The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around. So it's an irrational response but an understandable emotional response. It's a final marker of an era that realistically ended more than a decade ago. That video games are not an island: an enclosed experience of just you, the game, the console, the controller, the TV, and a bunch of wires connecting it all together. When we were kids, you had this little disc that exploded out into a world that was all your own to explore and experience. Now it's not all your own. When you bought a PlayStation 2 and some games, your relationship with Sony could end at any time and nothing would change in your day-to-day gaming experience. But today, buying a console is an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer every microsecond you play a game. And most people don't want to admit that. And ending disc production forces us to admit that old era has been dead and gone. More frighteningly, we helped it along every step of the way by overwhelmingly preferring digital downloads and always-on online games.
> The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around.
On the contrary. It's been a very long process of boiling the frog.
I bought a physical release of Spore in 2008 and the game allowed itself to be installed a couple of times. Few years later I bought a single player RPG game for which I still own the CD but I'm not able to play it because I tied it to an online service and lost my credentials. All the games I own on Steam can be gone in one second and my children probably won't be able to get access to them even if they don't require online accounts, for which very many does.
There's a huge disconnect between online games that require servers to be played on - in which case it's sad but understandable that one day these will be gone and unplayable - and vast majority of games that are single player that still require players to be online and have credentials to some 3rd party applications.
GOG is the only vendor that actually lets you to own your games.
Steam is the only company that play fair with their customers, but I can easily see the future in which Gabe passes out and Tencent buys the company.
> But today, buying a console is an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer every microsecond you play a game.
We are fully aware of that, and that's precisely what we are opposed to.
I can buy an old PS2 with collection of games, plug it to a monitor and have fun with no hassle and without an internet connection. 10 years from now PS5 will be a dead brick, even with a bag full of games.
Steam's policy is that an already published game can only be delisted, allowing old owners to still play the game. I still own the original versions of Skyrim (before Anniversary edition, definitive edition, and all other *ditions), and I can still download it and play it, even though that version is not available for purchase in the store anymore.
Xbox and PSN don't have such luxuries AFAIK, after a game is removed from the store you cannot keep downloading and playing them.
PC is the last bastion for gaming freedom, a place to patch your game to use community servers. And for better or worse, piracy and emulation is always an option for the games that have any restrictions
With the exception of a few (regrettable) "game key" cards, physical Switch 1/2 games are usually playable offline with just the game card and the console.
This is part of the appeal of Nintendo consoles - you don't need to connect them to the internet, and they are still terrific for local multiplayer.
I'm still perfectly happy with my solo racing games on PS2, not that I play them much anymore (or I would have bought ought a PS3 4 or 5.)
I never understood why I should prefer driving against some punks that spend their evening crashing into the other players on purpose or wait for online races to start.
> Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around.
I disagree. They are using that as an excuse, when in reality they simply desire more control. When Sony releases their sales numbers they never compare physical and digital sales of games that are offering both, but rather compare physical sales to everything digital including DLC and digital-only games to make the percentage of digital sales seem higher. You can't ever get a real comparison when there are options for both. Since it is true that physical sales are declining, they feel that they can do so without significant push back. Disc sales are still significant, and even besides the big companies there are tons of smaller companies that would gladly continue to order discs for indie games, limited editions, collectors, etc.
That said, I think you are quite correct about the "ongoing relationship with the manufacturer". This is just another step in the direction of seizing total control over things that people once considered that they owned.
Just going off vibes, I think if Sony could sell a physical media from now until the end of time they would. This is a company that engineered a tiny optical drive and little DVDs encased in cartridges that slot in for their portable game system. Whenever you read about a format war, one side is almost always Sony. This is also a company that like took a full month to recover their online services. My point is I think Sony is a follower and not a leader in this space. If they could print discs and license the tech to deal with them from now until the end of time they would.
The through-line there is not a love for optical technology, but a desire for control. UMDs and MiniDiscs and the like existed because Sony thought that they could impose a monopoly on the market. On the contrary, after so many losing bets, you would think they'd be tired of trying, and looking for another way to get the same end (lock-in).
I think you misunderstand. The disc was the practical tie-down and compromise that allowed gamers to stomach what was happening. Whether or not gamers actually took advantage of the opportunity, the fact that there was a disc out there that they could physically pick up and buy meant that console game publishers (and, by extension, non-indie PC game publishers) couldn't descend into the depths of perma-Early Access-dom, or sell you a "game" that was really a pre-order.
