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Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

birchtree.me

641–650 of 796 posts

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#641
post #33

Even if the games are played off the internal hard drive with updates, there's a bit of "legal grey area" where enthusiastic fans of the game rebuild the code, and run the game with assets from the original media. "Technically" only folks with the original media in their possession will be able to play the original game.

For example the Ship of Harkinian PC port of Ocarina of Time. This requires a legal or illegal copy of the original game to run, so the copyright authorities don't crack down on it yet.

Mah boi, this decompile is what all true warriors strive for!

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#642
I have a new rule that I will attempt to follow:

For every game I purchase, I shall also download and archive a pirated version. If it is not possible to download a pirated version, then hold off on the purchase until it is possible.

This works for me as an ~18 years 'sober' reformed gamer, so there's nothing I'm desperate to play on release. My plan is to collect a bunch of the best games (within my small-ish bubble of interest) of the last X years, and play through them in retirement, time and interest pending. This excludes me from online-only games, which is OK with me.

I'm not saying this rule will work for more 'active' gamers, but I think it might be something to aspire to.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#643
post #190

I don't have a console other than an old PS4 rarely used and I was going to buy a PS5 until the recent news. Now I don't want to buy xbox because of this post. So, what's left? I have a kid and little time and I haven't been a "gamer" since I was a teenager but I want to be able to play maybe 5 or 6 games (co-ops, FIFA, GTA) without downloading anything. It's even more annoying for me because I often have phases of o…

Old consoles, old games, or no video games is a solid choice too

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#644

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

[deleted]

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#645
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to simply purchase some Minecraft thinggy for my kid and Microsoft sent me through what seemed to be a 70 step process of logging in, captcha, authenticating, verifying, logging in again, trying to buy, getting blocked, captcha, authenticating again, E-mail verification, online verification, blocked again, contacting support, authenticating, talking to their fraud team, re-logging in, captcha, authenticating,…

As they say, the day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck will be the day they start making vacuum cleaners.

That is so perfect I'm going to steal it and post it on my work's Slack channel as my own.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#646
post #29

Recently got a big fancy TV with 4k + Dolby Vision It’s a lot of work figuring out what movies support the format. And all the premium upgrades to Netflix, etc get them to stream premium formats. Then it doesn’t work and you’re spending 30 minutes debugging your TV, wondering why you’re not getting the amazing new restoration of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I totally understand why people just buy physical media. Games may…

You can just pirate movies.

This is how you get a movie that's really quiet for some reason and maybe in some forsaken format

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#647
post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to take a 25 year break from Microsoft, from 2000 to 2025. Yet I was drawn back in because my son wanted to play Minecraft. This was the worst account process of any system ever invented, as far as I can tell. Plus in 2025 I had some interesting clients that are large corporations that use Microsoft as their core IT practice. The escape to the relative simplicity and consistency of AWS interfaces, from MS…

I started writing a long rant about my experience with Microsoft accounts, Minecraft and Microsoft Family whatever they call it. Parental controls and stuff. But I think I'll just agree with you. It sucks, it's confusing and is designed to suck as much money out of you as possible.

[deleted]

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#649

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

I did this a couple of months back. Ended up refunding the game after spending nearly two hours "playing" the account creation game. If someone doesn't want my money, that's fine by me I guess.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#650
post #108

Gaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s…

Someday that GameCube will break and so will all the others. And someday that PC capable of running open source emulators will also break. And all that will be left is corporation controlled hardware running corporation controlled software. Maybe we'll be lucky and be allowed to rent a few of the old games.

This. My old GameCube is already broken, the optical drive decided to die. Fortunately some Swiss magic still allows it to run games, otherwise it would just be an expensive paperweight.
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