I like Valve but stfu dude.
Physical discs was the only thing that was a plus side of consoles compared to PC gaming (you could trade and resell it).
This is so clearly a company employee portraying a certain sentiment that the company stands to profit from and acting like that is what consumers chose.
Sony, chose this. I didn’t chose this. And valve knows that now 30- 40% or better of PlayStation players will be making their way over to them in the next 5 years with this very sentiment of “oh well its what consumers chose”
I know it wasn’t the company of valve that said this and just an employee but still fuck this dudes opinion on the topic. Of course he shills for the end of discs that was the only thing that set consoles apart from Steam.
The quality, tone, and tenor of this entire debate says FAR more about the type of people who want to talk about video games on the internet than it says about the ethics of corporations, creators, or the video game industry…
I was hoping that Lemmy game communities may be better than Reddit, but it seems like the same old circle-jerk…
What does it say?
That people are getting tired of companies bleeding them dry for every single thing in every way that they possibly can?
You expected a website primarily full of people who hate greediness and billionaires in general to not have anything to say about a decision that is anti consumer?
The cool thing about communities is that you can find all kinds of people who agree with your viewpoint. You could make your own with the 5 other people that feel the way you do on this topic and get the conversations you were hoping for.
Some facts:
- Video games offer orders of magnitude more, and higher fidelity, content then at any point in history.
- Video games are accessible to more people, in more parts of the world, across more platforms than at any point in history.
- In 1996 there were 100,000,000 active video game players, 30 years later in 2026 there are now 3,600,000,000. That represents a 3000% increase
- Adjusted for inflation, video games are the cheapest they have ever been.
It is wild how much gaming has grown.
But none of that means you can’t still produce disks especially if all that growth equates to more profit overall.
What if you just don’t want to? Can you provide any other examples where artists or creators are LEGALLY COMPELLED to produce art on a specific medium or under a specific distribution/licensing scheme? Because that is what is being suggested by many who oppose the move to digital.
Imagine you were a photographer who works exclusively in digital art, and the courts rule that you cannot continue to sell digital art unless you also maintain a physical darkroom and also offer physical prints of your art. Would that seem reasonable?
“I don’t agree to the terms of your storefront and I won’t sell it there”
Also, many games release on PlayStation and Xbox that are digital only and have no discs. This has existed since PS3.
Do you know how many exclusives are only on Steam?
Same way with gog’s DRM free stance which is why people get upset they don’t have every single game that comes out, its the publishers choice.
The freedom to make that choice is important.
For what you described to have any merit you would have to force companies to sell their games on all gaming storefronts which will never happen and shouldn’t because that is anti consumer and anti business all at the same time.
Same way with Denuvo. If a company wants that shit in their game they can do that and I can choose not to buy it until they remove it. But no one should ever try to force that across the board.
It would be different if PlayStation and Xbox had always been digital but they haven’t. They are taking a consumer choice and right (reselling a disc) away by this decision. That’s why people are pissed.
The ability to release your game only digitally with no disc has ALWAYS existed.
And no your imagined fantasy scenario of the photographer would not be right.
I am starting to think maybe you are saying PlayStation shouldn’t be forced to make discs and the fact is that they ARENT digital only has always existed and they just said they are stopping making discs with no court cases or forcing their hand and it will stay that way they get to do whatever they want.
Thing is, people who have been with them since 1994 have a right to be pissed off about an anti consumer move like this.
If my wife fucks another dude at the bar I’m going to bitch about it very vocally so she knows I’m unhappy and leave her. That’s kind of like this. You have a right to do something and people have a right to react the way they want to about it short of violence.
Sony has a right not to produce discs but I also have the right to call out that greedy decision for what it is and never buy from them again. No one is forcing publishers to do shit and they never have.
I would not agree with some sort of law that FORCES Sony to keep making discs but I would agree with their customers bitching enough about it that they choose to change course.
If they decide not to I’ll just decide not to use them anymore. As someone who owns over 500 games on PlayStation though I absolutely have the right to call them out on their bullshit a spade is a spade and Sony is a greedy anti consumer company at this point. Used to love them.
They are taking a consumer choice and right (reselling a disc) away by this decision. That’s why people are pissed.
You NEVER owned the game, only the media. See my other response about the legal EULA that have been included with every game you have ever purchased. Studios and publishers have no moral or legal duty to sell you a piece of plastic.
