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

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.

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). All you need is to get something called the Goldberg Emulator, replace the SteamAPI file, then add an app_id.txt file. Done. You can play any Steam game offline (assuming the publisher didn’t put their own DRM like Denuvo). I’ve done this a lot, and it is legal as long as you don’t share your game to other people.

This part bears repeating anytime someone says “Valve killed ownership”. They can break the trust that is formed with their customers at any time, but so far they have not.

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That’s the case with DRM. I do own my games, on a big fat HDD. While optical media literally rusts and still has DRM.

So, just to be clear, with a PC you can: * Use whatever input(s) you want, even mix and match if some parts of a game are better with a controller or KBM! * Install mods and get assloads of free, community made additional content for loads of games. * Run most any old game outside of the current and previous console generation with emulators.

Steam allows (but notably does not require) DRM but has Proton integration, Steam Input and Steam Family Sharing. The refund policy is also reasonable and makes me far more likely to try games I might not otherwise.

GOG is also an option for true digital ownership of games, if they’re sold there. The refund policy there is even better!

Meanwhile, Sony’s refund policy is laughably bad (no refunds once you start the download) and they’re about to force everyone to fucking deal with it. What is the point of owning one of these locked down, shitty boxes at this point?

The ability to trade is lost on pretty much every platform including PC. In some ways it’s been lost on PC for the longest time, because PC has had CD key nonsense since at least the 90s while consoles operated on physical media for much longer.

The lack of this ability is, of course, compensated for by piracy.

Definitely a good breakdown of the major points that most are overlooking with this situation. It would be a much easier pill to swallow if these platforms were taking an approach similar to GOG or allowed for multiple storefronts on their platforms (extremely unlikely to happen).

For game consoles (focusing primarily on PlayStation and Xbox here), the following (IMHO) protections should be in place for an all digital platform that respects the customer:

• A digital purchase is tied to your account. If a game can no longer be sold on the platform, you can still download it later on if needed because you already purchased it.

• In the event that the servers are to be shut down: the downloads for active game listings and previous delisted titles that an account has access to; there will be a grace period of “X” days to allow users to buy whatever game/DLC they wish and will have the option to back up the installer for said software. This can then be moved to a compatible storage device for archiving purposes. (The cherry on top would be the ability to migrate the data to a computer so it can be archived however desired).

• A digital purchase can be lent to friends and family for “X” amount of days. During this time, the game will not be accessible to play on the host account, but can be recalled if desired. Otherwise, once the time period has passed, it will return automatically. The “lent” game will then disappear from the other players library, but if interested would have the option to visit the store page for purchase.

• Finally a digital “resale shop” where players could list their digital games/DLC. This would allow players to sell off their unwanted games and could potentially give other players the opportunity to purchase a game that may be delisted. Currency paid would likely be equivalent to store credit, but could be used for future purchases.

Sure, a lot of it is very unlikely to happen and is definitely wishful thinking, but that’s the only way I would move forward with a digital only console market. Otherwise, I would go 100% PC. Time will tell how this goes.

”I personally don’t think people care about owning physical media.”

I know I’m in what feels like a growing minority, but I will always pick up a physical copy if given a chance. I have a solid games library and I intend on playing every title I own. That said, I know eventually things will be digital only. Until that happens, I’ll stick with my Switch/2 for physical releases and multi platform releases I’ll grab on PC if it makes more sense to do so.

One last thought on this that I’ve had as someone who prefers to collect games physically. For Nintendo, I have genuinely despised their game key card approach. From a preservationists perspective, it’s a waste of money. However, getting a code in a box is a massive joke. Sony actually succeeded in making the concept of a GCK looking like a solid alternative. I really don’t know how to feel about that lol.

TL;DR - good article that brings up a lot of points others are overlooking. I personally will still get physical releases until they aren’t available anymore, then go fully digital on PC.

Then buy from GOG. The gaming industry is not a monopoly. Vote with your wallet.

