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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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Just to poke the hornets nest: if CDs and Blu-ray discs are a crappy medium, moving forward, what would you suggest to be the replacement?
I’m all for physical media, but current optical media is more than a generation past obsolete and needs to be replaced.
I personally don't get the fixation on physical media. Like sure, you may put it on the shelf, which can be nice. But realistically digital is the way to go for most people. I just want what GOG is doing, where you gat a real installer that just works without internet connection, without steam/gog installed, same today as in 20 years, even if GOG goes under.
Thousands of games are distributed in that form on Steam too. It's a publisher/developer choice which DRM they use on Steam if any.
And if it's Steam DRM they use, the solution if Steam goes offline is... the button that says "Go Offline".
That’s exactly the same with Xbox and PlayStation though (the steam offline bit). You can always play your digital games on your designated “home” console as it stores licenses locally on it.
Steam still suffers the same issue where if steam shuts down and you buy a new PC, you won’t be able to “go offline” on it and play your games. They’ll forever be stuck on the pc that was your “home” PC.
System images exist, but ok? Assuming most people don't have that technical knowledge, all those non-DRM games still work. I can copy and paste Kerbal Space Program and play it anywhere. The games with DRM I bought, I bought knowing what I was buying. I also bought knowing that what I was purchasing was smooth distribution and streamlined updates and safe and easy network play and not running random Russian .exes with an EDM soundtrack while cracking; but also with trust that those would still exist if Steam didn't.
System images don’t get around steams home console feature lol.
People buying digital console games also bought them knowing what they were getting. The number of Steam games that have no drm is irrelevant because it’s all stuff that’s regularly given away for free anyway.
Just confidently stating untruth because the vibes suit
True. But steam's DRM is trivial. So if you downloaded your games and steam goes dark, you can easily "crack" them. I often do this to circumvent the 2hr refund window and test longer. As many games try to keep you entertained for at least 2hrs 😁
“Test longer”
You can just say you pirate games mate.
I buy if I like. I won't if I don't. My library is already too big, that loading it takes ages.
I pirate movies and series though. Without exception AND for convenience.
Sure, but then why pay for them at all, unless you really want to support the devs?
It being legal and convenient is the improved service that can help reduce piracy.
Paying is up to the user of course. It was just meant as a "it's not as bad as others in DRM". Also you could have hundreds of games for 0,- there, too.
For me it was indeed the convenience. I was pirate since the 80s but steam gave a reason to just buy. Be it updates, workshop, community all around a game, news for that etc.
DRM-Free files that the user can archive on their own media, in their own format, as they wish.
The ability to distribute media without shipping physical goods allows for much smaller productions to have wide releases and in some cases to make their games cheaper than otherwise required (cough, switch tax). The issue is the DRM preventing the user from making their own backups, rather than the physical product (although steam does allow you to make backups and copies of your library folder which is cool).
A distinction here is what is being sold to us. A disc is 'goods' where are sold the product under the assumption of ownership.
What is actually being given is a service!
We want ownership of a good, not rent of a service and digital via sony/Xbox is the latter.
The discs served as a proxy for licensing, right? It's easy to conflate owning the disc with owning the rights to play the game; but it's also easy to have DRM render discs useless if a game has "phone home" to unlock itself.
People don't necessarily want discs, they want to own a copy of the game. It's not a physical medium that really separates the two, it's licensing and DRM software.
Every studio would get closed literally within a generation if everyone went DRM free. Every. Single. One.
Btw you can already archive your PS5 and Xbox digital games. You can download them and transfer them to external drives, as many times as you want. Then you can plug those drives in to any Internet connected console and play them with your profile.