If you disagree philosophically, don’t buy games from studios and publishers who don’t distribute physical media…
However unhappy you are about this decision, it does NOT give you the legal or moral authority to DEMAND that an artist create art in the medium of your choice. I suspect the only reason that this vocal minority is kicking up a fuss is because they realize that the industry doesn’t care, because they can still thrive without your business.
No one is going to hold the entire industry back because you and a miniscule minority are too cheap, or afraid to move forward.
I disagree. The main selling point of a console is not the physical media. There are consoles out there that do not even have that feature. It’s the convenience of buying a console once and then knowing everything will run fine. No tinkering, just start it up with your controller and game.
People have fast Internet connections nowadays and can just buy it online and download. You probably have patches to download anyway. It might be even more convenient because you don’t have to go to the store or insert the disk to play. I don’t think people are sharing games that much anymore.
I think the average guy does not care. There might be some complaints at first like with the iPhone dropping the headphone jack, but then people are just gonna be fine with it. Consoles are not going anywhere. They are the iPhones of gaming, small selection but great optimization for that specific hardware.
Really now the price point is the main thing because any game can be ran very easily with steam forums and reading like two comments for problematic games.
Console is still plug and play sort of when it comes to games just working but any game can be ran PC trivially. Although console is a lot smoother to wake up and just start gaming in seconds PC has to boot and all that unless in sleep mode which isn’t always consistent
I like digital games on PC, not gonna lie.
But the only money I’m spending on the consoles I have is on used games. That’s what makes them worthwhile for me. I spent stupid money on the ps5 and psvr2 because my library of games could be built at a discount, and maybe every now and then I’ll get a new game that looks interesting because I have the system already. I bought the disc version of the ps5 specifically, not right at launch but close enough to it that I had to look around to find one (and said no thanks to the driveless ones that were available). Can’t remember if it was for the ps5 or psvr2 but for one of them I even held my nose and got it from walmart, which I try to avoid when possible.
Though the writing is already on the wall with these things. So many games are already just download codes even if they are on a disc or card, which means they require active support just to install and once that’s gone (either by Sony or publisher’s choice), then that game is gone. And I know you assholes think that’s a good thing because it means someone who would otherwise be playing that game needs to find something else to do and that something else might be buying another new game. So ultimately it doesn’t really matter if you (Sony) use discs or not, since removing them entirely is really just slamming that final nail in the coffin, but it’s already there just waiting for the hammer. I probably won’t get the next PlayStation either way.
Bullllllshit. I have bought multiple games in the last decade that didn’t include a physical disc but a code for me to go download the digital copy.
And you returned it and demanded a physical copy?
If it was actually the consumers choice then Sony would continue offering the PlayStation with a disc drive and physical media since that is what the vast majority of consumers chose despite it costing more to purchase.
You can’t draw any conclusions on console sales alone. I also bought the disc version, despite predomenantly buying digital releases.
It’s more expensive but not that much more expensive. The difference was in the ballpark 50 bucks or so. On a 500 to 700 euro or so purchase (by the time you add a controller, charging stand, games etc.) this is peanuts.
I didn’t buy the disc version because I needed it for physical games, I bought it to have the option.
For the record I hate that it’s going away. But i’d be lying if I said I didn’t get it.
I’d argue that that is exactly what you voted for. The option to still have physical media.
You may well have been buying mostly digital games, but you DID buy the console with a disk drive for a reason.
Somebody might buy a mountain bike, doesn’t make the company they bought it from responsible for supplying a course to use it on.
Huh? What is this analogy? Doesn’t make sense to me. In this case, your mountain bike provider is the sole provider of courses in the world and is now deciding to get rid of all off-road courses. Only asphalt remains.
Right, but why would they keep maintenance on these courses going if nobody uses them and only uses their mountainbike to ride to work, over the asphalt? Why not focus on making them better for that instead?
The community at large stopped buying games on disc. Evidently to the point Sony feels confident enough to axe them entirely without too much noise. So far it seems to me they are right, I don’t really see the public outrage you can get with other controversies like the launch state of some games.
And why wouldn’t they honestly, this has been pretty much the reality in the PC landscape since the PS3 era and also XBOX is also already pretty much there.
