People want retail games and if the big 3 can’t cover that market a new and more sustainable subject will fill that space. Maybe it’s time to bring back physical media to PC, a more open system where publishers could make profit selling their retail games similarly to vinyls for music.
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Also, I have a pet peeve:
I see a lot of people claim to want discs, but they haven’t actually used them given the choice.
Or buy DRM free. And they don’t.
For what it’s worth, I try to buy games from GoG first, first party storefront second, but that hardly even works anymore. It’s almost always only available on Steam. Maybe rarely on EGS or something, but then it’s not clear if the download is even DRM free, and it literally cannot be cheaper if it’s listed on Steam too, so that’s not really an option.
Nah. The hardware for making discs is aging, and not developed anymore. USB/SD cards are too expensive.
And digital key reselling? That’s a whole can of worms for grifters to squeeze.
Not that it doesn’t suck. I want to (legally) archive and resell my games.
…But I don’t know a good alternative.
No. Optical media bad.
The issue isn’t the copy being physical. The issue is the included license being too limiting.
Licenses aren’t new or necessarily bad. Even physical retail copies of movies with a license. You know that FBI and InterPol warning at the very beginning? That’s your license. It basically just limits you to personal use. If you charge people money to come to your house and watch it, or if you charge money to rent it, you need to purchase a copy that comes with a license which allows that.
If you were around during the days of movie rental stores, if you ever lost a rental movie and had to replace it, it would often cost $100 or more because you were replacing a copy that came with a rental license.
An ideal purchase would be a digital copy with a license similar to the one included with physical retail copies.
I’m all for people having discs if they want them but, man, I do not want that shit cluttering up my life.
What I’d like to see is good selling indie games doing a “limited edition” or “supporter edition” 6 months to a year after they launch. Have it be a physical box, with an SD card or Blu-Ray with custom art, plus various bits of merchandise.
Essentially, get them to make pre-order or limited editions after the game already launched and garnered goodwill instead of trying to front load all the greed.
I’d definitely buy copies if games like “Sea of Stars” or “Ori and the Blind Forest” did this
If they are DRM free so they could be resold or shared/traded then I’m on board. The only two problems I have with digital shit is you cannot share/lend/resell it and, if you’re not in control of storing it, there’s no guarantee it will always be available after purchase.
The whole point of PC is digital data though.
The original DOOM was shareware, you were allowed to copy and share it with your friends or online however you wanted because it promoted and popularized the game.
CDs on PC were always just a retail medium. Unlike classic consoles, there are very few PC games that run right off the disk. It was usually an installer.
I know people complain about Steam all the time with “you don’t actually own your games” but you do own your PC and the filesystem which means you can copy that data and do whatever you want with it. No EULA on earth is going to stop you.
Of course if it ships with DRM or relies on steam to launch, then yeah that’s lock in, but that’s where GOG and pirate repacks fill the space.
It was inevitable for consoles to go full digital because 90% of sales are digital and it gets the inherent convenience of digital media, but consoles don’t let you access the filesystem and do whatever you want. It’s a locked down system with a metric ton of security to prevent you from ever copying the game data.
Retail will also always reduce profit, especially for smaller developers who need to rely on a publisher to sell on their behalf.
Steam and GOG take a 30% cut, so it’s probably better to promote itch.io or some other platform if that’s a concern.
we need offline, drm-free installers and games that are not tied to the storefront you bought them in
physical versions could be offered for those, i think it would be cool! but it’s not necessary imo. as long as it’s preservable and transferable, it’s good.
You just described GoG which I don’t even want to recommend after they sent a bunch of Nazi emails and then went “Oopsie doopsie poopsie sowwie”.
yea gog can fuck off but the way they do games distribution is how it should be for everyone imo
No one actually wants physical media other than collectors and preservationists, and the latter can just write digitally obtained files to storage after the fact.
Modern games are very bloated, and even optimized 4K textures still take up a lot of space. We’re past the point where discs are remotely feasible as a way of efficiently storing games.
similarly to vinyls for music.
This one sucks so much. Vinyl coming back is awful.
- It is heavy, it costs a lot and takes a lot of energy to transport
- it is made of plasticizers, usually phthalates with lead as a stabilizer
- it degrades from every use
- the waste chemicals are often dumped into rivers and streams in poor populations
- a lot of energy is used in the steaming and pressing
- the sound quality is not as good as people think it is (inner distortion anyone?) and the “warm” and “feel good” sound are easily replicated in other ways. I don’t want to dwell on this one. Lets just say mastering and your equipment have a lot to do with this.
No, physical media is not useful for PC games, you want a DRM free installer (preferably with all relevant patches applied, both game patches and compatibility DLL/mods for older games), not the physical media (which may or may not have DRM).
This ship has sailed a long time ago on PC (~15 years ago).
