• sanpo@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    It’s not like physical media makes any difference anyway these days.

    Actual disk often gets just a glorified installer, and even if it includes the entire game you’re likely to have to activate it online anyway.

    The “own your games” ship has sailed long ago, unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups.

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups

      Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer. I try to buy games there instead of Steam, purely for this reason.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer.

        Note that this is a major selling point for GOG and available on most of their library, but unlike their early days, not everything is DRM-free.

    • PunchingWood@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The difference is the price of buying discs vs. buying from a digital store that has no competitors.

      I’ve bought almost exclusively second-hand discs for my PS5, because they’re like half the price for the exact same content.

      Sadly it’ll probably be just a matter of time before those will be phased out as well, one way or another.

        • PunchingWood@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They can, difference is a vast majority of people don’t want to buy/build a PC, or deal with a PC setup in general, they just want to press one button to make it work and sit on the couch. So the easy option for them is buying a console, it’s plug and play, while a PC requires quite some setup.

          • iopq@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            So we need Steam Box. Steam Deck just works 99% of the time. I can only complain about the desktop mode being buggy and non-steam games being a pain in the ass to install.

            • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              Then we return to the topic of not owning your games with Steam. Try installing non Steam games via the Heroic launcher and use Bazzite OS instead

              • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Try getting non-playstation games on your Playstation. What about games from older Playstation? Can’t get most of those on there. And let’s not pretend you “own” Playstation games anymore when so many require online amd patches anyways.

                Steam is more value for money and improved services and support. I used to be a die hard Playstation fan but it got old being treated like shit.

                • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today
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                  1 year ago

                  You can get generally up to PS3 games working on PC and you’d be owning those games too. Value for money is good and all but owning vs leasing is clear cut and I’ll take owning my stuff everytime, as that is valuable to me.

    • dmention7@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      For $700 they could at least throw in a 4k Blu-ray player.

      Then again, I ponied up extra for the disc version of the original ps5 for that exact reason, only to find out the media player software is a giant piece of garbage that was clearly given no effort. So I can’t say I’m too surprised.

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I remember thinking it was bs when half life 2 required a steam account and now everyone loves it.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        For better or worse, the landscape has shifted since then. I can’t imagine people love Steam for being Steam, but rather for being the most consumer-friendly platform on PC.

        Refunds? No questions asked if it’s within 2 weeks and 2 hours of playtime.

        User reviews and ratings? Yes, and even comments on those reviews.

        Community content? Steam discussions, guides, art, etc. Even mods with the workshop.

        Bribes development studios for exclusivity deals? Nope! Devs can release games wherever the fuck they want.

        Platform support? PC. Not just Windows, but going out of their way to make Linux a first class citizen. They even support Crapple despite its miniscule market share among PC gamers.

        • IcePee@lemmy.beru.co
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          1 year ago

          You’re right. But, all this good stuff is to obfuscate the central fact that you don’t own the property you bought. Sure, Valve has claimed that should they go away, as their last act, they’ll provide the ability for users to own their purchases, but who actually believes them?

    • B312@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Thing is, that’s not how it works on PlayStation. On PS5 you can download and play games without ever connecting to wifi. The whole glorified installer is mostly an Xbox thing ever since the XB1. I’d know since I own both and usually get discs to play my games.

    • mesa@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m glad some companies are going full media and the younger Gen is buying physical media. It’s creating a counter culture that smart companies are using to their advantage.

    • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Is it possible for modern games to fit on a disk?

      I think it would be an interesting change if brand new games had a hard limit on file size so they can fit on and play from an actual disk.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Absolutely. It just depends a lot on the game of course. A blueray disk can contain over 100 GB. But a game could be split over several disks too. It was rather common to do that with CDs on the original PlayStation.

      • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The issue isn’t the game engine, it’s the texture files.

        If you don’t care what it looks like, you cut 80-90% or more from any modern game subbing low quality textures.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          If they use a good, 12X bluray drive, it will be quicker to install from a disk than to download it unless you’re lucky enough to have a good fiber internet connection. Even then, the servers you download from will often be overloaded and slow on release day.

          • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            That’s not my point. Most games do install fine from the disk.

            He’s talking about playing from the disk, too, and that’s a problem.

    • criticon@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      It does if you rent

      I’ve been using gamefly for a while, I can’t rent digital only games

    • Pasta Dental@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      This in my opinion is one of the valid use cases of a blockchain/NFTs: they provide provable ownership of digital goods. This means that if implemented, in the future we could actually own games music movies ebooks etc. The only remaining step would be a decentralized torrent-like system that allows the users to download the licensed content that they own via their nft.

      • Zorque@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean, I can actually own a bunch of stuff as long as it doesn’t have some sort of proprietary DRM bullshit attached to it.

        The problem isn’t that there’s no way to obtain media in a non-bullshit way. The problem is that distributors don’t want to provide media in a non-bullshit way.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          Sure, you can still own digital media, but you can’t sell or trade it like you can with a physical copy.

      • patatahooligan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        How would an NFT help in any way? We’re not lacking the means to prove you bought the game. We’re lacking companies willing to sell you games and laws that prevent companies from saying “buy” when they mean “rent”. If we got to a place where torrenting software you’ve bought in the past is legal, we don’t need NFTs to accomplish it…