminate in June of 2029. Extensions to this service may be granted at publisher discretion." This needs to be BIG RED PRINT when I hand over my money. Not hidden on page 15 of a service agreement.
• kasince2k 2mo ago
  "looking at you movie industry" - i think 'indie' movies are coming. there's a wave coming and the early signs are the likes of obsession and iron lung. all hope is not lost
• avaer 2mo ago
  Maybe you think gaming/media companies are greedy and should make less money. But if you want the industry to continue in the current state, keep in mind the price of games needs to be adjusted: price *= (total game sales / avg player count) If there's a million sales but only 10 thousand people playing at a time, the price of the game needs to be multiplied by ~100x, because these copies can be shared, and the sales would be divided by 100x if the copies can be efficiently shared. The modern internet would make this buttery smooth to do (companies that make this easy will pop up overnight). I'm not arguing either way, but this is the back of the napkin math to consider, and how that would ripple across the industry, for better or worse.
  • sciencejerk 2mo ago
    The kinds of buyers who purchase pre-owned "used" games often CANNOT or WILL NOT shell out $70-100 for a new game. Social peer pressures might impact this (hey poor kid, do you really wanna lose your friends?)
    • dominicrose 2mo ago
      The equivalent of a "used" game now is a game that was release more than a year ago and is on sale or at least has a price tag cheaper than it used to be. The playstore is a bit more dynamic than real stores with physical disks which means it's easier to get lower prices for some games. On complaint I have is that storage is extremely expensive, but I can't blame that on Sony.
• brador 2mo ago
  It is about memory. Same reason people wish to own the photographs they take. It is the right to trigger your own neurons and synapses irrespective of your capital value.
• jmyeet 2mo ago
  This isn't just isn't as clearcut as people make it. A lot of it is based on a historic idea of an SNES cartridge or PS1 disk that contained the complete game, which was played locally and was entirely self-contained. It makes sense that you'd "own" that. But we don't live in that world anymore. An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it? If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly? Even with games like CoD that have a campaign, the game would degrade by losing online services. Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down? Or does it need to be available to download forever? If so, who hosts that? As another example, I can probably from some old DVDs with games like GTA4 on them if I dig in boxes. I have since bought most on Steam since but ignore that. Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up. What happens then? What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists? What exactly do you "own"? For digital TV shows and movies, this is far easier. I've never bought any of these. Years ago, you couldn't even download movies again from iTunes. If you lost it, bad luck. They reversed course on that I believe. But all these cases where the digital store lost the digital icense, which is going to happen, what did you think was going to happen? What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained? By whom? You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle. But games are tougher for the reasons I described. Here's something else to consider: part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail. This degradation is built into the pricing model. I honestly don't know what the solution is here but this just isn't as clearcut as people are making it out to be.
  • Telaneo 2mo ago
    > An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it? You should. > If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly? You should also own a copy of the server software so you can host your own Fortnite lobby. > Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down? The real-world solution for this is 'jailbreak your console and download the game from the web'. There could also be sanctioned backup solutions which negate that issue. So long as the user is given a chance to back up and thus keep the game, you don't need a download server to be maintained. > Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up. The real world solution are patches made by people who care, and those usually work. The better solution would be that that connectivity doesn't break the whole game. If it's just for the online half of a game, it should degrade gracefully. > What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists? VMs exist. > What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained? Provide a DRM-free copy if you shut down the servers. > You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle. A battle worth fighting [pirate flag emoji]. > part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail. Is this a significant part of the model? How many resales were they expecting per 1000 normal sales? It can't be many. This to me seems like it could be rounded down to 0.
• cyclonereef 2mo ago
  this is one of the few areas i feel like a blockchain-style solution could work. Mint a token, transfer it on sale or resale to the new wallet. Validate a wallet with the key is associated with the account. Same for old-school MSFT licenses or other systems where you buy a license key. There's probably a shortcoming I'm missing here, but it's the only genuine case I could see a blockchain having use above other technical solutions
• pizzathyme 2mo ago
  I made a hard switch from all digital to all physical (when available) after I tried to introduce old games to my kids. I found many of them were no longer downloadable. What are the odds that PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox servers will be around in 2040? 2050? It’s certainly not 100%. Those companies may not even exist. If there’s any dependency, there is a chance that one day you won’t have access any more.