I think drm-free indie oriented publishers like Annapurna could make a lot of money with physical copies.
I could see physical releases, at least as special editions, being a thing people would like. Though I think today SD cards would make more sense, at least if flash memory prices ever come back down.
But a SD card with a custom label in box with proper box art and a little art book inside would be cool for fans and collectors.
But a SD card with a custom label in box with proper box art and a little art book inside would be cool for fans and collectors.
Essentially Switch cartridges, but PC
Exactly
As someone with a collection of a couple hundred CDs and another hundred or so DVDs filling my closet, I’m not really sure everyone appreciates the logistics of holding physical media for a couple-hundred-game library.
That may be true, I just don’t see the point of storing the DRM free installerі on an optical disc, something like an SD card which can be easily updated seems like a much better fit.
Most computers don’t have optical disc drives (I do have one, but I am exception and I don’t use it for data).
I, for one, would be in favor of selling physical PC games on flash drives. Like, flash drives are (were? not sure how bad the chip shortage has hit them) dirt cheap, and even the biggest games today generally don’t go far beyond 128GB (not counting post-launch patches), and I can find 128GB flash drives retailing for $10 right now at Micro Center. I assume a big enough publisher buying in bulk could get them far cheaper and more price optimized for this specific use case, and 256GB drives for even larger games for not much more. It would be more expensive than discs or cards, true, but not every PC has a disk drive or SD card reader; every PC these days has USB ports and most of them have USB 3.0 now. And still being smaller and more durable than a disc the same way cards are, could save on packaging costs if they optimized the packaging for it.
I also feel that people buying physical PC games are usually enthusiasts willing to pay a premium, anyhow, and giving them a reasonably nice flash drive with the game on it would feel more “substantial” than just getting a card or disc in a plastic case.
I doubt it. At least for all but the most viral of indie games. Manufacturing physical copies is expensive and would involve minimum order quantity from suppliers.
Tbh, popular indie games could probably use crowdfunding platforms post launch to do it
I combine the two.
Burn offline drm free installers onto blank cds.
Well… Dvds, I can fit some older games into cds but they don’t have the same capacity.
Optical media really isn’t your friend. I love it, I have loads of old games on optical discs and I bought a PS5 with its disc drive specifically because that’s how I wanted to buy the media. But I also back up what I can to spinning rust or solid state drives that can sit cold stored until I want them. Optical media will degrade. There are exceptions, like M-Disc, but the medium is slow and space consuming.
If the files are DRM-free as they said, then there’s nothing stopping backups. I don’t get why you’re trying to paint it as an either/or thing
I’m not sure I understand. Whether it’s DRM free or not has no bearing on the reliability of optical media as a backup format. Discs you write to are not generally as reliable as factory pressings, with some archival exceptions, so it’s not the ideal choice. I wasn’t making any argument about whether it works or not.
JFC, how are you this dense?
I’ll spell it out for you then: Step 1: Buy DRM-free optical media Step 2: Place DRM-free optical media into an appropriate reader Step 3: Copy DRM-free files off optical media Step 4: You now have a digital backup for your cool collector’s item
I mean, I have an external hdd I keep a backup of important files on, and an ssd I use to transfer things onto a second computer, and it’s just a full backup of my primary pc.
Fair enough. I didn’t assume you were doing that for data generally. My original comment was unnecessarily condescending in tone, sorry about that.
Physical media has long sailed but not drm free software.
(I’m not sure which of those you’re referring to, just clearly stating)
I was talking about data storage on optical discs, not DRM free installers. :)
Perfect. 👍
It’s not the disc itself that people care about, it’s having a transferrable license. People want the option to rent games, or give them away/resell after playing. Physical media provides some legal protections for that because you are buying a license attached to the thing storing the software.
Digital distribution is a perfectly fine way to get a game, if it weren’t synonymous with big companies taking away your ownership of the right to use software you purchased. You can’t share a game you enjoyed with friends. If you lose access to your account you’re SOL. If the host server shutsdown, you better have had a stable copy installed/backed up.
People don’t hate digital downloads, they hate the consumer abuse they have enabled. Stop the consumer abuse, and only collectors will care about physical media.
That’s one of the use cases NFTs were meant for, noncustodial transferable digital property. Sadly, they got ruined by the ape jpeg grifters who didn’t even bother to upload the actual image to the blockchain. The entirety of Steam, Spotify, and Netflix could fit on a specialized blockchain like Arweave, but none of the publishers or big media corporations have any interest in doing that when they can “sell” them to you every 5 years or, better yet, let you rent them one month at a time. Maybe if one day people stop “buying” them, they’ll be forced to do that, but I won’t hold my breath.
That’s one of the use cases NFTs were meant for, noncustodial transferable digital property.
How would you: make the key transferable and secret, while still notifying the original vender it happened, and collect payment, and keep me from selling and turning off the key?
