Funny. The consumer didn’t make physical media worse for the last 15 years.
Manual or at least something besides the disk: Gone Price: Same as digital despite they getting more profit from digital. Disc: half the game, other half downloads. (Not always, mind you) Game: Half baked without at least two patches.
They’ve been giving less and less with physical editions to push the more profitable digital store, and then they act shocked when no one buys physical.
Shockingly, if the only difference between physical and digital is that you need to go out of your way to pick the physical, most people will just get the digital.
Still I got my Switch games in physical so I can trade with friends.
Of course the “former Valve writer” is Chet Faliszek. The dude never shuts up.
If GOG just hired one full time intern to go ahead and bake Proton into their platform so they could have Linux support that isn’t completely broken, I’d probably start getting more games on their platform again.
Edit: Oh, looks like it’s on the way. Maybe I’d better start wishlisting.
I feel like everyone in this thread is ignoring the literal headline.
The point being made is that the consumer chose these rights-infringing, privacy-corrupting, ownership-destroying choices.
Then OF COURSE companies weaponised it.
The issue is that your average Joe doesn’t think for a damn second in his life, and picks up whatever is put down.
Yeah, arguments that blank percent of people are morally good are insane since… Most people dont really think about long term morals of their decisions day to day if ever. Most people just live and do by convenience without asking if it is morally good but simply believing the self to be.
It needs to be convenient to do good things for people to do them and the convenient option for a long time has been giving up ownership rights.
Yeah … Morality is subjective… If the majority of a given population does a thing, that thing is moral within that population.
So consumers were given the choice between physical media that you made artificially expensive and overly inconvenient or digital media that you made practically free and ultra convenient. That’s called the illusion of choice. But now you can blame your victims when you abuse them because they brought this on themselves.
Physical media is no more expensive or inconvenient than it ever was. It’s just that you’re now comparing it to downloads, which bear no manufacturing cost and don’t require you to physically go to a store or have the media shipped to you. These are exactly the reasons that consumers prefer downloads.
Up until the Wii era you could just insert the disc in the console and start playing immediately, it was much more convenient than waiting an hour for a game to download and install. You didn’t need to manage disk space as well. Or login before playing. The industry destroyed the convenience. Now only Switch has an option to start playing from cartridge.
Doesn’t most of the physical media still require downloads to actually play anyway? I don’t own a console but it seems like every time I’m at one of my friends who do and they’re putting a new game in they have to wait on it to install/update or whatever. Maybe it’s just the big AAA ones.
Only if you have an internet connection active. Otherwise, I believe it’s just insert disc and play, IIRC.
It s more nuanced. 80% of buy are digital. Some industries it s worse. Like music and movie. But thoses industry value their “hardcore” consumer and will never shelve their physical release, who also append to be better quality than digital release. Contrary to video game where its litteraly the same product. Nobody has an issue with valve being fully digital cause they can’t lock down other store. What sont does is unprecdent and I pray for their downfall.
When all options are rigged, it’s pretty rude to blame “the consumer”
Try get your games pressed onto disc and boxed. Shit’s difficult as fuck and Sony hasn’t done anything to streamline the process and make it easier and cheaper. Even if you have the money as an indie dev you will basically be forced to go through a publisher and forgo a significant chunk of your margin to get a physical release and the margins are already a quite ways smaller than digital for physical releases. Hence why indie games rarely see a physical release on PlayStation. Sure only a minority of people buy physical but so do a minority of music consumers buy vinyl. Yet vinyl is thriving. Sony is the gatekeeper they hold the keys to turn physical games into a successful niche segment of the market like what vinyl is to music but they purposefully decided not to.
I just wanted to add that it’s also really stupid to claim that “consumers chose thing” because companies did it since they found it more profitable. Companies do many things people don’t actively want (or even dislike) for profit.
An interesting example is brought up by Andreas Malm in his book “Fossil Capital”. He explains how consumers didn’t chose for the manufacturing of electronics and lots of other things to move to China. Companies moved their manufacturing there because it was cheaper and would increase their profits. Now the choice for many consumers is basically to buy Chinese-made or not buy at all. I know since I actually tried a few years ago!
“Former” and “writer”
Sure. So there’s no reason he might not got paid by Sony to say this, right? Or yet alone have any professional knowledge on distribution of games.
Edit: check is wiki. He’s a sorry ass grifter. Putting up valve before his name to make his sorry points more credible. Trying to squeeze out his valve history even though majority of his career was spend on not being able to cope with indie studio workload and then shifting to riot games for monies. Now he’s making TikTok videos talking about valve like it’s his majority of experience. Also he was opposing Stop Killing Games. https://preservetube.com/watch?v=qr6I2BiU238
I’m 37 years old, I only buy digital when it’s cheap and easy.
I will never ever buy a $100 game digitally. Years ago when I bought overlord, overlords DLC and overlord 2 all for $5 and I got 40+ hours out of it… That was 10 years ago… If that is taken away from me then I’ll be annoyed but I won’t want to burn down the entire industry.
Rockstar a few years ago created a terrible remaster of GTA3, GTA VC and GTA SA and they wanted to exterminate the original PS2 versions.
I’m Happy the digital versions but I still have all of the PS2 discs in a box somewhere.
GTA VI is releasing soon with no disc… Enjoy! No disc… And no Lazlow… I’ve got plenty of other games on discs I can play.
I play on PC, last console I owned was Sega Saturn. I have a few physical copies but most of my games are on steam and Gog. a friend who plays in console and perceive as normal Sony’s practices, asked what’s the difference between how he choose to play and me: I shared with him the example, some time ago rockstar delisted the original 3d GTA trilogy. Its not available in any digital platforms as an option to buy, but I still have them and play actually.
Then I shared with him the amazing indie games, he can buy for cheap, and the recurring sales. And let him know that on Sony’s ecosystem, they won’t have this flexibility, they will set dynamic prices, lock people out without any easy way to appeal.
It dawned on him, finally. Yesterday he shared Dammit Jeff’s video advising to turn auto update on ps5 off. Like him, there’s a lot of players misinformed of the consequences of consoles tyranny.
I don’t mind digital if i can own it, store it wherever i want and installing it without internet
“We gave you two options previously, making one prohibitively expensive unnecessarily, and you didn’t pick that one as we planned. We respect your decision.”
What we want is DRM-free games, not your bullshit
Fucking morons
People have been buying more and more physical media recently due to the enshittification of streaming. I’ve been buying blu-rays for movies I really want to ‘own’.
It just clearly not up to some people’s standards. Imagine how much more $$$ valve would make if they published physical copies for their steam machine.
People have been buying more and more physical media recently due to the enshittification of streaming.
Have they? More and more, really?
I guess I must have missed the memo, because I no longer have the giant storage cases full of plastic discs or tapes. I’m hard pressed to name anyone else in my social circle who still does.
I’ve been buying blu-rays for movies I really want to ‘own’.
I just pirate that shit. Why on earth do I want a hard copy of something, plus a device to play it, when a 2-TB hard drive can host more media than I could watch continuously for a month. That’s before you get into degraded quality of older discs and machines. Or my increased appetite for foreign media - shit that was never on offer in the states without knowing a boutique distributor or a friend traveling overseas or someone with a subbed copy.
Imagine how much more $$$ valve would make if they published physical copies for their steam machine.
Getting this from Valve is absolutely mind-bending, given how much of their library is exclusively digital.