All Digital Future - The Loss Of Physical Games And Media
- Thread starter karmakid
- Start date
This could be more about the loss of the FIFA license than anything.
depends on what games. Online gams that have physical disc, for sure no, but a physical game where all the game on discs, yes. It gets rarer though, since many games come incomplete on disc.
There are commercial & legal implications & its MUCH more advantage for games & software to go digital making them service & not product.
Products & services have different regulations. and regulations are even more anti-consumer for software in general.
You cannot sell a car that promises parking assistance, & when you get your car, it doesn't have it. You will be eligible for reject or compensation. Even service like gym, if for whatever reason they terminate your membership, they have to legally compensate you for the period you paid for but no access. Otherwise, you are opening the door to fraud & bad business practices.
Software DOESN'T need to follow these rules.
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When the game is physical, you only own the piece of plastic that the game is on. You bought a license to use the game that is on the disc.
If you actually owned the game, you would be able to legally copy and redistribute the game, and profit from it.
Pulling the games from the store doesn't mean what people think it means. It means you can't go buy it if you haven't already. If you already own it, you can still download it anytime.
I've got a few old games that have been pulled from the store, and I can install them no problem. It just means if you never owned it, you can't go buy it after.
I've got a few old games that have been pulled from the store, and I can install them no problem. It just means if you never owned it, you can't go buy it after.
What!!!
You are conflicting Owning something , and owning the IP right
You buy a Book, you cannot copy the book and distribute as well, same with a car, an artwork print etc ….. but that doesn’t mean you don’t own the book, print or car.
Owning a physical disc in the modern day era is no more than owning the installation file, which may or may not be useless depending on if it has to connect to the internet for authentication/activation.
Not that its 1:1, but that's why if I can I like to buy my PC games via GOG. They give you an offline installer and no need for internet authentication or activation.
Unlike films and music, where buying a physical disc will provide you with improved (often vastly improved) picture and audio quality, there's no real benefit in owning the disc version of games for me. When games are delisted due to licensing issues, it's typically games I haven't played in years.
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While that's generally true currently, anything could change in a license agreement. In theory, there's nothing to prevent a company from putting a "non-transfer" clause in the EULA. They probably wouldn't, because the outrage would be massive for such a small % of gamers now anyway. There's nothing stopping them from putting just about anything in that wall of text which nobody ever bothers to read when installing a new game.
There's also a few things that poke holes in "owning" the game:
-Day 1 patches. You may "own" a beta/early release build. So many games have sizeable day 1 patches.
-So many games barely function offline. Try playing an old EA Sports game. It will "work", but you'll often be sitting at a loading screen as the game spends minutes trying to find servers that are long gone. Last time all of EA's services went down, most of their games became basically unplayable even offline. There are very few truly offline games out there anymore. Ubisoft games are the same way. Their servers go down, and be ready to wait several minutes just to get into a game. It may "function" but barely.
True. But I read somewhere forget if that's UK or globally but physical software actually hasn't changed in numbers much , it's just the adoption of digital has increased exponentially.
If we're being honest, I blame Steam for alot of this. They successfully transitioned the PC market to digital only years ago while keeping prices constant. The console makers and big publishers had to see this and want a piece of the pie. And to be fair consumers, have in droves, voted with wallets and overwhelmingly supported digital over physical for the last few years.
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Reminds me of a Bombcast discussion with them saying publishers wanted the Stream model on consoles but can't because of retail. Bit by bit they have been trying to remove that problem.
So you’re saying the og xbox one method of buying and reselling games that outraged gamers was just them ahead of the time, they couldn’t take it bluntly so they had to ease them in over time, only now they can’t resell it
Basically. Apart from online every 24hrs publishers have quietly moved to what was announced.
If we're being honest, I blame Steam for alot of this. They successfully transitioned the PC market to digital only years ago while keeping prices constant. The console makers and big publishers had to see this and want a piece of the pie. And to be fair consumers, have in droves, voted with wallets and overwhelmingly supported digital over physical for the last few years.
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I am happy to never have to set foot inside a Best Buy or a Gamestop again. I don't know how it is all over, but our Best Buy is basically an empty store. There's barely anything on the shelves. I half expect a zombie to come flying out at me. It is empty and depressing. I can mess with some store that could mess up my preorder, or I can just hit play when the game launches.
I also don't think you can blame Steam on game prices. Steam still has some of the best sales in the business. I bought Bioshock 2 Remastered for $5. I paid more for lunch. PC gaming never had much of a used game market anyway. Digital sales on consoles used to be very good. Now they are terrible. I don't think you can blame digital though, more the simple added cost of making games. It is really only the last couple of years where what used to be big holiday sales started being really bad.
The last time I went into a Gamestop was to buy a replacement joycon for my son's Switch. They automatically included the insurance and I had to stop them as they were ringing it up so they didn't. They're garbage.
The GameStop at Yorkdale allowed me to use the Yorkdale gift cards I got so I'm happy
But.... you own the plastic medium? I mean, there was a time people could unload their copy at Gamestop or sell it to someone else.
I suppose there you can probably 'sell' digital downloads say you're handing over the license or something, but seems like a pain in the ass.
Software as service is one of the most dubious anti consumer business practice.
Use to be able to buy a software and use it as long as you want. Now you are fonce to pay monthly/ yearly subscription with little benefit other than right to use the software.
photoshop. Maya. Even even MS office.
In past, your new version need to be good for customers to upgrade. With sub system, you do not need, you are held ransom because many file formats are bespoke and not readable by competitors programs
This happened to me with Autodesk. 2023 and I still using version 2020 with zero update. I eventually cancel and go blender
Use to be able to buy a software and use it as long as you want. Now you are fonce to pay monthly/ yearly subscription with little benefit other than right to use the software.
photoshop. Maya. Even even MS office.
In past, your new version need to be good for customers to upgrade. With sub system, you do not need, you are held ransom because many file formats are bespoke and not readable by competitors programs
This happened to me with Autodesk. 2023 and I still using version 2020 with zero update. I eventually cancel and go blender
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I remember ages ago I wanted to buy the PES soccer game (competitor to Fifa and not super popular here in the states). I preorder from Gamestop, and the guy tells me that the game didn't ship nationwide. "Nobody has a copy in the US right now!". I walked next door to the Best Buy that was visible from their front door and there were multiple copies sitting on the shelf. There's millions of similar horror stories online.
People talk anti-consumer, but there's nothing worse than Gamestop. Just a horrible company that has awful service. People talk about their used game market like it was some great benefit, while they were mostly just scamming people. Don't pay full price for most games, and you won't need to trade them in.
We still need retailers for food and even clothing, but the rest? They serve no purpose. There's no "value add".
I said this in the other thread but if the big US retailers like Bestbuy, Walmart and Amazon give up physical media when it comes to gaming, I might be done with console gaming. Or at the very least pushed out of it to exclusively gaming on PC. While PC gaming hardware is getting more and more elitist ( due to lack of competition/whole nother issue) with Sony, MS and most publishers releasing their games there and having multiple sales, its easily the best place for me to play most of the time. If Nintendo ever jumps on the PC train that transition will occur alot faster.
I'd think Amazon will always keep physical. The brick and mortar retailers can't pay the bills, but Amazon should be fine.