And yeah, technically on the PC there is “comptetition” in terms of other digital storefronts but it’s mostly the publisher that decide where you buy their game, not you. So in practice it’s highly debateable how much that actually works as proper competition for the consumer. In practice you just have a bunch of extra bloat installed…
You might not have that competion on the Playstation, but Sony is now going to have to keep the Playstation interesting to people without offline disc deals people could score elsewhere, we’ll see how they manage…
A random bluesky post is not a study
I am sorry, but “Former” seems to be the keyword of the nonsense stated…
And have you ever heard of merchandize and why it exists?
My choice is for human art, dear "former writer’…I just wanna say this is my opinion.
98% of the shit we deal with. Not just game shit, but everything…all boils down to these folks with power being utter rotten puss filled cunts.
Like honestly. Fuck disc. I hate em. I love digital. But fuck me. Let it be mine. Let me mod it (without cheating in it) let me play it on any console I want. Let it be my $80 of the game to do with as I want.
Like stop being such assholes. Why do these folks gotta turn into hateful cunts cause they got money or they made a game or media or whatever the fuck.
Consumers wouldn’t be as pissed if they weren’t being fisted constantly.
That’s why I love gog, and it’s the only store that gets my gaming money. The games are mine, as long as I keep a backup of the installer. I can do with them what I want.
I see why the newest AAA games are a must have for younger gamers, but as an older one I now have the patience to simply wait until it releases on gog if I actually have the urge to play it.
Digital is fantastic, I miss the boxes and handbooks and feelies, but I don’t miss the discs.
You can do that with Steam games too. The ones without DRM.
And it’s the developer that chooses if they want DRM.
Well can you see beforehand which game uses Steam DRM? And I still need the client installed to download anything, and even then I only archive the actual game, not any dependency.
The steam store itself doesn’t show if a game uses Steam-DRM (which is a buncha bullshit if you ask me) but the PCGamingWiki usually has that information.
99% of games will never release on GoG no matter how old they get though, because once they’re on GoG they’re essentially free.
GoG is great, but GoG is fundamentally never going to be a competitive storefront. It will always be niche and missing most games people want to buy.
Also people don’t seem to realize but you can “back up” digital Xbox and (I believe) PS5 games too. Download them, transfer them to an external HDD or 10 if you want, and then at any stage you can plug them back in to your console, transfer them over to the internal drive, and they work. Even without internet. It just has to be on your console that is marked as “home console”.
More games release on GOG when customers show there’s money to be made there. If you make it important to you that your games are DRM-free and spend more money on GOG than Steam, you help tip those scales. It’s not fundamental. If DRM is poison for making money, then fewer games will employ it.
But the games people want to buy on steam aren’t on GoG, and there’s no Steam vs GoG sales charts for people to point publishers to and say “look! Look how much money we will spend if you go drm free on GoG!”.
Also there’s just no denying it, and even trying is disingenuous - a game like GTA 6 releasing on GoG without DRM would sell significantly less than it would in a platform with DRM. It’s just the truth. It would be on torrents and every download site the minute it’s released, and millions and millions and millions of people who were going to buy it would get it for free instead.
In the terrible state that the video game industry is in for developers, releasing a big AAA game DRM-free would be the last game they ever release.
Plenty of the games people want to buy are on GOG. Definitely not all of them, but you can find GOTY winners like Clair Obscur and Baldur’s Gate 3, games that should have won more awards like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and The Alters, awesome indie games like Mina the Hollower and Escape from Ever After, plus the old stuff that GOG restores like Dino Crisis and Alpha Protocol that had pent-up demand. There’s no chart to compare sales, but developers talk, and they know their own sales data. Firms like Circana buy sales data and then sell the analysis back to help companies figure out what will help them make more money, including where people are buying video games.
Also there’s just no denying it, and even trying is disingenuous - a game like GTA 6 releasing on GoG without DRM would sell significantly less than it would in a platform with DRM. It’s just the truth.
That’s easy to claim and impossible to prove. Baldur’s Gate 3 released day 1 without DRM and still went on to sell over 20M copies; how many people do you think pirated it? Millions and millions? There are some people who are always going to pirate, but I think most prefer the experience of just buying the damn thing and getting better service out of it, not the least of which is quick and easy patching. We also now live in a world where Denuvo is fully broken open. There’s no difference in one’s ability to pirate once the game has been cracked at all. Piracy is going to happen one way or another, and GTA6 is basically guaranteed to make more money than any other video game that came before it.
In the terrible state that the video game industry is in for developers, releasing a big AAA game DRM-free would be the last game they ever release.
This is demonstrably false, given the AAA games that release on GOG all the time.
given the AAA games that release on GOG all the time.