• BatFastard 2mo ago
  Does anyone here remember owning games on disk? It was a royal pain in the ass! You had to inset the disk every time you wanted to play game. The disks got scratched, destroyed, or rearranged by the wife. Steam has saved me from all of that. Plus I can share my whole library with my family members. Sure I might lose access to them all when I die, but 20 years from now who is going to care?
  • xboxnolifes 2mo ago
    I support the ability to copy the data from the disk and store it digitally, which should resolve all of those concerns.
  • skotobaza 2mo ago
    I care about having access to my games 20 years from now. I've been playing more older games for the past few years (most of them were released 20+ years ago). And I want to be able to play games that are being released now and that I have missed because I was playing older games. It's a normal expectation.
• NorwegianDude 2mo ago
  I've been running a small game dev studio for ~20 years, and the one change I think must be made, is to ban the usage of "buy" when it comes to games. Games are licensed, not bought, and that should be crystal clear to those who are paying. Most of the games people play runs using proprietary software and/or licenses, and often on very specific hardware, with game features that makes sense for the amount of players the game has. Requiring that people should be able to play such games if the company stops running it would completely change and limit how games are developed, and in many cases require a completely different version of the game to be co-developed in case people stop playing it. It would with 100 % certainty result in slower development, fewer games, and worse games. I do of course think that developers should try to make games playable without the company being involved, within reason. Some games that do not have licensing issues or complicated server backends as a requirement could be made available without too much work. But for things like e.g. MMORPGs it's nearly impossible. If your ever developed bigger software systems you know how many moving parts are involved, so just imagine the difficulty of making it work on consumer machines...
  • folkrav 2mo ago
    Changing the verbiage would be better in that it would be honest, but I still find it absolutely despicable that the very concept of owning a game basically disappeared. Tons of games people play do NOT have notable online features outside leaderboards, cosmetics or other inconsequential mechanics.
  • Gigachad 2mo ago
    You are talking about online games here which are a subset of games. And I agree they exist in the moment since they rely on external servers and other players. Most games aren't online games though and those would realistically last forever if it wasn't for companies shutting down activation servers or download servers. There's also a problem where old games get delisted. If you want to play an old game today you can just buy the disk of ebay. Now the only way to buy a game is through the digital store which won't be selling the game forever, with no way to officially transfer copies between players.
  • skotobaza 2mo ago
• nlawalker 2mo ago
  I’ve always wondered what the major industry players’ theoretical price would be for offering transferable licenses, and how many people who say they want to be able to resell would pay it. It’s also interesting to me that we got all the way to 2026 and one of them officially going all-digital and we never saw price differentiation for physical copies.
• h4kunamata 2mo ago
  I pardon to disagree, it is a physical vs digital problem, and it is our fault. Companies started pushing digital content and we accepted it, Xbox GamePass has been a cancer (I am Xbox player) with all the games destroyed because of it. Nobody can disagree that digital games is convenient, turn your PC/Console on and that is it, load the game, start playing something else, etc, without leaving your sofa. We never thought about the consequences of that, look what happened with DVD, Bluray had luck coz its post-peak era happened by the time people started going back to physical disks over streaming services and the downfall of such services. This is also related to how everything nowadays is digital, requires subscription which removes features like BMW heated seats, firmware update and what not. Companies made us addicted to everything digital, that gives them full control, higher price for less, Amazon Prime without ADs requires a higher tier, Sygic Offline mobile app now requires higher tier to have access to features that were once part of the lower tier. Gaming studios until recently were focused on live services over single player games, it is digital, content is behind paywall, etc and etc. Digital DLCs over releasing a new game coz that would force physical release. This is our fault and we might have gone past the point of no return!!
  • reichstein 2mo ago
    The distinction is not physical vs (entirely) digital. If you buy games at GOG, you get entirely non-physical products, but you own and control those bits. You can download the game and keep playing it as long as you can provide it with a suitable runtime environment The things you don't own are because they require an online service to work. No matter what you do, short of removing the dependency, aka "cracking", it will only work as long as the online service allows it to work. Any feature of.a consoles with OTA software updates are in that category. Even if you own the hardware, you don't _control_ the software.
• xiaodai 2mo ago
  we gotta accept that "owning" a digital asset will be a thing of the past. ppl need to update their mental model and evolve.
• DonHopkins 2mo ago
  You think you have it tough now, huh? When I was a kid I had to rewind my Apple ][ games on casette tape before returning them to the library, or I'd get a hefty fine, and it was uphill both ways!