If physical releases actually go away, that dystopia comes to bear. Console publishers think that this is a step in the direction of further control over their library, which is laughable. They're killing the compromise, the other side of which was, "Gamers will mostly respect console DRM and not flood the zone with "Explicitly Fuck You" piracy." These companies are about to learn a hard lesson.
Discs don’t matter. The whole “bring back discs” thing is pointless. They’re gone. Period.
Rights matter. If we had the same rights with digital purchases we had with old physical games the disc thing would be a much much smaller issue. Would many care outside true collectors?
Don’t confuse the two. If you do, and you complain loudly enough, you’ll get the monkey’s paw version of discs. All the downsides of both, no upside at all.
This is just straight up false. Laws don't cease to exist because of a liquidation. Legal rights absolutely matter in the event of a liquidation, and will be part of any liquidation process.
For example, if there was a law that the entire source code (including server code) should be immediately put into public domain if the game maker is unable to meet their obligation of serving up the game due to liquidation, then the release of the source code would be a legally sanctioned part of the liquidation process.
If gog.com went away tomorrow, downloaded games and installers can be copied to another PC relatively easily.
I'm not sure how easy it will be to copy downloaded games to another PS3 once Sony pulls the plug on the PSN store (and likely PSN login) for PS3 next year.
Discs do matter in one way. I don't think I have ever seen a digital "purchase" of any significance which I could resell or gift at a later time. Some "in game" things are resellable, but only within the game's ecosystem. All digital games, music, movies, ebooks, audio books, etc are not (AFAIK).
So if I get tired of my DVD movie collection, I could sell it or give it to my kids. If I ever decide I'm too old for the retro game cartridges I have, they could go to future grandkids. But my GOG games or Bandcamp music is stuck with me forever (legally speaking). Nobody would know if I "gave" them to my kids, but there certainly is no way to resell them.
Now this is still a rights issue, but physical media makes this easy (outside of keys/DRM as you point out) You always have the right to hand on a physical object.
Sure, but the context of the article is the recent kerfuffle over Sony deciding not to continue producing disc copies of games. It would not be difficult for them to keep producing disc games but still restrict them in the same way as digital games (e.g. requiring you to authenticate to the PlayStation servers with an account the first time you put the disc in, and then refusing to allow that copy of the game to work for any other account in the future). That might sound extremely, because it is, but let's keep in mind this is a company that made the CDs people bought install rootkits to try to avoid letting people burn copies.
The point that I read the parent commenter as making is that if the loud outcry in favor of discs go so loud that they were forced to spend effort with continued manufacturing of physical discs, it seems like a pretty reasonable assumption they might try to do something like what I described, because at least they get some of what they're trying to go for with the digital-only strategy even if it's not all of it. Focusing on the discs themselves is a distraction from the actual issue.
It’s trivial to sell media or software on a disc such that the disc itself is not equivalent to a license to use the media or software on it. I don’t know of video games do this yet, but this was the case for a prominent PC operating system for decades.
Discs matter because centralized digital distribution is what is eroding your rights. The medium's the message.
It's the malleability and ephemerality of digital content that has enabled not just restricting people's rights, but destroying the authenticity of media by arbitrarily replacing its content. The reason Amazon could delete 1984 from your Kindle, is its digital nature. Nobody, except you, can delete a book from your shelf or change its content.
> For years now, the testers at DoesItPlay have been documenting this trend, testing thousands of physical game releases to see which ones live up to the promise of full “plug and play” functionality without an Internet connection. Thus far, a full 27 percent of the physical releases they’ve tested require some sort of download to fix game-breaking bugs or obtain core game content that is not stored on the physical release itself. That ratio balloons to 34 percent for tested PS5 games and 50 percent for those on the Xbox Series X.
It's not about the digitalness, it's about the hardware that enforces the rights management. You can stick every Super Nintendo game ever made on to a not-very-large SD card. It's completely digital. No one anywhere can control what you do with them. It's honestly more "yours" in that form than the corresponding rather enormous pile of cartridges.
Turning things into big piles of numbers isn't what takes them from you. It's the hardware and ecosystem that limits what you can do with the numbers. The reason Amazon could delete that book isn't that the numbers were particularly deletable somehow, it's that people were using systems that let someone else control them.
