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GameStop Boss Says Disc Drives Should Be Required On Game Consoles (www.gamespot.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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"It would be great if people had to buy more of the thing," says guy who makes money selling the thing.

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[–] 44 points 3 years ago (9 children)

I mean.. he has a vested interest. But he's right we need media that isn't dependent on official servers

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  • [–] 17 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    If only that was what he was saying. He doesn't care whether they're dependent on servers. The vast majority of physical games sold today are already nothing more than an entitlement and some of the game files, with the rest being downloaded after you insert the disc. He's only concerned with Gamestop getting their cut, both in new game sales and especially in their bread-and-butter trade-in market.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Of course making money is his motive, but that does that matter?

    Digital distribution only means you can't give (or sell) your games to someone else. So with digital only the copyright holders of the video games make more money. Once it's all digital only, next step is to require a connection to a server for them to work, so then they can shut it down to force you to buy a new console and re-buy all the old games you want to play again. What are you going to do if the decide to go that way? It's either stop playing video games altogether, or go along with whatever scheme they feel like coming up with when they enshittify themselves like every other company inevitably does.

    A physical copy means more options for the consumer, why should we care how much of the pie this corporation or that corporation makes off of it? In fact corporations in general make even more money from non-transferable digital distribution.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I'm not sure why you're trying to convince me of the merits of physical media? I did not, and do not, disagree. It's a more flexible option, and more options is always better for the consumer. But the reality is that physical media, in its current iteration, doesn't offer all that much protection. The only universal benefit of physical media is the ability to regift or resell. It's a great benefit, but it hardly liberates consumers from dependence on servers.

    As for my original point, it simply read to me as if this person was giving the GameStop exec credit for something he did not say. I wanted to make sure his comments were seen in an accurate light.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    So we should reject an ally that has a shared goal simply because their motives aren't pure enough?

    It's the old Stephen Fry quote "it's more important to be effective than it is to be right." We shouldn't care so much about whether or not someone has the right reason for trying to affect a positive result. Gamestop's motives are irrelevant, the effect of their actions are what matters.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Given that MS have put a lot of work into making your digital 360 titles work on Series s/x and even upgrading some of them, I don't think that's a concern with all publishers.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    In the days of zero days patches and DRM requiring a check to the servers, a disc doesn't guarantee that at all.

    If anything, disc just became dongles to prove ownership and download the full game.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    This is also true. With DRM, I feel like we're missing out on a lot of property rights that should be remediated. I'm not sure what all could be done for zero day patches, though. Maybe we go back to the Windows XP days and distribute update packages via CD as well. TBH, though- if we have the ability to directly access the storage medium of a console and we are able to remove DRM, there's no reason to make a disc drive mandatory

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