• dartharva 2mo ago
  I am surprised at all this shock the decision has garnered. Is it shitty and consumer-hostile? Yes. Was it inevitable looking at the current trajectory of game distribution logistics? Also yes. Forced digitization should have in no way been surprising.
• danpalmer 2mo ago
  It's also about competition. Consoles are a significant investment, to only be able to buy content from one source creates monopolies. An equivalent would be if TVs were sold by Netflix or Disney, and only played content purchased from those entities. The second hand game disc market prevented those monopolies from taking prices to stratospheric highs. I believe this is why digital distribution has seen little push-back on PC, because we have the convenience without the monopolies. Steam is huge, but Epic, Ubisoft, EA, gog.com, and others provide plenty of competition. If consoles go digital only, from a single source, I think we'll see >$100 games quickly, we'll see subscriptions required to play be much more prevalent, and we'll see the death of consoles within a generation.
  • krige 2mo ago
    > Consoles are a significant investment, to only be able to buy content from one source creates monopolies. It used to be that consoles were generally the cheaper alternative to a gaming PC, which was subsidized by the price of games, which in turn stimulated the second hand market as people tried to recoup their investment in games, not the system itself. But now that it's no longer really true, and system prices keep going up for little in return, it's really the worst of all worlds: expensive systems, expensive games, no way to resell, and two of the big three are acting increasingly worse (the jury's still out on what will Nintendo do next, but their ridiculed key-on-a-card system at least allows for reselling). And this is on top of Sony outright lying about the reality as various leaks and scraps of that indicate that physical sold very well, better than digital.
    • sciencejerk 2mo ago
      Never heard of Nintendo's patent for digitally signing and transferring game ownersbip. Thanks for sharing. Hope it gets implemented!
• alliao 2mo ago
  usual shortsightedness from bean counters, while studio do lost revenue on second hand trades they gained another player! I can't believe they think that's not a worth while trade. Games are like books, the amount of time people spent on it far outweighs their opportunity cost in earnings, and you only have such a short window to capture that audience so do it however you can, allowing piracy is a legit business strategy, let alone trading second hand games!
• pjmlp 2mo ago
  > Because PC is an open platform, people have figured this out and will continue to figure out bypasses in case things go south (which they haven't so far, thankfully Actually not quite, as security measures keep increasing across macOS and Windows. Before someone brings Linux into the picture, most folks don't know Tuxedo, System 76 and co exist, what matters is what is on display at Media Markt, Saturn, FNAC, Publico,....
  • 360MustangScope 2mo ago
    Who cares what people know about? PC is still an open platform for you to boot alternative software. Most people don’t know how to even “acquire” software without the DRM. It’s not really anyone’s job to spread news and tell people to go learn. If they get interested and care that much to preserve what they have, they can google and learn. Many have learnt about Linux due to the recent PS5 jailbreak for instance.
    • Departed7405 2mo ago
      If ownership is reserved for the elite (essentially what you are saying here) then it's not a right, it's just a glitch in the system.
    • Schlagbohrer 2mo ago
      I agree with you because this incentive to learn has motivated so many young people in the past to learn how their computers work. The incentive of jailbreaking games or being able to get software for free should push people to learn these things and free themselves from walled gardens.
    • pjmlp 2mo ago
      Still is the magic word here.
• tupacshakur 2mo ago
  deleted
• underdeserver 2mo ago
  PC games are physical. I have my games right here on this thumb drive in my hand. If I sell it to you, and you plug it in, you can play my games.
• TyrianPurple 2mo ago
  Once you buy something (physical or digital), ownership of it should rest solely with the purchaser and no one else.
  • meh2frdf 2mo ago
    Should according to you, as it serves you best that way. Not how the world works, and for sound economic reasons.
  • hahahaa 2mo ago
    How does that work with SaaS though? Or are you saying to ban SaaS.
    • duckmysick 2mo ago
      If the SaaS provider goes down or decides to discontinue a product, then yeah, ideally I should be able to install it somewhere and self-host it. It might not be easy but should be doable. If I want to modify it to fix a bug, I should do so - or take it to a third-party software shop/consultancy. The same way I can take my car or my fridge to a repair shop after the warranty runs out.
    • istoleabread 2mo ago
      The difference is you're buying games vs licensing software. There should be a clear difference between buying and licensing softwares/games and should be told upfront.
• hahahaa 2mo ago
  Tldr: Walled gardens suck. I can't lend you or sell you my iPhone app either. Physicsl media is cool because it offers both a unit of authenticity and ownership. Second hand games were fine as having the game when it came out was the value, like a movie vs. watching free a year later on TV.