> You can stick every Super Nintendo game ever made on to a not-very-large SD card. It's completely digital. No one anywhere can control what you do with them. It's honestly more "yours" in that form than the corresponding rather enormous pile of cartridges.
And further, see how much effort companies spend on trying to prevent people from putting games onto computers like that and using emulation to play them. There's a pretty solid argument that copying games from older physical media like that to purely digital copies actually preserves them, because it's a lot harder for someone to construct a bunch of mechanically functional SNES consoles than it is to distribute copies of an emulator.
The point is you have no rights digital or physical. That’s the problem.
Disc are not magic totems. There is nothing promising you the disc you will work in 10 years, 10 months, 10 days. Nothing ensuring that you can resell it for >$0. They could trivially make the disc hold a one-time redemption for the game.
If you buy a physical used copy of Anthem can you play it? Nope. They could do that with single player games.
What’s the resale value of, effectively, a coaster? Can you lend it to a friend? Your current rights are about the coaster. Not the software.
You happen to have abilities with physical discs because of tradition. You’re not guaranteed those. Digital makes that obvious.
> Disc are not magic totems. There is nothing promising you the disc you will work in 10 years, 10 months, 10 days. Nothing ensuring that you can resell it for >$0. They could trivially make the disc hold a one-time redemption for the game.
I think the funniest thing about all of this to me is that we're literally talking about the company that put rootkits on their CDs to try to stop the content from being used in a way they didn't like. They might literally have the worst track record in history when it comes to predatory consumer behavior related to discs, and people are trying to get them to keep making them.
Get a Mig Flash, rip your games, support the emulator communities, etc.
It's so easy for DRM'd games to become lost forever as the rights transfer around, and the hosting or support costs stop being worth it for publishers.
I don't understand how we are running into a future where I cannot buy the equivalent of "PS2 + 5 games" on a second-hand shop. That has been the main way to play games for a lot of people: buy a previous gen pack (with N games included) when the richer neighbour was upgrading to the next gen console.
How's that going to work out today or in newer generations?
The young people today are so used to just paying a subscription, it’s really sad. On the upside there is a movement in buying older physical media among the youth but I think it’s more of a fad.
Not a great article, but a very real phenomenon. I recently picked up a banned Nintendo Switch Lite for cheap -- meaning it can't download games or updates off Nintendo's servers, but it can still play cartridge games. And while most games function, there are more often than not critical fixes or significant content updates missing. The console exists in a strange sort of limbo where everything is playable but not in its best form.
The problem with Sony killing physical games (and the wider culture of digital purchases) is, unfortunately, a long-term one. Nobody will be seriously affected right now, as long as Sony's update servers are up and both digital and physical are supported. But 10, 20 years from now, both from a game preservation standpoint and from a consumer protection standpoint, this will be disastrous, when many games will still be charging outrageous prices (without the soft check of reselling/trading) or even no longer exist.
What games? One thing I do appreciate about the Switch is that most first party games come fully playable on cartridge. I bought Splatoon Raiders the other day on the way to the train station for a long ride; I popped it in and started playing, never had any internet. It occurred to me later that I probably couldn't have done this for a third party title.
There's a spreadsheet [0] tracking Switch games where you can see which ones have 'complete' versions on carts. It's roughly 1/4 for both first party and third party titles, though first party games are more likely to have cartridges released in a later run with updates included, while third party games are more likely to just have no updates.
(Splatoon Raiders was released a week ago so I don't think that's a good example to use for games without updates. Even it has an update already, albeit a non-critical one)
> Splatoon Raiders was released a week ago so I don't think that's a good example to use for games without updates.
...I don't really see why. The question isn't whether a game has updates available, it's whether the un-updated version feels like a complete experience vs a compromised one.
I'm not sure how to read the spreadsheet in that context.
> The question isn't whether a game has updates available, it's whether the un-updated version feels like a complete experience vs a compromised one.
Exactly -- a game released a week ago is unlikely to have updates that could make it feel like a compromised experience.
Take, say, Terraria. I had a blast playing it ten years ago, despite having a fraction of the content and polish it does now. Nonetheless, if that version was all I had access to today, it would feel like a compromised experience.
