Can we stop spreading the propaganda for them? Sony lied about digital sales by including digital-only games in their figures.
Every game with a physical release, according to their developers, makes most of their sales on disc. It’s literally always a 70/30 split every single time (give or take 10%). I cannot find any evidence of a game that sold more in its digital form than physical
Yes it is a conspiracy. Sony doesn’t want physical games for a whole bunch of reasons not least of which is control and greed. And if you think this is a new thing you would be wrong. They have been pushing this quietly for years. Second hand sales, game rentals, trading… these are all things that cut into Sony’s profits. If you ever want a reason follow the money.
Playstation was dead to me once they released the PS3 and did the bait and switch linux thing (again).
Why do you care what Sony does, just avoid them all together.
The only hope is governments deciding that you have a right (probably for a limited time, discs dont last forever) for you to have license Key that you can use, trade, barter or sell.
But who will manage a database of keys? I hate that I am going to say this: a blockchain of key/ownership? I cant think of any other decentralized method.
Or a home brew is going to happen that “rips” the hard drive on install and makes a copy on a USB or attached drive or something, but that brings us back to the problem: the hardware itself.
If you don’t own the machine, you don’t own the data. You DONT own the playstation because it is proprietary and you cant do anything with it.
Honestly, in my lifetime I’ve bought maybe 7 physical games, and that was the Myst series.
I was too poor when I was a kid so pirated, now I use Steam, and if that goes to shit, I’ll be sailing the seas again, just like with streaming.
I only care about getting a copy of the game, not a licence.
When was the last time you got a fully up-to-date playable title on physical media?
What nonsense. What matters isn’t whether we use physical disks or not. And it’s all digital anyway, you don’t get many games on vinyl these days. The real issue is whether you own the games you buy. As GOG is proving, game ownership is something that publishers can easily offer, regardless of the delivery mechanism. If Sony would step up and do the same, killing physical discs wouldn’t be a problem. It’s a trust issue.
GOG doesn’t give you ownership of the game the way physical media does though. Unless they’ve added a feature to sell your used games?
Download the offline installer and now you have possession.
Further, because GOG enforces no DRM or mandatory sign-ins, so that means that you also have control over that copy of the game - you can install it and play it however and whenever you see fit.
For GOG games were you downloaded and kept the offline installer, the only way that the rightsholder has of stopping you from installing and playing that game is to sue you, which is:
- Almost certainly not worth it for then due to the cost of taking somebody to court for it versus what they would gain if they won.
- They actually have to have an actual legal basis for unilateraly changing the licensing agreement with you and hence be allowed to block you from continuing with the activity you have a license for (installing and running that game), which they almost certainly do not have in pretty much the whole World since EULAs aren’t valid there (they’re considered an attempt at, after a sale is completed, forcing unilateral changes to the implicit contract which is the sale, so have no legal validity)
With other stores they can just force the store to take down the game and now it’s up to YOU to sue THEM to get restitution and the “not worth it” is now something that goes against you (unless you have access to a Small Claims Court in the jurisdiction you’re in, are you really going to sue them for a 50 bucks game?)
In fact, physical media is worse than digital GOG games, because the former can have phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins so you have possession but not control.
PS: However if the point you were making was about resale, then it’s a valid point. Mind you, physical media with phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins can also be de facto unsellable if that’s what the game maker wants.
Good point, I’m guessing it probably falls short of physical media in that way. As I understand it, they let you download an install file for the games you purchase, which you can save and use offline. I doubt that publishers would put effort into enabling a second hand games market
How exactly did I choose digital? I don’t even buy games.
Bean soup?
No, I made the choice for physical. I don’t own a single digital game on a Sony console. Don’t put this on me. I want to buy physical. I never wanted digital for myself. I always wanted choice.
Its just that I don’t matter. I’m a minority and Sony don’t give a fuck about me. It’s not my fault Sony is stopping physical production. Its still profitable, so Sony could keep on doing it. But they don’t because they want to fuck me over.
Damned be the man who blames the consumer and he can shove his worked at Valve credentials up his ass.
I would happily buy steam physical games if they existed
They did. GameStop back in the day tried to stop Steam and the switch to digital codes in cases.
So some people bought digital and therefore that is justification to get rid of physical?
Sony has released very few single player games this generation on purpose. Single player games are perfect for physical media.
Sony wants everyone to play live service games to sell the game, the updates and the online subscription. It is part of the plan.
I had a PS4, witch was sold and didn’t have coonsole for years. Then I got a PS5 and my account was deleted with all my purchases.
That didn’t happen to my steam games.
The problem is the legislation around digital consumers rights.
Agree with your point, but why did you own a witch, and why did you sell her?
/s
Because of the coonsole. (that’s necromancer slang for raccoon soul)
Companies offer games as a digital download or physical disc.
