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

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

#131

Post by Gigachad »

harrisoned wrote: post #84
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It allows you to play your games offline though, so if Steam's servers go down you can still play your games. I'm not sure if that's permanent or if you need to reactivate your DRM / license every once in a while though.

Around a decade ago i had to move to another city and spent a few months without internet. I had all my favorite games downloaded on Steam and was able to play them offline with no issue for all that time. Not sure if it still like that, but it was possible back then.

It’s not possible with any Denuvo game which will require you reactivate with a drm server every so often.

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

#132

Post by grumbel »

glimshe wrote: post #90
cautiouscat wrote: post #9

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…

That's the one reason I don't use Steam. I'm not saying Valve is evil or anything like that. But GOG's transparency and commitment to DRM-free games should be the market standard.

DRM-free was a nice idea 20 years ago, the problem is that it doesn't scale. There is just way to much media out there to keep track of and especially with games you are looking at frequent updates and patches, that your DRM-free backup won't get, unless you turn backup up a full time job to keep track of it all.

If GOG went down tomorrow, those games would be gone just the same as the Steam ones, since I gave up trying to back them up a decade ago.

On top of that, those updates can be kind of useful. None of my GOG games run on Linux, while most of my Steam games run on Linux. Also annoying: None of the GOG games run on a genuine Win9x either, as what you are getting is an updated version for modern Windows, not the original game.

Either way, I just don't think DRM-free is the proper solution for media management today or in the future. The olden days of static media are largely gone and the modern world is just way more fluid. So far none of the proposed solutions are able to capture that properly.

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

#133

Post by K3UL »

I keep seeing article like this, that look like they have been written by these companies to push the opinion. People saying "who cares because you cannot play it anyway" instead of "discs should be less dependant on network to gain another advantage".

But the case for physical disk is not (only) about playability, it's mostly about ownership and the fact that you can actually lend it to someone or resell it. It's also about retail, and it's about collectors. About people with a slow or limited connection having access with that much less to download.

Another thing is also that if I have a physical copy, I have the right to a digital copy. So a non-working disc might not always be the end. But if I have a digital copy and they take it off the table, I do not have this right and it is gone forever.

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

#134

Post by egeozcan »

cautiouscat wrote: post #9

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…

My son and we as his parents really love Bluey, but it's impossible to buy a DVD set here in Germany, with German dub, because Disney distributes it exclusively through their plus platform.

There are many more examples like these. Very sad state of affairs.

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

#135

Post by b3lvedere »

account42 wrote: post #119
b3lvedere wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not staying this to be pendantic or to annoy you, but you really do know that at the bottom line, the same sort of license applies to movies and music that as of games. It is just accepted with movies, music and books that people just 'have' them. The publishers seriously know what a huge outrage there would be when they did the same to those forms of media like they did with games, but they would if they could get a…

A lot of games are not sold with re-sellable licenses at all while almost all movies are.

You can resell a movie (dvd/blu-ray) and music (cd, tape, etc) like you can resell a physical book. But if the license you have actually agrees on that, i don't really know. Back then i had several dvd's that granted watching it in a family environment but did not grant you reselling.

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

#136

Post by trelane »

ragazzina wrote: post #88
jerf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General principle: It is way easier to avoid lock in by not being locked in in the first place then to extricate yourself later. It's easy for me not to be locked in to a streaming video service because I had a DVD collection that predates them, and I maintained it instead of being on a streaming service, so I've got a personal collection. It's easy for me not to be locked in to a streaming music service because I ha…

>and I maintained it How do you plan on maintaining your CD and DVD players when the new ones will be sold with a subscription plan like printers?

> How do you plan on maintaining your CD and DVD players when the new ones will be sold with a subscription plan like printers?

If you buy physical media, you should rip it to FLAC and put the original disc in a safe place.

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

#137

Post by pluralmonad »

7e wrote: post #101

Own? You don’t own someone else’s work. Even when it goes into public domain, you don’t own their creation. At that point, nobody does.

I own everything I've learned. I also own some hardware on which I sometimes deposit this information for later retrieval. I own all of it, keys to nuts.

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

#139

Post by happymellon »

righthand wrote: post #95
inigyou wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Steam games don't actually have any DRM. They just link to steamapi.dll for things like achievements, and that makes you think you can't run them without Steam. Some have DRM, of course.

What is the command I can use to run them without Steam then? If the game links to a dll that launches Steam and won’t play without it, then that is effectively Drm. Before I even play the game without Steam: how do I download it without Steam?

Depends on the game. Stardew Valley can be run outside Steam, and I do it to be able to add mods.

How do you run an application? Depends on the application, as they all have different filenames...

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

#140

Post by saghm »

Uvix wrote: post #112
inigyou wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not an actual Steam Deck? You can install any software you want on it.

You can but having to hook it up to a mouse and keyboard and monitor every time I want to install new games from not-Steam would be a pain.

Out of curiosity, why not use desktop mode without an external mouse and keyboard for that?
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