Updates matter significantly more for some games than others. Sandbox games like Terraria and Minecraft often lie at one end, while at the other end you'll often find first-party Nintendo games, which typically receive a handful of bug fixes at most. Of course, how much playing a 'lesser' version bothers you personally varies greatly too.
The spreadsheet just shows which games have fully updated versions available on cartridge.
This made me think of how we have to manually block certain devices (usually smart TVs) so they don’t “phone home” and show us ads and so forth. I see your switch being banned as a sort of mixed blessing. It’s liberating in a way. I wonder if there’s some way to use a proxy to self host the software patches. We had something similar on the PS3 homebrew scene.
I've looked into it, and there doesn't seem to be any existing solution. You can transfer updates from one Switch to another, though, so if you have two Switches that opens up some options.
The PS3 is a relic from an era where consoles being connected to the internet was still a relatively new concept, and security was a lot more lax. Newer consoles like the Switch are far more locked down, everything is signed/encrypted/verified/etc so any tinkering of that sort is impossible without a kernel code execution exploit.
The only option for a banned Switch Lite is installing a modchip (there are people who will do it for you for a fee, well worth it imo).
I'm fairly sure it's one of the reasons both MS and Sony went with AMD hardware from 2013 onwards, they can make use of the security/virtualization features their server platform has.
Got bitten by the deceptive nature of Nintendo "game key trash". Purchased a game online without reading carefully the description. Sent it back and bought a SteamDeck.
I can't recall if the seller even put the correct visuals: game key trash have a banner telling that they are plastic waste and you should instead give all the money to nintendo by using eshop.
Nintendo is the worst. Another example: Wii virtual console purchases don't carry over. They're selling people the exact same Mario ROMs dozens of times in a display of absolute rent seeking. Playstation recently got caught remotely deleting people's "purchased" movies too.
I too bought a Steam Deck and haven't looked back. It's still a normal computer even if Steam itself goes to shit, but all signs point to it steadfastly refusing to do that. Here's to hoping Gaben never dies.
The Switch has one particular feature that doesn't get enough talk: basically any game update can be sent to another Switch peer-to-peer. I'm pretty sure it even works with Game Key Cards, since they're just a rebrand of an annoyance that the Switch 1 had since launch.
You could, at least hypothetically, put every physical cartridge in a Switch or Switch 2 and download all the updates to those games, and just have an offline mirror of Nintendo's entire update CDN. More likely someone should make a homebrew app that archives update data by using this weird peer-to-peer update protocol, but I have no idea what encryption would need to be broken to make that work. But it would be a legitimate boon to game preservation to have something where someone with a bone-stock Switch and a game can just download the update they need and be done with it.
Steam does this for installation with machines on the local network! It will discover them and get the data from those machines instead of downloading from the wider internet. I’m not sure if it works for updates but it might!
The point the article is making is that people assume that a game having physical media means its fully functional - but that's often not the case. Most games made recently rely on access to centralized servers to make the game playable in a concrete way. Emulation will help - but unlike previous generations having physical media won't be enough.
The majority of gamers do not care because the games being released today aren't worth saving. They are all symptoms of the same root cause. Quality went down immensely in the 2010s.
This has happened to other media, and it was inevitable that it would happen to games. What eras of movies or music do you think of when you consider those collections? Why would gaming be different?
yeah the backlash against sony is focusing on the wrong detail, disks don't mean ownership and digital doesn't mean you can't own it
the disks themselves are largely a relic already, not enough storage for some games... and I don't recall a game I've played recently that didn't require a download on first play
it would be nice to have some regulation that at least requires games to have some sort of labelling that indicates a minimum length of support for online functionality requirements
The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around. So it's an irrational response but an understandable emotional response. It's a final marker of an era that realistically ended more than a decade ago. That video games are not an island: an enclosed experience of just you, the game, the console, the controller, the TV, and a bunch of wires connecting it all together. When we were kids, you had this little disc that exploded out into a world that was all your own to explore and experience. Now it's not all your own. When you bought a PlayStation 2 and some games, your relationship with Sony could end at any time and nothing would change in your day-to-day gaming experience. But today, buying a console is an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer every microsecond you play a game. And most people don't want to admit that. And ending disc production forces us to admit that old era has been dead and gone. More frighteningly, we helped it along every step of the way by overwhelmingly preferring digital downloads and always-on online games.
> The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around.
On the contrary. It's been a very long process of boiling the frog.
