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The news as of late
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Gaming
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All I am seeing is people complaining about no longer getting games on optical media, something I thought was redundant back in the 2000s. But apparently console gamers really like their shiny discs for some reason.
Physical media is massive for the global south and generally more impoverished people, you can buy used game discs much cheaper. Another reason why forced always-online for single player games is terrible, multiple reasons, but if you are poor you have less access to reliable data. If you are of lower wealth you more likely have less storage space and slower internet speeds also which makes it more inconvenient. I agree with the idea of digital only in that it takes less resources to produce but it benefits the corporate profits while hurting already disadvantaged people.
Another argument separate is preservation of media. By removing physical media publishers can maintain control of the property and cause the loss of media which could have historic, social or educational value. It would still be possible to preserve the data but with more difficulty either physically or legally.
Also public libraries can carry discs and cartridges, but they can't somehow distribute "digital licenses" for games. (I'd say "yet" but publishers would probably start flinging poop over that one.)
They have platforms to do this with ebooks, and it is an assache that also thoroughly undermines the absurdity of pretending that IP is 1:1 analogous with tangible items. Can’t “borrow” a digital file for six weeks because two people have already done so and five more put their names on a list before me?
We gotta support creators, I get that, but copyright itself was always a hack based on literal scarcity of books.
Oh yeah, agreed on all points!
It generally works very well for ebooks, but yes, I think digital licensing is just as silly as "Web 3.0" before it was a thing.
The reason for my comment was that acquiring and checking out physical copies is easy: You catalog it and they circulate.
But for a digital platform with the AAA games industry? They'd probably demand some incredibly obtuse monolithic licensing platform with a ton of convoluted restrictions, not to mention the vast data difference between a simple ebook vs. a 100+ GB game.
So discs and cartridges are good to have in this case, multiple people can experience games, the people behind the games still get paid, for now until we reach Star Trek economy, it works.
Reselling discs, the option to have an offline copy that cannot be revoked, and consumer choice are never a bad options to have. I paid for the product, I should be able to do with it whatever I wish. Though most discs now are just a download code, we can demand consumer protection for the products they make us spend ridiculous amounts of money to attain, and take back our right to actually own what we buy instead of having a license with a potential end date we are never informed of. Look at Sony removing media, and UbiSoft shutting down servers of single player games rendering them unplayable.
As far back as I can remember game discs basically always came with an online activation so they weren't really offline or forever playable if the servers went down.
But in the same concept you could also save the game install files and have the equivalent of a physical disc just in SSD or HDD form.
That's a valid POV for computers but how are you proposing that someone does that on a PlayStation or Xbox without jailbreaking them?
There was a period where that was true for PC but that generally hasn’t been true for consoles
Yeah. I don't want to have a huge amount of Games in my Home. But I do want to own the license/game and there need to be laws dropped providing that kind of access.
It is a foul excuse by publishers that you cannot own a Game. Yes. I cannot own the Code or development tools. But I can own the fully functioning game. We never got that to begin With. It is all about control.
You cannot own the copyright, but you absolutely can and do own a copy. The notion of "licensed, not sold" is a lie.
Well then I have some excellent news for you. GOG sells games without any DRM, once you download it and can install it anywhere without internet access. You can even copy the installert to back it up.
Woah I didn't know Sony let GOG onto Playstations!
Don't get a playstation then. You are literally voting with your wallet.
Kind of a problem when the alternative to a console is either an expensive PC that you still have to set up (and has a more clunky expirience than a console) or the steam machine which isn't cheap either in this economy
If someone is too stupid to work out how to double click a file to launch it I don't think their opinion even deserves respecting. Keep in mind you need to setup an account to use a console too these days, and enter billing information. Installing a game is easier than that.
As for expensive... It just isn't. Sure, you CAN spend thousands on a really high end PC, but you also don't have to do that if you don't want to. If you want to get into really fun stuff you can game on stupidly cheap hardware. But even push button and ready to install games doesn't have to be that expensive.