Why could you only name like 3 then? Which 2026 AAA games have released on GOG?
Which GOG release bankrupted a company by way of piracy?
Last I looked into it video game piracy actually had a net benefit on sales. Any advantage DRM has from a sales point of view is null after about 3 months post launch anyway. It can and does kill small indie devs but any big boy in the industry, piracy usually benefits sales.
Piracy never has a benefit on sales. Where are you getting that from?
Don’t be so sure. Apparently they publishers don’t make hard numbers publicly available anymore so there’s no good data but there was a survey of denuvo games.
A Denuvo-protected game cracked in the first week after release can expect to make about 20 percent less revenue than if the DRM had remained in place, according to the study, while a crack six weeks after a game’s release only costs an estimated 5 percent of theoretical total revenue. After 12 weeks, new sales are so negligible that “developers could eventually remove unpopular DRM schemes with minimal losses (and possible gains from strongly DRM-averse consumers)
Unfortunately that still doesn’t answer the question but until publishers post honest numbers we’ll never have the proper metrics to measure the actual impact piracy has. But in the day freeware like Doom basically relied entirely on piracy for sales so it’s not an out of pocket take that piracy could benefit sales. It is an old take though. I’m old.
transfer them over to the internal drive, and they work. Even without internet.
That might work for some games, but there’s an increasing number of games requiring you to establish some sort of connection to the internet even for single player or mostly single player games (Lego Horizon for instance).
Try to transfer one of those and load it up on a new console without an internet connection.
Sure, your “home console” might work for some games for now. But in 10-15 years when Sony is trying to sell you the PS8, they’re going to be cutting off service to the PS5. What happens when you have to take that device in for maintenance and they need to do a factory reset? You need to log in again to activate it, except now it’s a brick that might only be able to play a few games on physical media. Anything downloaded/backed up would likely require that specific account.
By that time I’d be more worried about finding a working PS5 than their auth servers being taken down. That’s also assuming that they have completely removed backwards compatibility, which in an x86 world is highly unlikely.
The fact is that to preserve games forever, digital distribution is actually much better. These consoles will be emulated at some stage, and they won’t be playing physical games.
once they’re on GoG they’re essentially free.
Unlike all the ones on Steam that never get pirated? Steam DRM is so easy to bypass it may as well not exist. Also, unlike GoG, you can add your pirated game to Steam and play multiplayer.
There’s no way Steam don’t know this is happening which means there’s no way it’s not intended (especially given Gaben’s stance on piracy).
There’s a huge difference between no drm and “easily” bypassed drm.
Hell yeah. Love GOG.
But for me, while I love old games, I need my new shit lol.
Like bf6 has been a gem for me. Some bugs and bullshit, but I do like it. Which, call me stupid for this but bf6 and modern battle/war games are a bit of therapy for me. I joined the Marines, got to last week of basic training, came back from team(?) Week and was told to get my shit on the front deck or whatever. Ended up I had hep c. Paperwork fell through and it wasn’t caught till I was almost done
And grant you, I wanted to “fight for America and the people in it” since I was like 7. I was 20 just outta h.s. It tore my world apart. Had to do meds and all that. Pills and injection.
Anyways. Games like battlefield or even the more serious ones like Insurgency helped me use some of the stuff I learned on my own over the years and stuff in basic to not feel like it was all a huge waste of my life.
Tl"dr I enjoy modern fps games because they help me deal with my trauma in life.
feelies
You are sufficiently old. Good job.
I always wanted Wishbringer SO BAD because it came with that damn rock.
Other stores have DRM free games too. For example Cyberpunk 2077 is DRM free on Steam. DRM, for the most part, is forced by publishers rather than stores.
There’s nothing wrong with getting fisted.
No, I love fisting. But with consent.
Yep, that’s absolutely it and it doesn’t matter how it’s handled the will always be assholes. So we should go back to public measures.
Let it be my
$80$59,99 of the game to do with as I want.Never forget, never forgive.
It was $50 before that and as high as $90 before that. $60 is kind of arbitrary, honestly.
Yeah, but it suffices as a line in the sand. We could probably use horse armor as well, but that’s even more arbitrary and there are few publisher who have managed to keep mtx based market under control and run a free successful game for years, ex POE.
If the game is honestly updated with effort and hard work I will pay $80.
I clean air bnbs, houses, condos, and all that for a living. I don’t do shit for less than $100.