I bought a physical release of Spore in 2008 and the game allowed itself to be installed a couple of times. Few years later I bought a single player RPG game for which I still own the CD but I'm not able to play it because I tied it to an online service and lost my credentials. All the games I own on Steam can be gone in one second and my children probably won't be able to get access to them even if they don't require online accounts, for which very many does.
There's a huge disconnect between online games that require servers to be played on - in which case it's sad but understandable that one day these will be gone and unplayable - and vast majority of games that are single player that still require players to be online and have credentials to some 3rd party applications.
GOG is the only vendor that actually lets you to own your games.
Steam is the only company that play fair with their customers, but I can easily see the future in which Gabe passes out and Tencent buys the company.
> But today, buying a console is an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer every microsecond you play a game.
We are fully aware of that, and that's precisely what we are opposed to.
I can buy an old PS2 with collection of games, plug it to a monitor and have fun with no hassle and without an internet connection. 10 years from now PS5 will be a dead brick, even with a bag full of games.
Steam's policy is that an already published game can only be delisted, allowing old owners to still play the game. I still own the original versions of Skyrim (before Anniversary edition, definitive edition, and all other *ditions), and I can still download it and play it, even though that version is not available for purchase in the store anymore.
Xbox and PSN don't have such luxuries AFAIK, after a game is removed from the store you cannot keep downloading and playing them.
PC is the last bastion for gaming freedom, a place to patch your game to use community servers. And for better or worse, piracy and emulation is always an option for the games that have any restrictions
With the exception of a few (regrettable) "game key" cards, physical Switch 1/2 games are usually playable offline with just the game card and the console.
This is part of the appeal of Nintendo consoles - you don't need to connect them to the internet, and they are still terrific for local multiplayer.
I'm still perfectly happy with my solo racing games on PS2, not that I play them much anymore (or I would have bought ought a PS3 4 or 5.)
I never understood why I should prefer driving against some punks that spend their evening crashing into the other players on purpose or wait for online races to start.
But anyone is different.
> Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around.
I disagree. They are using that as an excuse, when in reality they simply desire more control. When Sony releases their sales numbers they never compare physical and digital sales of games that are offering both, but rather compare physical sales to everything digital including DLC and digital-only games to make the percentage of digital sales seem higher. You can't ever get a real comparison when there are options for both. Since it is true that physical sales are declining, they feel that they can do so without significant push back. Disc sales are still significant, and even besides the big companies there are tons of smaller companies that would gladly continue to order discs for indie games, limited editions, collectors, etc.
That said, I think you are quite correct about the "ongoing relationship with the manufacturer". This is just another step in the direction of seizing total control over things that people once considered that they owned.
Just going off vibes, I think if Sony could sell a physical media from now until the end of time they would. This is a company that engineered a tiny optical drive and little DVDs encased in cartridges that slot in for their portable game system. Whenever you read about a format war, one side is almost always Sony. This is also a company that like took a full month to recover their online services. My point is I think Sony is a follower and not a leader in this space. If they could print discs and license the tech to deal with them from now until the end of time they would.
The through-line there is not a love for optical technology, but a desire for control. UMDs and MiniDiscs and the like existed because Sony thought that they could impose a monopoly on the market. On the contrary, after so many losing bets, you would think they'd be tired of trying, and looking for another way to get the same end (lock-in).
I think you misunderstand. The disc was the practical tie-down and compromise that allowed gamers to stomach what was happening. Whether or not gamers actually took advantage of the opportunity, the fact that there was a disc out there that they could physically pick up and buy meant that console game publishers (and, by extension, non-indie PC game publishers) couldn't descend into the depths of perma-Early Access-dom, or sell you a "game" that was really a pre-order.
If physical releases actually go away, that dystopia comes to bear. Console publishers think that this is a step in the direction of further control over their library, which is laughable. They're killing the compromise, the other side of which was, "Gamers will mostly respect console DRM and not flood the zone with "Explicitly Fuck You" piracy." These companies are about to learn a hard lesson.
Discs don’t matter. The whole “bring back discs” thing is pointless. They’re gone. Period.
Rights matter. If we had the same rights with digital purchases we had with old physical games the disc thing would be a much much smaller issue. Would many care outside true collectors?
Don’t confuse the two. If you do, and you complain loudly enough, you’ll get the monkey’s paw version of discs. All the downsides of both, no upside at all.