• noduerme 2mo ago
  What's scary is how quickly the lack of ownership of things we used to own can become a "new normal". Forget about explainin to the youngins. My girlfriend is 7 years younger than me and barely grasps the concept of why I'd have 20,000 mp3s on my phone that I ripped off CDs I owned. Why not just pay for a subscription? She doesn't understand the utility of anything being hers. So I say, send me a song. And she sends a link. It's hard to even explain to someone who doesn't know what it means to have anything that isn't rented.
  • pprotas 2mo ago
    What do we "regular folk" really own in our lives? Our houses are rented or loaned (via mortgage), the car is paid off in installments, everything is a subscription or license. Many people I know purchase their clothes and electronics through buy-now-pay-later services and stream all media they watch. We lend our time and effort to our employer if we are salaried, as we don't get paid at the end of the day but at the end of the month. How can someone who has never owned anything of value in their lives understand what it means to have something that isn't rented?
    • noduerme 2mo ago
      That is just such a defeatist attitude. It reminds me of the classic Gen X complaint when I was growing up (we're the first generation to have a lower living standard and worse job prospects than our parents) but we didn't just give up. I'm regular folk. I waited tables and drove taxis for years and coded in my spare time. I started somewhere between 5 to 10 failed companies depending on what counts as a "company". The one thing I learned when I was young was never buy anything on credit. I was up to about $20k of debt when I dropped out of college. I cut up my credit card and I paid it off and did not buy anything on credit again until my late 30s when I bought a house and the first car I ever owned that I didn't pay cash for (which I quickly paid off). There were long periods in my life where I lived on staple foods like rice, worked 12-16 hours a day, and spent half my income on rent. I also spent 12 years backpacking when I got myself into a situation where I could write software remotely, and I realized that This is completely normal in the world. Living within your means is normal. Living hand to mouth and saving a little is normal. No one had it as good as the boomers in America, ever. No one will again. Being able to buy anything on credit is a wild abberation that cannot last. But I live like my grandparents. Frugally. I've only ever owned 2 pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of jeans, 8 shirts and 8 pairs of underwear. I replace them when they wear out. I also own a house now, mostly paid off, and have about half a million dollars in the bank. Does that make me rich? I don't feel like it. Every day I go out of my way to earn and save instead of spending. Make money and save it. Don't buy shit you don't need. Don't rent anything you don't have to, and don't fall for the credit trap. When you buy things, fix them instead of replacing them. Don't sell anything. And don't look at what other people have and wish it was yours. I'm not religious, but there's a reason that covetousness and sloth are cousins in the list of ways you can ruin your own soul. If you refuse to use credit, and you live well under whatever your income is, you will be able to afford things of value once you pay off the mistake of taking on debt in the first place.
• deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
• pprotas 2mo ago
  I'm sad that Gabe Newell will retire one day, and Steam's benevolent dictatorship will go down the same route Sony just did. The convenience of digital game storefronts can cut both ways. For now Steam is on our side, but there is no guarantee it will stay that way.
• nalekberov 2mo ago
  > We don't want physical media, we want digital ownership rights! Don't confuse the argument! I don't know who's "we" for the author, but I DO want physical media. I want to have the feeling when I reach to my video game disc, take it out and put it into my console. Besides DRM-free digital purchase doesn't guarantee that the thing you bought won't disappear - digital game store can you bankrupt, video game publisher might legally force its title to be removed, etc., the list goes on and on.
• superzero11 2mo ago
  [flagged]
• xlii 2mo ago
  Geez, people have no idea how licenses work... License is not an ownership - It's limited right to use something. Any action anyone does that isn't covered by license (in software) is called "piracy". Games were never sold. Mediums were sold with attached licenses. And most of the licenses as early as 2000 contained something like: "This license is personal to you and may not be assigned, sublicensed, or transferred." Selling game with such license was just as big of a "violation" as straight copying and giving it out (not having right to do something doesn't equal to crime though, even if some companies, coughMicrosoftcough, want you to think otherwise). The only difference today is that licenses are enforced better. They can be held on license-server and new user can be denied usage after transfering was detected. But it doesn't matter if it's downloaded, on disc, or embedded on a spoon. Don't make people believe they ever owned a game. They didn't. You don't own games as well. Never owned them. You rented them. The only way to get out of it with winning hand is to side with reputable vendor that didn't cheat people out of licenses. Reason why I side with Steam is because I have my licenses intact even though they have 25 years, I know big corps that just make licenses go poof and pretended in never happened.