I get folks gotta eat. But if you want my money for your product, it better be that good dick shit. It better be high quality and ducking finished. Not this “oh here’s we got updates coming, the game is has a roadmap.”
Like motherfucker the game can’t drive it doesn’t need a road map, it’s need to be finished.
Wanna release the unfinished version? $20. But give me user support, working graphics, good multi if it’s that game, all the bells and whistles and I’ll pay $80 if you show me you goddamn actually care for the thing you are making.
Show me the love for your product/art/work and I will gladly give you money to support you for doing something you care about. And I mean even the ceos. Have some goddamn integrity and humility for fucking once.
Sorry to rant.
No need to apologize for ranting, rant on.
Nintendo 64 games cost like $60-$80 back in the late 90s.
They were also complicated circuit boards with full color manuals and box graphics, none of which is in digital nor the overhead of the creation thereof.
And they could not be patched later, so the testing was absolutely bonkers.
Yeah fair it is arbitrary, but the line in the sand must be drawn somewhere. So coming from PC platform and 59,99 being the agreed upon number for probably decade or more is a good enough arbitrary point to use as a line in the sand.
There shouldn’t be an arbitrary “line in the sand” for games. Just like there shouldn’t be for any other product. Because products are not all the same. Some games might take an hour to beat and others have endless replayability and it shouldn’t be expected that these all cost the same.
No, there most definitely should, there should be a line or set point for everything. A point from which onward one no longer accepts any further abuse.
Yes sure we can have discussion on where that line stands with gaming, like “no preorders” or “no p2w”, but there most definitely should be one or even multiple different ones and that should be upheld or else we do get current climate of AAA games riddled with mtx, psychological manipulation, getting more expensive yearly, no longer any long term guarantees either, while gameplay, story and performance quality dropping as well.
Without a set point or line, corporations wil keep on pushing the boundaries every single year as we keep allowing it.
A point from which onward one no longer accepts any further abuse.
A higher price does not mean abuse. It very well could just mean its a higher quality game with more content.
or else we do get current climate of AAA games riddled with mtx, psychological manipulation, getting more expensive yearly, no longer any long term guarantees either, while gameplay, story and performance quality dropping as well.
How does a low price stop that from happening? If anything it’s the opposite.
I wouldn’t really use 60$ as a low price, but that’s beside the point.
Your missing the trees for the forest. It’s not the low price, but setting a line which one does not cross.
Not having that line and constantly accepting every subsequent new mechanic to extract more profit from us has resulted in the current state of AAA gaming industry.
As i said we can discuss where that line runs, 60$ is just my own personal line, but that line, not specifically price, should exist and should not be crossed. Id agree with the “no pre-orders” as well as games should be only bought after independent thrid party reviews have gone out. Just that this line doesn’t fit into current context, this one fits better under a post of a releasing of a new highly anticipated game.
Though where would you draw the line?
I’d pay $150 for a great finished game. They don’t make that anymore, and you can’t make anything good and sell it for $60. So I’m not sure what you people want?! You want these companies to spend 3 billion making a game, making it perfect, and charging only $60 for it. Insane. No wonder why gamers get treated like entitled complainers.
You’re aware of the concept of inflation, no?
Are you aware of how much gaming has increased in popularity? Already this should cover the difference inflation makes over the years. When we add in profit form micro transactions and the only reason left to increase prices is greed.
My business has increased in popularity, too. I’m raising prices.
As is you’re right, I’m still not going to buy.
Are you saying that gaming increasing in popularity is a reason for companies to decrease the price? I’m not sure you know how this works.
and today they sell like 10x as many copies.
The perceived value back then was not having to pluck down 25c every time you played at the arcade. So even if the price was high it seemed cheap in the long run.
Editt : reading it again I’ve missed my point by a decade, this applies mostly to the late 80s
Indeed… and I never understood the stand against prices set by publishers, developers, artists, or people… for monetary support calculated for the human time, work, and effort done for a mirracle to share and support in hope…
$60 in 2007 is a bit under $100 now in terms of purchasing power. Games have essentially gone down in price.
Yes, but that’s just finding justifications for publisher who use every possible opportunity to screw us over at every opportunity while delivering shittier products every year.
No need to run free PR for them, corpos have whole departments for that. Fuck em, use the same mentality corpos use towards us, show them no mercy or forgiveness. Treat corpos with the contempt they deserve. We are the ones who have to exert the counter force, not just accept whatever they throw at us.