Disc is a manifestation of right. Without this they will screw people without them even noticing
It’s a pretend manifestation, as the article points out.
Legal rights don't matter if the other party is ever liquidated, or otherwise unable to meet their obligations.
This is just straight up false. Laws don't cease to exist because of a liquidation. Legal rights absolutely matter in the event of a liquidation, and will be part of any liquidation process.
For example, if there was a law that the entire source code (including server code) should be immediately put into public domain if the game maker is unable to meet their obligation of serving up the game due to liquidation, then the release of the source code would be a legally sanctioned part of the liquidation process.
If gog.com went away tomorrow, downloaded games and installers can be copied to another PC relatively easily.
I'm not sure how easy it will be to copy downloaded games to another PS3 once Sony pulls the plug on the PSN store (and likely PSN login) for PS3 next year.
I’ve run into several games that will not launch at all of you don’t have galaxy or galaxy has no internet.
Interesting - I found a list (with specifics) at https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singlep...
Most of the games seem to be playable but with some content locked behind DRM, galaxy, or online connectivity.
Discs do matter in one way. I don't think I have ever seen a digital "purchase" of any significance which I could resell or gift at a later time. Some "in game" things are resellable, but only within the game's ecosystem. All digital games, music, movies, ebooks, audio books, etc are not (AFAIK).
So if I get tired of my DVD movie collection, I could sell it or give it to my kids. If I ever decide I'm too old for the retro game cartridges I have, they could go to future grandkids. But my GOG games or Bandcamp music is stuck with me forever (legally speaking). Nobody would know if I "gave" them to my kids, but there certainly is no way to resell them.
Now this is still a rights issue, but physical media makes this easy (outside of keys/DRM as you point out) You always have the right to hand on a physical object.
Sure, but the context of the article is the recent kerfuffle over Sony deciding not to continue producing disc copies of games. It would not be difficult for them to keep producing disc games but still restrict them in the same way as digital games (e.g. requiring you to authenticate to the PlayStation servers with an account the first time you put the disc in, and then refusing to allow that copy of the game to work for any other account in the future). That might sound extremely, because it is, but let's keep in mind this is a company that made the CDs people bought install rootkits to try to avoid letting people burn copies.
The point that I read the parent commenter as making is that if the loud outcry in favor of discs go so loud that they were forced to spend effort with continued manufacturing of physical discs, it seems like a pretty reasonable assumption they might try to do something like what I described, because at least they get some of what they're trying to go for with the digital-only strategy even if it's not all of it. Focusing on the discs themselves is a distraction from the actual issue.
It’s trivial to sell media or software on a disc such that the disc itself is not equivalent to a license to use the media or software on it. I don’t know of video games do this yet, but this was the case for a prominent PC operating system for decades.
Even if it has the full game they can EULA out if it. There are no laws saying they can’t.
Discs are accidental theater. They didn’t start out that way but that’s what they’ve become.
Discs matter because centralized digital distribution is what is eroding your rights. The medium's the message.
It's the malleability and ephemerality of digital content that has enabled not just restricting people's rights, but destroying the authenticity of media by arbitrarily replacing its content. The reason Amazon could delete 1984 from your Kindle, is its digital nature. Nobody, except you, can delete a book from your shelf or change its content.
Have you read the article?
> For years now, the testers at DoesItPlay have been documenting this trend, testing thousands of physical game releases to see which ones live up to the promise of full “plug and play” functionality without an Internet connection. Thus far, a full 27 percent of the physical releases they’ve tested require some sort of download to fix game-breaking bugs or obtain core game content that is not stored on the physical release itself. That ratio balloons to 34 percent for tested PS5 games and 50 percent for those on the Xbox Series X.
It's not about the digitalness, it's about the hardware that enforces the rights management. You can stick every Super Nintendo game ever made on to a not-very-large SD card. It's completely digital. No one anywhere can control what you do with them. It's honestly more "yours" in that form than the corresponding rather enormous pile of cartridges.
Turning things into big piles of numbers isn't what takes them from you. It's the hardware and ecosystem that limits what you can do with the numbers. The reason Amazon could delete that book isn't that the numbers were particularly deletable somehow, it's that people were using systems that let someone else control them.
> You can stick every Super Nintendo game ever made on to a not-very-large SD card. It's completely digital. No one anywhere can control what you do with them. It's honestly more "yours" in that form than the corresponding rather enormous pile of cartridges.
