buying drm-free digital media is probably also okay, if you back it up yourself.

i don't do any subscriptions, myself.

"I'd like to pay rent for my heated seats!" -Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

They have played us for absolute fools

Exactly. We could crash it tomorrow if we just did this together. Each dollar you spend on it is a “yes” vote.

I've personally never rented anything & I've always bought physical media. I hate the whole idea of never actually owning the damn thing....

PHYSICAL MEDIA FOR LIFE !!

Is a rent-based economic system something new?

I used to rent VHS tapes and DVDs to watch movies for years. I never bought a VHS or a DVD in my life, and I watched hundreds of movies in those formats. Same thing for SNES games. Most of them I played after renting their cartridges for a weekend.

The only difference now is that the publishers are renting their products directly to us and making this their main source of income, making owning the products harder (or just plain impossible). But most third-world boys like me are used to this. I would never own official stuff anyway but I still have been consuming their content for decades.

I think the key part is the copy part at the end there.

For example: a bunch of 3DS games are dying due to age. So physical media can br lost just like digital.

If im recalling correctly, it's due to the quality of cartridges and how the games were stored on the carts(?). In which case getting a copy online is your next best bet. I feel like this whole rental system is the same deal. If they remove the ability to access the products you paid for, then you're perfectly fine to go grab a copy from somewhere.

The biggest reason to buy physical in my eyes is that having physical and digital versions of something acts as a failsafe for everyone when it comes to media specifically