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Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

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Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#41
I don't understand how we are running into a future where I cannot buy the equivalent of "PS2 + 5 games" on a second-hand shop. That has been the main way to play games for a lot of people: buy a previous gen pack (with N games included) when the richer neighbour was upgrading to the next gen console.

How's that going to work out today or in newer generations?

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#42
post #28
post #13

Discs don’t matter. The whole “bring back discs” thing is pointless. They’re gone. Period. Rights matter. If we had the same rights with digital purchases we had with old physical games the disc thing would be a much much smaller issue. Would many care outside true collectors? Don’t confuse the two. If you do, and you complain loudly enough, you’ll get the monkey’s paw version of discs. All the downsides of both, no…

Legal rights don't matter if the other party is ever liquidated, or otherwise unable to meet their obligations.

If gog.com went away tomorrow, downloaded games and installers should be copyable to another PC relatively easily (so far this has worked 100% for me at least).

I'm not sure how easy it will be to copy downloaded games to another PS3 once Sony pulls the plug on the PSN store (and likely PSN login) for PS3 next year.

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#43

The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around. So it's an irrational response but an understandable emotional response. It's a final marker of an era that realistically ended more than a decade ago. That video games are not an island: an enclosed experience of just you, the…

> Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around. I disagree. They are using that as an excuse, when in reality they simply desire more control. When Sony releases their sales numbers they never compare physical and digital sales of games that are offering both, but rather compare physical sales to everything digital including DLC and digital-only games to make…

Just going off vibes, I think if Sony could sell a physical media from now until the end of time they would. This is a company that engineered a tiny optical drive and little DVDs encased in cartridges that slot in for their portable game system. Whenever you read about a format war, one side is almost always Sony. This is also a company that like took a full month to recover their online services. My point is I think Sony is a follower and not a leader in this space. If they could print discs and license the tech to deal with them from now until the end of time they would.

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#44
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal rights don't matter if the other party is ever liquidated, or otherwise unable to meet their obligations.

If gog.com went away tomorrow, downloaded games and installers should be copyable to another PC relatively easily (so far this has worked 100% for me at least). I'm not sure how easy it will be to copy downloaded games to another PS3 once Sony pulls the plug on the PSN store (and likely PSN login) for PS3 next year.

I’ve run into several games that will not launch at all of you don’t have galaxy or galaxy has no internet.

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#45
post #41

I don't understand how we are running into a future where I cannot buy the equivalent of "PS2 + 5 games" on a second-hand shop. That has been the main way to play games for a lot of people: buy a previous gen pack (with N games included) when the richer neighbour was upgrading to the next gen console. How's that going to work out today or in newer generations?

The young people today are so used to just paying a subscription, it’s really sad. On the upside there is a movement in buying older physical media among the youth but I think it’s more of a fad.

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo is the worst. Another example: Wii virtual console purchases don't carry over. They're selling people the exact same Mario ROMs dozens of times in a display of absolute rent seeking. Playstation recently got caught remotely deleting people's "purchased" movies too. I too bought a Steam Deck and haven't looked back. It's still a normal computer even if Steam itself goes to shit, but all signs point to it stea…

The Switch has one particular feature that doesn't get enough talk: basically any game update can be sent to another Switch peer-to-peer. I'm pretty sure it even works with Game Key Cards, since they're just a rebrand of an annoyance that the Switch 1 had since launch. You could, at least hypothetically, put every physical cartridge in a Switch or Switch 2 and download all the updates to those games, and just have an…

Steam does this for installation with machines on the local network! It will discover them and get the data from those machines instead of downloading from the wider internet. I’m not sure if it works for updates but it might!

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#48
post #28
post #13

Discs don’t matter. The whole “bring back discs” thing is pointless. They’re gone. Period. Rights matter. If we had the same rights with digital purchases we had with old physical games the disc thing would be a much much smaller issue. Would many care outside true collectors? Don’t confuse the two. If you do, and you complain loudly enough, you’ll get the monkey’s paw version of discs. All the downsides of both, no…

Legal rights don't matter if the other party is ever liquidated, or otherwise unable to meet their obligations.

This is just straight up false. Laws don't cease to exist because of a liquidation. Legal rights absolutely matter in the event of a liquidation, and will be part of any liquidation process.

For example, if there was a law that the entire source code (including server code) should be immediately put into public domain if the game maker is unable to meet their obligation of serving up the game due to liquidation, then the release of the source code would be a legally sanctioned part of the liquidation process.

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#49
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me think of how we have to manually block certain devices (usually smart TVs) so they don’t “phone home” and show us ads and so forth. I see your switch being banned as a sort of mixed blessing. It’s liberating in a way. I wonder if there’s some way to use a proxy to self host the software patches. We had something similar on the PS3 homebrew scene.

The PS3 is a relic from an era where consoles being connected to the internet was still a relatively new concept, and security was a lot more lax. Newer consoles like the Switch are far more locked down, everything is signed/encrypted/verified/etc so any tinkering of that sort is impossible without a kernel code execution exploit. The only option for a banned Switch Lite is installing a modchip (there are people who…

I'm fairly sure it's one of the reasons both MS and Sony went with AMD hardware from 2013 onwards, they can make use of the security/virtualization features their server platform has.

Re: Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

#50

The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around. So it's an irrational response but an understandable emotional response. It's a final marker of an era that realistically ended more than a decade ago. That video games are not an island: an enclosed experience of just you, the…

I think you misunderstand. The disc was the practical tie-down and compromise that allowed gamers to stomach what was happening. Whether or not gamers actually took advantage of the opportunity, the fact that there was a disc out there that they could physically pick up and buy meant that console game publishers (and, by extension, non-indie PC game publishers) couldn't descend into the depths of perma-Early Access-dom, or sell you a "game" that was really a pre-order.

If physical releases actually go away, that dystopia comes to bear. Console publishers think that this is a step in the direction of further control over their library, which is laughable. They're killing the compromise, the other side of which was, "Gamers will mostly respect console DRM and not flood the zone with "Explicitly Fuck You" piracy." These companies are about to learn a hard lesson.

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