And further, see how much effort companies spend on trying to prevent people from putting games onto computers like that and using emulation to play them. There's a pretty solid argument that copying games from older physical media like that to purely digital copies actually preserves them, because it's a lot harder for someone to construct a bunch of mechanically functional SNES consoles than it is to distribute copies of an emulator.
No. Thats the whole point.
The point is you have no rights digital or physical. That’s the problem.
Disc are not magic totems. There is nothing promising you the disc you will work in 10 years, 10 months, 10 days. Nothing ensuring that you can resell it for >$0. They could trivially make the disc hold a one-time redemption for the game.
If you buy a physical used copy of Anthem can you play it? Nope. They could do that with single player games.
What’s the resale value of, effectively, a coaster? Can you lend it to a friend? Your current rights are about the coaster. Not the software.
You happen to have abilities with physical discs because of tradition. You’re not guaranteed those. Digital makes that obvious.
This is a rights issue.
> Disc are not magic totems. There is nothing promising you the disc you will work in 10 years, 10 months, 10 days. Nothing ensuring that you can resell it for >$0. They could trivially make the disc hold a one-time redemption for the game.
I think the funniest thing about all of this to me is that we're literally talking about the company that put rootkits on their CDs to try to stop the content from being used in a way they didn't like. They might literally have the worst track record in history when it comes to predatory consumer behavior related to discs, and people are trying to get them to keep making them.
That was Sony music, not Sony Computer Entertainment.
Different divisions of a mega corp.
We know divisions fight. The hardware business had to make MiniDisc worse so Sony Music wouldn’t be too mad.
Get a Mig Flash, rip your games, support the emulator communities, etc.
It's so easy for DRM'd games to become lost forever as the rights transfer around, and the hosting or support costs stop being worth it for publishers.
I don't understand how we are running into a future where I cannot buy the equivalent of "PS2 + 5 games" on a second-hand shop. That has been the main way to play games for a lot of people: buy a previous gen pack (with N games included) when the richer neighbour was upgrading to the next gen console.
How's that going to work out today or in newer generations?
The young people today are so used to just paying a subscription, it’s really sad. On the upside there is a movement in buying older physical media among the youth but I think it’s more of a fad.
Not a great article, but a very real phenomenon. I recently picked up a banned Nintendo Switch Lite for cheap -- meaning it can't download games or updates off Nintendo's servers, but it can still play cartridge games. And while most games function, there are more often than not critical fixes or significant content updates missing. The console exists in a strange sort of limbo where everything is playable but not in its best form.
The problem with Sony killing physical games (and the wider culture of digital purchases) is, unfortunately, a long-term one. Nobody will be seriously affected right now, as long as Sony's update servers are up and both digital and physical are supported. But 10, 20 years from now, both from a game preservation standpoint and from a consumer protection standpoint, this will be disastrous, when many games will still be charging outrageous prices (without the soft check of reselling/trading) or even no longer exist.
What games? One thing I do appreciate about the Switch is that most first party games come fully playable on cartridge. I bought Splatoon Raiders the other day on the way to the train station for a long ride; I popped it in and started playing, never had any internet. It occurred to me later that I probably couldn't have done this for a third party title.
There's a spreadsheet [0] tracking Switch games where you can see which ones have 'complete' versions on carts. It's roughly 1/4 for both first party and third party titles, though first party games are more likely to have cartridges released in a later run with updates included, while third party games are more likely to just have no updates.
(Splatoon Raiders was released a week ago so I don't think that's a good example to use for games without updates. Even it has an update already, albeit a non-critical one)
[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1CEABCBrPv1tWf89h...
Also there is https://www.doesitplay.org/
> Splatoon Raiders was released a week ago so I don't think that's a good example to use for games without updates.
...I don't really see why. The question isn't whether a game has updates available, it's whether the un-updated version feels like a complete experience vs a compromised one.
I'm not sure how to read the spreadsheet in that context.
> The question isn't whether a game has updates available, it's whether the un-updated version feels like a complete experience vs a compromised one.
Exactly -- a game released a week ago is unlikely to have updates that could make it feel like a compromised experience.
Take, say, Terraria. I had a blast playing it ten years ago, despite having a fraction of the content and polish it does now. Nonetheless, if that version was all I had access to today, it would feel like a compromised experience.