Why would you ever buy anything from a corporation like that?! They aren’t selling you food. This is pathetic. Gamers are pathetic.
We shouldn’t, that’s the point. Most, probably all AAA companies should crash and burn.
Microsoft is fulfilling that by buying half of them up. They’ve been incapable of not killing off studios they buy.
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Isn’t this literally victim-shaming? It’s not just game companies doing it, after all. What’s the alternative, to go live alone in the wilderness and not participate in society at all??
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True, but ain’t that a bit unfair for you to say? Do you not play games? Or watch stuff?
Isn’t this a “you complain yet you live in a society.” Or whatever.
I also grew up playing games. I won’t stop. And yes, while getting fisted, I’ll complain. You wouldn’t tell someone not to scream when getting attacked.
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My solution is to not have/buy a console (and the DS screen starts to be too small) and I’m on Linux.
Which means I don’t buy 80€ games.
That’s people’s problem, they must consume this new branded thing, again and again. Think about it, you have a million people buying whatever shit you make just because of brand/publicity, it will become more important to have the brand going, making the right publicity, than making an extraordinary game.
That said, I’d kill for a sweet semi turnbased “nineties” rpg. I do not play many games, they are rare on linux 😔.
Expedition 33 might scratch your itch.
Thanks, but is sure looks way too 3D run around for my taste (it’s not turnbased, right?) I just checked the trailer.
the things they were complaining about in the top comment go beyond consoles, they are a problem with PC games too. even on steam and linux. you’d have to buy exclusively from DRM free platforms like GOG.
also games are not that rare in linux, most work well via steam.
Or just pirate them, ezpz, especially if you already don’t morally agree with the publisher.
Well said
I don’t AAA game, but haven’t run into a single issue with a game running on Linux…
I mean i quit playing games in 2020ish because im sick of getting ripped the fuck off. I don’t watch tv or movies, either, anymore because it’s all sequels and garbage.
Join me and let these industries suffer.
Good for you. And I mean that.
I don’t buy enough games to really be impacted. Bf6 and Helldivers have been the most recent. I also use bf6 and HD to play with my best friend who is 4 states away.
But like I said…I literally was playing bf1 and titanfall all the way to bf6 with no other games bought. I don’t got a lot of time. I play 1 or 2 games a year and be content with that.
But really good for you. More power to you. I’ll try to fight it in another way.
On console, digital only means the only market is them. That’s why this is happening, and it’s the real issue. The ownership thing is an issue too, but that’s been dead for a while, even with physical disks. Very few games worked with only the disk install and no internet, so the disk doesn’t let you play without their support anyway.
I’ve been PC only for a long time now, so I’m fine with digital only. On PC we have some choice of marketplace. Sure, (I’m probably going to get flammed for pointing this out) Valve has used their market dominance to force price parity, but it’s still better than consoles. Console players are about to get fucked, and they’re probably going to turn around and thank them for it.
Chet Falisek has been on a crusade to have bad contrarian takes since he left Valve. His stance on Stop Killing Games was downright stupid.
When did he oppose SKG?
On this one I would watch the whole video. He’s trying to be pragmatic about the fight, not mocking anyone upset at disc loss.
That seems like a massive oversimplification of his stance.
He’s discussing the intricacies of what’s needed to keep games running past end of life, and highlighting what he sees as pain points. I don’t see any flat rejection, mostly he’s pointing out the kinds of legislation that can be harmful to indies and easy for corporations to circumvent.
I can understand not agreeing with everything he says there, but implying he’s an opponent of the movement doesn’t seem practical just off that video.
I don’t know why it wouldn’t be a practical conclusion to draw, considering that the points made on that video are basically in line with the points brought up by the video game corporations and trade associations, who as you might have guessed are very firm opponents of the movement.
I’ve brought up some of those same points in discussion, not because I “want to protect my dear precious widdle AAA publishers”, but because this is what lawyers do - they practice the most critically focused arguments their opposition will deliver when a confrontation goes to its highest court.
If you say a murderer stabbed someone, and I say “His lawyer’s going to ask you to show a murder weapon”, that’s not me covering for him, just pointing out what’s needed to deliver that conclusion.
Similarly, Chet has adequate experience describing what’s needed to keep a multiplayer game running, and if a AAA publisher brings their lawyers to court against SKG, they will absolutely deliver those same arguments - which makes the movement’s flexibility position on how servers run a critical subject to think about. I don’t blame anyone for feeling doubtful about how game makers can share servers, since it’s a very tricky subject.