Consumers buy physical disc out of a desire to preserve media.
Game is unplayable off the disc without a 98GB download that installs a digital copy of the game onto the hardware. Disc is essentially a physical license to play the game and is useless otherwise.
“You chose this”
Fuck right off. At this point, if a game isn’t either available on GoG or as a FitGirl RePack, it does not register as an option for me anymore. That is my choice.
and seems like ppl don’t realize the disc being the license means when the dig store removes the dig licenses it’ll also remove the versions that apply to that 98gb update for a disc license.
He isn’t wrong how many people here buy from steam - it’s rare if ever you get a physical release of a game on steam.
Now physical rights vs digital are the issue;
Buying a physical item means you own it and can use it whenever you want.
Buying a digital item means you buy the license to use that item. That’s a concept that’s been around for software purchasing for a very long time.
People want to own the digital item the same as the physical and not have the license pulled when a publisher decides to. Sony just doesn’t have the trust of the gaming community for this.
Yeah, even physical pc games often just have a download key inside and no disk, and computers haven’t had disk drives for a while.
(I know you can get external ones, but even cases nowadays don’t account for the ability to have them as an internal component)
I did manage to snag a copy of House Flipper 2 (it just had a Steam key, no disk) for 6€ a few months ago when the lowest historical price at the time (according to IsThereAnyDeal) was in the 20s or 30s, so I’m very much in the camp of physical releases in any platform. There is much more choice for consumers, game preservation arguments notwithstanding.
Also a ton of games have day 1 patches that you’d need to download anyway from their servers. I don’t recall seeing standalone installers for patches like we used to have. So buying a physical copy just makes you feel good rather than actually avoiding the problem with digital copies.
Two years ago when I built my new computer, there were something like two cases that actually had a slot for a disk drive. I did end up getting one for my older games and it is nice
I’d argue the right fight here is to reliably obtain “permanent ownership” for either kind of purchase. Anyone who bought their games digitally for the past generation and doesn’t follow gaming news (basically a silent majority of gamers) probably doesn’t even care about this ongoing disc backlash/boycott.
But highlighting things like the sudden pull of people’s owned movies, that may matter to them when applied to games.
I see no reason not to pirate a game I bought digitally if it is then removed as a playable game.
Same for movies, if you bought it, then it should be yours.
I think they should only let you rent movies online to avoid this issue totally.
Okay. You’ll basically not be a demographic they serve anymore.
Put it this way. This year had some great singleplayer games. Some of those were funded by terrible publishers. If, in a later year, that publisher sees “Huh, 95% of people pirate this game, only 5% buy it”, then they’ll just cancel all upcoming singleplayer games, and greenlight 20 more live service or gacha games, because that’s where the MONEY is.
“Vote with your wallet” works in two ways. Pirating mostly shows up as a stay-at-home voter, or a corpse.
If they pull a game after it’s been sold and played then they don’t lose sales from that game.
They lose the fans that bought the original game.
Who is talking about pulling games post-sale? I specifically said “upcoming”. As in, shutting down game studios and future releases.
Your torrent list would get a lot shorter, unless you basically stay retro. Either way, you’d be an irrelevant consumer.
they also mentioned pirating a game they bought. so the pub got the money for it.
To be fair, physical media has been dead before the whole sony debacle. What’s the pint of ownjng something like cyberpunk when you own the release version?
GOG, you buy it and can use it whenever you like and its digital. Best of both.
well, having a physical disk doesnt guarantee ownership. companies can still leave critical things off the disk and require you to download them when you install, or there can be some verification system. And if corporation servers go down, you still cant use it.
What we need is all the files and data we buy to be fully functional and not behind any encryption or other gate, be it digital or physical. Then make your own physical media of it or back it up whereever you want.
I bought physical disks until they were basically phased out. A large chunk of them just registered on Steam and downloaded the latest patch before they would run anyway. I have been against Steam and its DRM for a while, but everyone else chose to have no rights to their games, no ability to sell or loan them or give them to others. You will own nothing and love it.
j/w - aren’t most PC stores digital only anyway?
It isn’t about digital vs physical it’s about ownership. On PC stores you’re still downloading a computer file. That you keep.
PlayStation digital isn’t like PC digital, it isn’t a file that you store on a hard drive it’s an entry in a database to say that you “own” that game. An entry that can be easily deleted whenever Sony feel like it. Think of it like the difference between Netflix and Jellyfin hosting.
Just like Netflix Sony can take away content whenever they want. At least with Netflix they don’t try and claim that I own anything though.
ahhhh makes sense now
Yes, but the part everyone is leaving out is that was greatly helped along when stores like GameStop stopped carrying PC games other than WoW and CoD circa 2010.