Updates matter significantly more for some games than others. Sandbox games like Terraria and Minecraft often lie at one end, while at the other end you'll often find first-party Nintendo games, which typically receive a handful of bug fixes at most. Of course, how much playing a 'lesser' version bothers you personally varies greatly too.
The spreadsheet just shows which games have fully updated versions available on cartridge.
This made me think of how we have to manually block certain devices (usually smart TVs) so they don’t “phone home” and show us ads and so forth. I see your switch being banned as a sort of mixed blessing. It’s liberating in a way. I wonder if there’s some way to use a proxy to self host the software patches. We had something similar on the PS3 homebrew scene.
I've looked into it, and there doesn't seem to be any existing solution. You can transfer updates from one Switch to another, though, so if you have two Switches that opens up some options.
The PS3 is a relic from an era where consoles being connected to the internet was still a relatively new concept, and security was a lot more lax. Newer consoles like the Switch are far more locked down, everything is signed/encrypted/verified/etc so any tinkering of that sort is impossible without a kernel code execution exploit.
The only option for a banned Switch Lite is installing a modchip (there are people who will do it for you for a fee, well worth it imo).
I'm fairly sure it's one of the reasons both MS and Sony went with AMD hardware from 2013 onwards, they can make use of the security/virtualization features their server platform has.
How did it get banned? Presumably it has a modchip inside which means that getting updates from alternative sources is still viable.
Got bitten by the deceptive nature of Nintendo "game key trash". Purchased a game online without reading carefully the description. Sent it back and bought a SteamDeck. I can't recall if the seller even put the correct visuals: game key trash have a banner telling that they are plastic waste and you should instead give all the money to nintendo by using eshop.
Nintendo is the worst. Another example: Wii virtual console purchases don't carry over. They're selling people the exact same Mario ROMs dozens of times in a display of absolute rent seeking. Playstation recently got caught remotely deleting people's "purchased" movies too.
I too bought a Steam Deck and haven't looked back. It's still a normal computer even if Steam itself goes to shit, but all signs point to it steadfastly refusing to do that. Here's to hoping Gaben never dies.
The Switch has one particular feature that doesn't get enough talk: basically any game update can be sent to another Switch peer-to-peer. I'm pretty sure it even works with Game Key Cards, since they're just a rebrand of an annoyance that the Switch 1 had since launch.
You could, at least hypothetically, put every physical cartridge in a Switch or Switch 2 and download all the updates to those games, and just have an offline mirror of Nintendo's entire update CDN. More likely someone should make a homebrew app that archives update data by using this weird peer-to-peer update protocol, but I have no idea what encryption would need to be broken to make that work. But it would be a legitimate boon to game preservation to have something where someone with a bone-stock Switch and a game can just download the update they need and be done with it.
Steam does this for installation with machines on the local network! It will discover them and get the data from those machines instead of downloading from the wider internet. I’m not sure if it works for updates but it might!
Gamecopyworld continues to exist, which has been a while without any unnecessary interface changes.
I like to think this'll be around forever
https://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/
You don't need your right of ownership! Please resign from it as it is a relict of the past.
They have only 27 entries for a PC... Like PCMR does not care? The platform where cracks always were most important?
On PC you can pirate the full version even if the disc doesn't work.
interesting article about doesitplay community and their observations, but it seems like a lost battle since majority of gamers simply do not care
Gamers know that piracy and emulation will rescue lost games.
The point the article is making is that people assume that a game having physical media means its fully functional - but that's often not the case. Most games made recently rely on access to centralized servers to make the game playable in a concrete way. Emulation will help - but unlike previous generations having physical media won't be enough.
Yeah, if we want physical media we have to buy what is produced.
The majority of gamers do not care because the games being released today aren't worth saving. They are all symptoms of the same root cause. Quality went down immensely in the 2010s.
This has happened to other media, and it was inevitable that it would happen to games. What eras of movies or music do you think of when you consider those collections? Why would gaming be different?
yeah the backlash against sony is focusing on the wrong detail, disks don't mean ownership and digital doesn't mean you can't own it
the disks themselves are largely a relic already, not enough storage for some games... and I don't recall a game I've played recently that didn't require a download on first play
it would be nice to have some regulation that at least requires games to have some sort of labelling that indicates a minimum length of support for online functionality requirements