But to lend credit to your stance, if not that specific argument: Someone did share a different preserved YT link that I think portrays him as an opponent of SKG more clearly. I’m a bit disappointed in that stance, and I think he overstated Ross as being totally inflexible. The fact that he deleted it may at least indicate he changed his mind a bit, but it’s hard to say for sure.
I agree it is a lot easier to take his latest video more sympathetically if you haven’t seen his earlier video.
I think it comes off as oppositional instead of being helpful in the way you describe because SKG is already more flexible than he lets on in this new video. I mean he says in the video a couple of times over that this is how “he would do it”, and that “this isn’t the only way”. But that just means that the difficulties and scenarios he brings up isn’t really in the scope of SKG, and that the kind of preservation he wants to see isn’t the kind of preservation that SKG is aiming for. But by presenting these scenarios in the general case, he gives off the indirect impression that the preservation itself is more difficult than it needs to be. For SKG, as long as the game is left in a reasonably functional state, it’s all good.
Yes, the game corporations are presenting these more restrictive preservation scenarios because they want to paint this problem as being too difficult to solve, while Chet (I imagine, given his background) is presenting these scenarios because he believes it will be of genuine benefit to the consumer, but but ultimately they are both opponents of the more flexible requests laid out in the SKG movement.
Plus, he (like a lot of Valve employees) are pretty gung ho about the free market working itself out, and mentions that legislation are punitive and don’t work and that the game publishers should be partners in the effort and not enemies, so I can’t imagine he would get along well with the lot of the people in the SKG movement just on an ideological basis.
If you vote with your wallet, it just means those richer than you have a bigger vote.
Sorry, I’m not sure what your comment is supposed to point out exactly. Are you saying boycotting is pointless because there are other people giving them a lot more money than you anyway? I mean it would still cut into their profit
Are richer people buying 12 copies of a game?
In some sense yeah, I’ve heard from some of my more affluent friends buying multiple copies for different platforms. For example, I know someone with at least 4 different copies of GTA-V
Kinda; that’s often the reason you see $120 SuperDeluxe editions of games, where the protagonist’s pants have a bit of purple trim. Or $20 “boosts” that skip the first 3 levels (which you’d get by playing two matches)
It’s very much an artifact of wealth consolidation.
Oh yeah, I forgot some games have that kinda shit in them
I hate it as much as the next person here, but it was always inevitable. It was never a question of if, but when.
I know a lot of people look at physical media from a preservation angle, but in an era where games have a long tail of post-release updates and DLC, I’m not so sure they even serve that purpose anymore. If I want to replay my old games in 50 years, in many cases I probably don’t just want to play the 1.0 that’s on the disc. If I’m still dependent on the availability of a third-party download server to get the remaining data, do discs even still matter all that much?
physical media from a preservation angle… If I want to replay my old games in 50 years
And don’t forget bitrot. The modern bluerays are scarecrow and wind chime material in like 2-3 decades after manufacturing.
I’ve been downvoted en masse for saying that physical media doesn’t last forever, and that many of my PS1/2/3 physical copies no longer work due to labels peeling off and disc rot. It doesn’t happen apparently.
Physical media isn’t what people should want - it’s emulation. Physical media only works as long as there’s original hardware to play it on, and it’s getting harder and harder to get working original hardware.
I suing care about playing the game on original hardware, I care about being able to play it on really and easily available hardware.
Also Blu-ray players/drives need regular updates for the encryption keys, it’s why the PS3 gets updates every couple years still. Sony will stop updating them some day.
I think part of the reason why games have inflated so little, compared to any other goods, is that they slowly but consistently moved from selling physically to selling digitally, thus increasing profit without needing to raise prices. Now they are forcing more to switch to digital AND they are increasing prices. I do think the AAA gaming industry is about to hit a wall quite soon
In this sense, Chet is right, the ‘democracy’ of consumers has prevailed, and the people have spoken. They said ‘digital.’ I myself have been a PC gamer for over a decade now and I can’t remember the last time I bought physical media.
“You as the consumer have forced the large corporations hand, and you’ve told them ‘Stop with retail.’”
