Now, digital stores emphasizes digital games are licenses, not ownership

[Stare best girl]

don't support the mandatory digital-only bullshit Nintendo has been pushing lately. The industry's fucked and has been for a long time.

it's more 3rd-parties fault for using that piece of shit instead using 64GB carts while Nintendo has the fault for make that shit as a option instead of more sizes

in Xbox is even worse as Microsoft not longer makes its games in physical and instead prefers let fucking Limited Run make the work

 

[Kebasketball]

I could have sworn that snippet has been on Steam for ages now. Anyway, yeah, that's digital storefronts for you. So convenient, eh?
Buy on GoG, buy physical, don't support the mandatory digital-only bullshit Nintendo has been pushing lately. The industry's fucked and has been for a long time.

True that, been doing the same for years, collect them games and emulator to preserve for life and 100gb M disks blue ray bdxl on Amazon, the good main brand, can last for hundreds of years and easily longer than our lifespan, and than external hard drives and then micro sd card sandisk extreme for best reliabilty for years, I never had a problem for 8+ years using them. You can't trust these companies at all before we kmow it they could even ban emulators sp best to back them up as well since evil has ran amuck anymore in companies and nobody seems to be able to do much yet at least.

 

[JG5009]

Honestly, screw it, this is why Switch emulation / hacks are good, alongside physical carts and things like GOG. Any game (be a ROM or fully offline copy) that can never be revoked remotely and doesn't need yet another account to function will always work and are fully owned files no matter how much time passes, it's just necessary to have this alternative more than ever.

At this point I buy to support the devs and I get another copy on the internet to actually play it, without having to deal with the intendo account bullshit, I just don't care anymore.

 

[PhantomTohsaka]

Meanwhile GOG: You paid for the game, you keep the damn game
View attachment 117793

What's Gog? I've haven't heard about it before.

 

[trickybus]

If you're going to buy digital, you need to learn how to back-up the game files. It's possible to play Steam games without Steam.

 

[Pro Pixel Player]

I could have sworn that snippet has been on Steam for ages now. Anyway, yeah, that's digital storefronts for you. So convenient, eh?
Buy on GoG, buy physical, don't support the mandatory digital-only bullshit Nintendo has been pushing lately. The industry's fucked and has been for a long time.

You got hope, Rusty?

 

[RustySK]

You got hope, Rusty?

Now that's one hell of a question. For the industry at large and its focus on digital distribution?
Not really, no. Not so long as marketing, advertising and online culture continue to function the way they currently do.
But I'm also a pessimist in general and haven't had the best couple of years lately, so take that with a grain of salt.

I think it mostly comes down to an ideological question of whether you want to support the downward spiral or reject it to whatever extent you reasonably can as an individual.

 

[Leifang]

You mean this?

View attachment 117806

Usually found on legal VHS tapes

Many like this, notice how this license is so insane you're not allowed to copy (reproduction) the tape, OR to SHOW it (exhibition) to people... xD of course nobody followed those laws, and sometimes they had less insane licenses like allowing it for "private non-commercial" viewing at home.

You never owned the content. It just didn't stop anyone from copying analog media, then digital with CD and DVD-Rs, every time new formats like Blu-Ray appear the whole piracy protection was hinging on it being hard to copy/duplicate, that's part of the reason why everything moved to streaming now.

If they let you just download a file normally, it would be way easier to copy and send it to someone without a subscription.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

It was clearly the case since day one, even physical games are technically more like licences with the program installed on.

At least they're explicit about it.

Post automatically merged: Oct 12, 2025

Meanwhile GOG: You paid for the game, you keep the damn game
View attachment 117793

*As long as you still have your account to download said games and installed somewhere.

 

[skramz]

you guys buy digital games? LOL

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

you guys buy digital games? LOL

Many indies are digital only.

 

[skramz]

Many indies are digital only.

caught me there, i've pirated many indie games but in the end have ended up purchasing around 90% of them, even if they were a bit too costly (looking at you, factorio!)

 

[DreamCPS]

I think that since we're paying for licenses, not ownership, we should be charged accordingly. If the game isn't actually mine, that should be reflected in the price.

But these things are always very complicated and bureaucratic, not to mention the erratic way in which laws of any kind are often applied.