It’s about who controls it.

Because if one side controls it and does something with it they’re not legally entitled to do do, they still get away with it if it’s not worth it for the other side, even being in the right, to take it to Court.

So if you have in your hands the files for the installer for a game which doesn’t do phone-home validations and you’ve actually explicity rented it for a limited time yet carried on using it past that point, the other side would have to take you to Court to stop it, and in the absence of a streamlined and very cheap Judicial process to do so for that kind of thing (like there is for things like loans) it’s generally not worth it for them because it costs more than they gain.

Similarly, if they control if and when you can install and run a game (which is possible even if you have the physical media - all it takes is for the game to have phone-home DRM that checks if you’re authorized) and they stop you from using it, even if you’re in the right with zero doubts (so, there was no clear upfront information that you were paying for a unilaterally revokable license and you live in a jurisdiction where Justice isn’t a joke, like Germany, so the unilaterally imposition of further contractual conditions after the sale - i.e. EULAs - aren’t at all valid), it’s generally not worth it to take it to Court to force the other side to restore you access to the game or compensate you (a few euros) for it because it costs more than you get back from it.

Holding physical media is highly correlated with controlling it, but (as per my example above) in a World of always on Internet access were phone-home DRM is easy to have, it’s no guarantee at all of actually controlling it - you might have the bytes in the stablest imaginable storage medium in your hands and you still don’t control it because you can’t actually access the game without external authorization - and that in practice means that you can get shafted even though you’re entirely in the right as long as the monetary amount you being shafted out of isn’t too large.

Converselly, whilst digital distribution is highly correlated with not controlling it, as stores like GOG show it’s perfectly possibly to sell games digitally in such a way that you get control of it (if you want - you have to actually download GOGs offline installers) by which point the cost of trying to control what you do with it is on the other side and the same monetary logic applies - it’s not worth it for them as long as the monetary amount they would gain from doing it isn’t too large.

Curiously, this also means that for PC games GOG can actually be a better way of getting de facto ownership of a game copy than physical media (if you make sure you download the offline installer) because GOG enforces the rule that their games have no DRM, whilst plenty of PC games in physical media have phone-home DRM.

It baffles me how ingrained this allready is. The people I play games with just accept that it’s happening. Saying “It’s all digital anyway.” and “I never owned anything.” And in the same breath they still remember “the good old days.” It’s like they have allready given up. I’m hellbend on owning my own software and owning my own data. And if I tell people I have my own cloud server to store my photo’s instead of some corporate cloud they express the wish to have that option as well. Yet, they all just go on with their dossile behavior of not owning anything…

It’s kind of both for me honestly. Call me old fashion… Or just old… but I really enjoy seeing a shelf full of game cases and looking through them to physically pick out what I wanna play. And it’s really just nice-looking to me, just like a bookshelf that’s actually full of books looks good.

I got to the block about Netflix, and got furious - because you’re exactly right.

During Netflix’s rise, I heard a common quote: “So in order to watch all the shows, I now have to subscribe to 8 different streaming services?? Screw that. Put it on Netflix, or I’m going to pirate it.”

There was a key detail of that generic quote that always infuriated me from how much people glossed over it: “…to watch all the shows…” There are some very cool games out that I haven’t even bought because there’s so many options. What kind of media junkie is watching every popular show right now? And obsessing over centralization so much they want a monoculture service that can raise its prices as easily as flushing a toilet?

Much as I like Steam, I like that it’s only one PC option. That’s important. Inconvenient, sometimes, but key to competition. Even Valve needs to be kept in check to promote consumer-friendly practices. I’m just upset no one believed in that when it came to TV, or some of the lesser services might not have needed to sell out to AMC or Disney.

My personal rule : GOG over Steam, Steam over piracy, piracy over everything else.

How to think of games has changed over the years.