  • jscd 2mo ago
    I mean yes, you never “owned” the IP, but this doesn’t change anything. You also never owned any movie on a DVD, song on a vinyl, or text in a book. Software is a strange beast in the world of copyright law, but, at least in my lay understanding, video game discs still have had protection under the first-sale doctrine, which means you were always allowed to resell, rent, give away, or destroy your copy. Ownership of the medium is still something.
    • aexer0e 2mo ago
      > video game discs still have had protection under the first-sale doctrine Not true unfortunately. See: Vernor v. Autodesk; which was first ruled in favor of first-sale doctrine but later reversed by a federal court. There haven't been cases for video game discs specifically but I don't see a reason who it wouldn't be the same as this software, since they also explicitly mention you're being sold a license, not ownership.
  • 2mo ago
• cabirum 2mo ago
  physical vs digital is a spectrum: - a physical disc, playable as-is - physical, with major flaws without online updates - physical, was playable on release, now requires updates - physical, unplayable without updates - physical, contains only a launcher to download full game - physical box without disc, contains download code only - digital
• __natty__ 2mo ago
  Most of us know what is it about. The problem is Sony and other companies have plenty of money for lobbying governments. What options do we have? I know it’s mostly technical forum but is there any lawyer or government representative who can help?
• dmvjs 2mo ago
  if a game has a download update bigger than 1GB then the physical copy is useless
• 1970-01-01 2mo ago
  Tale as old as time. See also: Richard Stallman. Yes, we're back to arguing the fundamentals. What exactly does "owning" the hardware mean? What exactly does "owning" software that runs on that hardware mean? Only when we hit the limits of those terms will we know what we can and cannot do to it.
• SideQuark 2mo ago
  Rent vs own is about price. If you want to own something, digital, physical, information, goods, then a vendor will charge more, sometimes a lot more, to sell you an infinite ownership vs you get limited rights. Most everything I buy needs to fight for my money. Of course some vendor specific things, such as a specific movie, are not replaceable, but since very few things, if any, are so important to me that I won't spend elsewhere if a good is too much. With that competition for $, vendors generally are competitive, and don't tend to have extremely high profit margins. I prefer the limited rights, since I can try far more things that way, with finite budget. And I don't get stuck with higher prices on things I ended up not wanting/using after I got it. I can simply cancel. I think the general disconnect is people too often assume they handed out money so should get infinite rights, while ignoring the nuances of economics/pricing.
• alexruf 2mo ago
  I completely agree. This isn't about physical discs vs. digital stores. It's about ownership. When I, as a customer, pay a lot of money for something and get nothing more than a temporary right of use, then something is going seriously wrong here. And no, I don't think you can compare it to movie streaming. With streaming, I pay a monthly fee for access to the platform. I don't pay for every single movie I watch. That's a completely different deal. If Sony offered a flat-rate gaming subscription for a monthly fee (and no, PlayStation Plus isn't that), then I'd be totally fine with losing access to the games included there after canceling the sub. But if I, as a customer, am expected to shell out 70-80 bucks for a single game, I want to actually own that game - physical or digital copy regardless! I've built up a pretty large collection of physical games over the years on two shelves behind me. And every now and then, I really enjoy playing some of those older titles. It took me almost half a year just to get a disc drive for my PS5 Pro. Half a year where I couldn't play my favorite games anymore and had a useless new console just sitting there next to me. I'm actually a bit worried about the next console generation - is it going to make my entire game collection unplayable and useless?
• finecode 2mo ago
  [flagged]
• Mr_Minderbinder 2mo ago
  > If anything, video games were late compared to something like the music industry, where not owning your music has been the status quo for a while now! My perception is that the music industry is better than other parts of the entertainment industry in this regard. I imagine what the author is thinking of is streaming, which I treat as a sort of on-demand radio. There is an understanding that it is ephemeral. A customer concerned with “owning” their music would not be confused by this and seek another avenue, which in the case of the music industry is both wider, richer and more free than those of adjacent industries. The common dedicated formats used for distribution: the compact disc and vinyl record, do not have copy protection, which is a better situation than what movies and video games are in. Online music stores invariably deliver you music as a simple computer file, with no copy protection or platform or connectivity requirements. This is the rule rather than the exception, which is not the case when making movie or video game purchases on these types of stores.