But then Chet shows his entire rancid asshole by actively ignoring the power dynamics between corporation and customer. The corporation always has the upper hand because the customer CAN ONLY buy what the corporation is OFFERING to sell. The corporation is always, at all times, presenting the customer with a false choice. A customer who has shitty internet and has to purchase all physical media, they may be in the democratic minority but that doesn’t mean we feed them to the wolves. But an ex-Valve writer wouldn’t know shit about that, they haven’t shipped a physical game since Portal 2. What choice did you give consumers for Counterstrike, 2023? Half Life Alyx, 2020? Dota, 2013?
Once you, apparently, regretted your decision to invest almost entirely in digital, you didn’t start buying Crimson Desert discs while you could, nor did you abstain from making digital purchases altogether. Now it’s too late, says Faliszek.
Suck my dick, clown.
On the other hand, the corpos don’t have the upper hand, they have to make a product we’re willing to buy. We always have the right not to buy it and should use it more often. If any brand makes a bad product or sells it with too high price, we should fully use our right not to buy it. Not accept it, begrudgingly, and buy it.
I have done it multiple times over and no corpo hit squad has shown up to force me to buy anything. Even much more easier for digital goods as we can always sail the high seas.
While yeah it hasn’t have had any effect on the overall market, at least i have a clear conscious and refuse to become a victim of corporations.More people should use this right, we are not helpless victims of corporations.
The corporation always has the upper hand because the customer CAN ONLY buy what the corporation is OFFERING to sell
Absolutely not correct, because the opposite is also true. The corporation can only sell what the consumer is offering to buy.
But there are way more customers than there are corporations. What you’re saying it true only if the corporation is selling something no customers wants to buy. The existence of gaming whales more or less proves that is not the case. 90% of the customers can choose not to buy but as long as that last 10% covers the rest of 90% it doesn’t matter that the majority of the customers refuse to buy what is being sold.
That’s not an argument to take the same choice away from future customers.
We made the choice for mostly digital in a world where physical was still available as a fallback. That’s not the same situation as if it wasn’t. The existence of physical media and a resale market does prevent some of the worst fuckeries of an otherwise monopoly, regardless if you ever bought or sold used games.
Also Valve is a very different animal to Sony.
Steam has removed (not delisted from the store, removed the libraries of people that owned the game) less than 40 games since inception. Excluding F2P games, Valve has mostly refunded people where a game is outright removed.
Sony has closed 4 music stores in the same period, with no recourse for purchases. They’re removed tens of thousands of movies from PlayStation accounts over the same period, these were ‘purchased’ and then just removed for licensing reasons.
Valve has a level of trust they earned and why Digital only isn’t as much of a problem there, now. It was during the opening years becuase Valve has not earned that trust yet.
Sony has burned people so many times I just consider them not trustworthy in general. any ‘purchase’ on any Sony service is just a 2-3 year lease imo.
The younger generation, the future customers, do not care for physical media. They’re being raised in an increasingly digital only world. The only ones that care about physical media are the people that grew up with it before digital was a thing, and are stuck in their ways.
the future customers, do not care for physical media.
You did not understand my comment. They may not care about the physical media, but they will care about the fuckeries a Sony with a total monopoly over playstation games will force on people. Dictating higher prices without even the slightest competition will only be the beginning.
Last time I bought a disc it had just a downloader on it
Friendly reminder that GOG exists and has a backlog of great games that can keep you entertained for ages. If you want to put your money where your mouth us, I suggest putting it there.
Buying the hot new thing no questions asked is how we get more of the Sonys of the world.
I agree physical games are dead, but I’m sure as shit not buying digital from anyone with a history of plucking purchased shit out of people’s libraries.
This is what I will do. I’ll play my backlog, buy used games on disc and newer releases on gog.
Yeah… for global gaming market disk sales are like under 5% of total sales, even for consoles it’s like 10%. It’s a nice option for you and me, a collectors item, aftermarket sales, a hedge for digital “ownership” rugpulls? For publishers and devs it’s just a cost that doesn’t even justify itself, because nobody is buying or putting their money where their mouth is. How low would the marketshare have to go for them to be justifying pulling the plug. Nobody really gave a shit about physical until few days ago.
Plus 90% of the games that come with disk option these days are irredeemable AAA slop anyway. Digital distribution enabled the indie scene where all the innovation is these days. if we had disks we we wouldn’t have indie studios. Companies like EA, Sony, and Ubisoft would dominate totally and act as gatekeepers, because only they would have the resources pay for the upfront cost of publishing to make the damn things. Digital won, accept the caveats and be happy about the upsides.
