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‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Going Digital-Only Is a Car Crash for Physical Media (www.hollywoodreporter.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 14 points 2 months ago (25 children)

How many games nowadays are available on a physical medium? Why would this be important?

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  • [–] 52 points 2 months ago (16 children)

    Its a line, some people like to buy and own. Remember this moment when you spend the rest of your life renting your media.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    I mean it might just shift to services like GOG. I use Bandcamp for music and don't buy physical CDs anymore because the files are DRM-free and easy to archive. Same with GOG for games I own on it.

    Now, Rockstar is definitely not doing a DRM-free release though. Hopefully a cracked version circulates eventually.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    We as a household have been Xbox a long time (and played GTA1 release day on PS1) but we are likely moving towards PC and GOG model. There’s just too many hoops, and too many greedy costs to continue with Xbox. It’s a sad time.

    We want to have control of our devices and media. I want to ensure I have access on my terms. I don’t wanna turn on my interface to see a glorified advertising screen.

    We don’t begrudge cost of games. It just get miffed at my rights as a purchaser continually being eroded and treated like I’m the issue for saying that’s not acceptable.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago*

    Not to ridicule your prior decisions, but it's been obvious since at least the xb360 days that gaming on a locked platform (console ecosystem) would always lead to the revocation of ownership and the inability to do what you wish with your own hardware and games (unless you modded them, and I recommend modding your old consoles if you still have them).

    There is no future for true game ownership on a locked platform. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft understand this quite well, which is why you are lured in to a walled garden with the cheaper "cost of entry", and have no true exit that lets you keep your stuff as they gouge you further and further.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago*

    I don't really care about owning for its own sake, but I know services only get worse for customers over time, so that makes me prefer owning some things.

    "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem"

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Yep! I’ve gone back to the glory days of an iPod, but with an old iPhone I use just for local music when I want Bluetooth & modern conveniences. Soooo much better! I have my whole library and then some on it, 128GB iPhone 12 filled with opus music, on an app I built with AI help.

    The app is just for myself and can’t be distributed as it uses some API stuff that can’t be posted to the App Store, but it took me about a solid 2 hours of work on Kiro (basically like cursor) to make my own perfect music app.

    It works totally offline, scrobbles everything I listen to, and when I have internet again automatically uploads it all to lastfm. Deep listening stats, the works.

    I’ve cancelled all of my music subscriptions now and have my own library of all the shit I like. For free! Want more music? Sail the seven seas!

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    You can also buy music directly from artists on Bandcamp Fridays where they still get 100% of the sale going to the artists. I was afraid that would stop when it got sold but it's not dead yet.

    Also, another option is to have a locally hosted Jellyfin or Plex (ha) server and stream to yourself. My music collection is over 600GB so there's not many phones that can hold it all.

    I also self-host a music scrobbling service with Maloja and Multi-Scrobbler docker containers so I can get similar types of stats as last.fm while also having more privacy. I was able to import my stats from last.fm to it as well.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Hell yeah I never knew that! I’ll do that for sure, I love supporting the artists directly & not having it go into someone else’s grubby hands. Thanks!

    Also very interesting on everything being self hosted, might have to look into that myself as my collection is growing rapidly haha

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    The point of last.fm for me is the recommendations more than the stats themselves, are you able to run a similar recommendation engine based on some musician database or similar?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago*

    Yeah unfortunately it does not have the same recommendation engine, just listening stats. I haven't looked for a recommendation engine because I hadn't thought about it. I'll look to see if there's anything like that now.

    EDIT: I always forget about ListenBrainz. Not self-hosted, but definitely a good last.fm alternative that includes artist recommendations.

    https://listenbrainz.org/

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Since a physical copy would undoubtedly require day one updates to just work properly, you would just end up with an unplayable physical copy If they decide to not make these updates available.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    I don't get it, you can have a DRM and online activation on a CD, and a DRM free digital copy.

    Also you come about a bit snarky.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    It’s not meant to be snarky. I suppose I just get frustrated at those who are willing to move towards a system where you don’t own a thing. I’m good, I can do without but I worry for the next gen tolerating bullshit from corps who have monopolised so much.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago

    Fair enough!

    I loved the cartridge era, just plug it in and switch your console on. Great for sharing too.

    But I don't get it with a, I guess, multi 100GB game, that will contain anti copy stuff, need patches, be made with DLC in mind and so on.

    For me it's just hipsterism or the need for some "feelgood", as it doesn't fix the problem with ownership.

    I remember when the CD could be installed 3 times, and that's it. I prefer a DRM free copy BTW, on my drive, what's your thoughts about that?

    I'm also a bit curious about all the downvoting 🤷🏻‍♀️ have we stopped discussing (this is not aimed at you of course)?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Literally all of them because there is no way for a game to exist without physical media. If it's on your SSD/HDD, it's on physical media. If it's in "the cloud" it's in someone else's SSD/HDD. It's always on physical media, just not a nice little disk in a box.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    It's important for people who buy/sell games second hand...

    Also it can be nice to find an old game you bought 20 years ago in a closet with your old console and have some chance to be able to just boot it up and play it without needing the servers to still be up and running...

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Because I like to actually own the stuff I buy. I don’t want to purchase access to a product for the same price as buying it outright.

    I’m also salty every time I see a digital game available for pre-order. Pre-order is to make sure you get one of a limited set of copies. There are unlimited digital copies. The only thing pre-ordering a digital game does is ensure upper management is less stressed about bug fixes and botched releases.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago

    Is that still possible with modern games? The last time I bought a physical game it came with a Steam key that locked it to my account. And that was 15 years ago. (Granted, it was Portal 2, so obviously it was on Steam. But I still couldn't give the disc to someone to let them play it.)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Almost all of my Nintendo games are physical. If I had a Playstation or an XBOX I'd go for physical copies as well. Why? Collector and resell value, also you can't just disable my physical game, you'd have to come by and physically take it away from me.

    On PC, I care less about it. If Steam shuts down tomorrow, I download everything today and unlock it via Goldberg or just pirate it on demand. On console, I either can't do that at all or it is quite challenging to do so (with some exceptions).

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