Arguably the first real computer game game “Spacewar!” followed the “the “hacker ethic”, whereby all programs were freely shared and modified by other programmers in a collaborative environment without concern for ownership or copyright”.

After a while, copyright came into play, and people were expected to “buy” a copy of the game, but “piracy” was common.

Meanwhile, the consoles pretended the game was a physical object, and that you needed that physical object to play, and that you could give that physical object to someone else, or sell it back to the store.

And then there was the shareware model, used for games like Doom. It kept the idea that games were copyrightable stuff, but it didn’t try to stop people from copying, and allowed them to share the games around. People were just asked to pay for extra levels, or sometimes just to send in some money if they liked the game.

On PC, Steam became the dominant platform because it’s less of a headache than piracy. Steam doesn’t pretend you own a physical object, you’re buying a license.

Fundamentally, gamers want the games to be free. If possible, they want to avoid paying for them at all. They want to be able to give them to friends, and have no restrictions on how or where they can run them: online, offline, on a phone, on a toaster, whatever. Once they have access to the game, they don’t ever want to have to give up access for any reason. They want the companies that make the games to release patches for any bugs that are discovered, and ideally, they’d like free additional content post-release.

Game companies want gamers to pay as much as possible for games. They want people to buy their games, they want an additional purpose for every additional machine the game is installed on. In addition, if they can manage it, they want people to pay continuously for playing the game, so it’s not just a one-time payment. They also want to be able to revoke access to the game at any time, and not have to pay the players when they do that. They don’t want to have to keep maintaining the game after it has been released, though they might be willing to do that if it’s profitable because it means more people will buy the game.

Neither extreme position makes much sense. If people aren’t going to give money to the developers, there will still be people making games as a hobby, but there won’t be high-budget AAA games made as a business. On the other extreme, if a game is too expensive, can’t be refunded, might be revoked at any time, and requires that you continuously pay while playing it, most people won’t bother.

So, what’s left is a negotiation, what will people put up with? Gamers typically hate paying for live service games, but if they do that there’s a reasonable business case for the game company to keep releasing content for the game. Gamers would like to be able to re-sell their game (really their licenses to those games), but that means a significant loss of revenue for the game companies, so they’re unlikely to accept that. The additional revenue means they can either keep the price lower, or can make a better, more polished game. Gamers would love to be able to play games forever without additional payment, even online games requiring servers. Game companies don’t want to have to support that based on a single sale that might have happened a decade ago. Game companies would love it if old games stopped working, so people have to buy new ones. That’s unlikely to be a fight they win in the long term though, because unless there is a required online component, it seems absurd to cut off access to the game just because it’s old.

In the end, there will probably be compromises. For a lot of people, the compromises will be unfair. Maybe they’ll play more indie games or even free software games. For other people, they’ll grudgingly accept, but in exchange will get games that have 100,000x the budget of something like “Spacewar!”

That’s a bingo

And this is to go even futher beyond:

Ownership of software must include the right to maintain and repair it so it can continue to work - not only while the copyright holder’s servers says so. To be able to remove any digital locks as you would do to any physical lock found in your house. To do this we need the source code, and since not everyone is a programmer we need the right to share changes with others.

Support open source/software freedom respecting games!

That’s what buggs me about the situation. Physical media doesn’t matter one bit.

There’s nothing about physical media that conferrs any kind of ownership over the copy. Already way back in 2012 I bought an used copy of Skyrim only to find out when trying to install it that it used Steam and the CD key was already tied to the previous owner’s Steam account. I had the physical media, but it was worthless to me.

What we should be fighting for (or put our money towards) is DRM-free copies, like what GOG sells. If you really fetishize plastic disks nobody’s stopping you from burning a copy of the DRM-free installer onto one, or you can put it on your NAS, the cloud or where the sun don’t shine.

The only games you truly own from a pragmatic point of view don’t even come on physical media, they come with public licenses. Commercial products that you come to love will always be used against you. Just stop engaging.