And once the vendor went away, no new keys would be issued. So why make a public crypto ledger, when their ledger suffices?
Just like an NFT. Useless in this case too.
Imo they weren’t ruined by grifters. NFTs are built on a flawed system that caters to exactly the kind of libertarian, free enterprise assholes who ate it up. If they weren’t running the grift, they were getting scammed themselves. Crypto is a mirage of wealth, and everything built on top of it is either only a vehicle for legitimate currency or laundering ill gotten gains. It’s just an unregulated stock.
Signed chains of custody already exist, they could be inplemented and nothing is stopping any of these marketplaces from doing so. They don’t need NFTs, which have a needlessly complex set of requirements, to validate a game’s license. Any service could leverage their pre-existing DRM scheme to let you sell your copy to someone else, but that doesn’t give them the same benefits as someone buying a new copy.
NFTs are built on a flawed system
What do you mean by that? What is the flaw of the system?
everything built on top of [crypto] is either only a vehicle for legitimate currency
What do you mean by “legitimate currency”? If I can buy and sell things for it, how is it illegitimate? There are plenty of non-strictly monetary blockchain and crypto applications, like arweave, for example, which is a decentralized, permissionless blockchain based data storage protocol where you can store and share encrypted private data like on google drive or publicly host files and static websites, or DAOs, which enable decentralized control and decision making through provably fair voting. Financial applications of crypto are also great. You can buy and sell things privately over the internet without a need for a middleman who will take a cut and can cut you off if the government makes them or they don’t like what you’re selling, like what happened with wikileaks, pornhub or more recently with steam. Platforms like hyperliquid and tokenized real world assets give people across the world, also from sanctioned and disenfranchised regions, access to global financial markets where they can privately and permissionlessly trade stocks, commodities, etc. without the need for a broker who can block buying and selling, like robinhood did during the GME short squeeze, front run them, and take a cut of their trades. People from countries with high inflation like Venezuela or Turkiye can use crypto to easily and safely store their wealth in a less inflationary asset like ₿, $ with stablecoins, or tokenized gold.
or laundering ill gotten gains.
How do you launder money with crypto? I thought that starting a fake business in the service sector like a beauty parlor or a restaurant was the gold standard for money laundering, tax man don’t care as long as he gets his cut.
Signed chains of custody already exist, they could be inplemented and nothing is stopping any of these marketplaces from doing so.
True, but that’s still dependent on the marketplace continuing to exist, if it ever disappears, so does your media. I suppose that’s also true for a blockchain, but it would be a lot less likely for the digital media blockchain to go down than some marketplace, and since it’s decentralized, the community would have a vested interest in running nodes to help keep it alive.
They don’t need NFTs, which have a needlessly complex set of requirements, to validate a game’s license.
What complex set of requirements do NFTs have? You can deploy them pretty easily these days. You can send them automatically upon payment, and you wouldn’t even need a server for that or validation of licenses, as it could all be done in the EVM with a smart contract.
Any service could leverage their pre-existing DRM scheme to let you sell your copy to someone else
This doesn’t address the accessibility issue. If the service goes down, you lose the media you “bought”, and doesn’t work for services without DRM.
You can’t reason with someone who is already biased to one position. They’ll never try to see the benefits.
But yeah we can have visa and mastercard approve all of our purchases too
I am biased, I admit, but that stems from lived experience. I was, for a time, pretty invested in the concept of cryptocurrencies, blockchain cryptography and NFTs. I don’t like traditional payment processors or banks, but I don’t think NFTs themselves are the solution. In general, I think applying physical restrictions to digital content is a bad idea, and ultimately that’s what NFTs and smart contracts aim to do. It sounds nice to be able to validate ownership, but all it does is prop up existing licensing schemes by building a framework to enforce them.
And if you don’t see a problem with that, then we’ve got different perspectives on the world and that’s fine, but don’t assume I’m not willing to listen.
I mean, there’s no reason NFTs are needed for that, a normal database would also work.
Sure but when a company shuts down or decides to shut down the database all the media goes with it. That’s what sony just did, all the stuff you “bought” went poof. Not having the ability to transfer the license is only half of the issue.
I’m like the only one I know with an optical drive in my computer and its not even a bluray drive. Maybe if they distributed on like USB drives? but that seems expensive
i’ve never had a hddvd or bd drive. there was one in a laptop we took in for recycling once. didn’t even bother pulling it.
I’ve been burning cds with my offline installers on every game I can. Finding blank cds in physical stores is hard, I lucked out finding this stack brand new at a thrift store.
I would very much like to have a desktop with cd racks filling the frame around it again.
Personally, so long as it’s DRM-free, physical, installers or zipped files sound like a good idea.
And like with vinyl, if it comes back, it’s to be expected that it isn’t as big as it once was. But being there, it’s another option for the preservation and ownership folks.
