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This doesn’t directly affect me, as I’ve exclusively bought digital games only for over a decade, but it still annoys me based on principle. It’s basically a bait and switch - it would be far more honest to just say “it’s digital only” than to sell a useless physical box.
Same. I buy exclusively digital for the convenience, but how can they claim this is a physical version of the game when it doesn’t physically include the game? It’s not even a loophole at those point. It’s just a lie.
They want the people who buy physical for the box in their collection, to buy the game, but they don’t want anybody to have the ability to resell the game for a fiver after the fact, because that means someone else gets the game without giving them money instead of buying a brand new digital license at full price.
I’m part of the problem, I’ve only bought games on Steam (or in a few instances in the not too distant past, xbox store for cross-platform Forza enjoyment), but holy hell does it irritate me that we can’t actually OWN a copy of a game anymore.
So, the physical release is just… actual garbage? Like sure, someone may proudly display it in their bookshelf or whatever, but then, it eventually becomes trash, and there’s no reason to keep any of it because there’s no physical copy of the game which can be resold or even borrowed out to friends?
That’s not a “physical release”, that’s a piece of merchandise, as useful as a Funko Pop.
Only if you paid $$$ for the “Constellation Edition” - that includes a digital watch, a nice case, and a few other physical goodies. It’s already sold out though, so yeah don’t bother now to buy any physical edition.
Honestly, one of the reasons to get a physical copy is to save time on the download. Not everyone has blazing fast or reliable internet where they live. Just having to download a patch as opposed to the entire 80+ GB game can be a big deal to some. I know it was like that for me back when the only thing available in a past residence was DSL. No cable or Fiber, just DSL.
This argument was laughed at some 10 years ago already, because everyone in the western world has good enough Internet and if you live in the middle of bumfuck, nowhere, then you should move.
What has changed in 10 years is that now Eastern Europe has good Internet too, with the exception of Estonia, where Telia is allowed to be supreme overlord of deciding who gets fiber and who doesn’t. Spoiler alert: If you don’t live in a building with 20+ apartments, they don’t really care much about getting fiber to your building.
To make matters even more ironic, we’re supposed to be the tiny IT powerhouse of Europe and even the whole world. Well then why the hell does it take me 10+ minutes to download a fresh dockerized Java/Kotlin project’s dependencies from Maven at home?! And 5+ minutes for any individual Cargo project even if it’s not dockerized because it seems Cargo doesn’t even have a central local cache like Maven does, it’s per project.
I’m a big fan of physical games, I want to own them, and play them even if the internet isn’t available, and this blocks that, I don’t want it. I don’t have a gaming PC anymore because I can buy a console cheaper, but if physical discs are gone, gaming PC’s allow for piracy so I can keep the games for as long as I want because I don’t see every future Xbox having backward compatibility.
I understand the sentiment, but how many new releases can you really play without any internet connection? You often need to download a day 1 patch or contact the game servers to be able to play, even for single player games.
It’s annoying for the customer, but it’s not a new development.
It’s totally unacceptable to me too. I would only buy if it is on physical disk or is available as a full DRM-free offline installer.
Also the used game market makes it so you can buy and sell your games when you are done with them. I switched to PC awhile ago. I don’t think it’s really cheaper. It cost about $1000 to build a PC that can compete with a $400 console.
pirate more than ten games and you come out ahead
I don’t really like playing pirated games. I enjoy steam cloud save. I like being able to switch between my PC and my steamdeck and my laptop.
Yes but that PC can generally last longer, and perform far more tasks. It isn’t a fair comparison to use price alone.
It depends on your use case. If you’re always buying the newest games it ends up being more expensive since the games cost the same at launch and a comparable PC will always cost more than a console. But if you have a big backlog of old games you still like to play, take advantage of pc sales (being a smart shopper, buy game keys from other storefronts, don’t need every need game you want at or near launch), like to mod, and need a computer that is powerful for other reasons already then there’s a reduction of cost with all of that plus additional benefits for continuing to play on PC as you upgrade.
That PC is an investment. It will easily outlast at least three generations of $500 consoles, because it can be upgraded.
Yeah but upgrading your GPU costs as much as a new console.
There ought to be a law that a physical release of a game sold in a box has to include some kind of physical media that contains a version of the game. Yes, I get that a multi-gig Day 1 Patch is inevitable, but as someone that had to rely on a craptastic mobile broadband connection for a solid year or two, this is a travesty.
If you wanna just sell a code for a digital version in retail stores, just sell code cards without the plastic disk-like box. It wastes less resources, and makes it more clear what it is.
Boxes should come with branded USB sticks (who even has a disc drive these days?), and if the physical version isn’t a box why even bother. Random swag is the point.
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Well, my previous PC still had disc drives – two in fact, a DVD reader and a CD-RW. Only because I didn’t get a new case and didn’t have any replacement front panels, though, they were never connected because PATA doesn’t work well on a SATA-only board. Also still had a 3.5" floppy drive, also not connected, for the same reason.
Now my case doesn’t even have a bay to put a drive into.
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Well, the PS5 and XBOX Series X still use disks as their physical media… but yeah, the Series XBOXes in particular could switch over to those storage modules you can slam into the back of the consoles. At least for exclusives - the XBOne has no port for those.
But for PC… I reckon most people buy games on Steam there anyway.
And while I would appreciate swag… I think most developers would only go with cheap non-brandname USB sticks with the logo of the game printed on it, that’s built just good enough to not spontaneously combust if you look at it funny.
No, they would spend way too much money on custom USB drives. There would be 20 different kinds, with the super premium gold edition* only being available as a preorder bonus that costs $20 extra.
*does not contain real gold
The stupid reason for the box is probably that people equate size with value, and stores have a harder time charging $90 for a slip of paper.
Easy fix: Print the install size on the slip of paper in big letters.
In Bytes if need be.
More than 1 billion bytes per dollar!
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“physical” release my ass.
Release your ass, buddy.
Are the three days already over?
I’m not your buddy, pal.
Im not you pal, friend.
Welp. With this and other AAA games like Alan Wake going full digital, I suppose the end is nigh for physical media. It’s a real shame. I own tons of physical games dating back to the Atari 2600. I tend to view things like Limited Run Games to be collector bait, so I guess most of my games are going to be purchased on GOG or Steam once the plug is pulled(I do not trust digital storefronts on console).
What really sucks is that it eliminates any sort of trade-in systems. I rarely have the desire to play a game I’ve already finished, at least I would be able to recoup some of that money towards a new game. There goes that along with lending games to friends
How often does that happen these days though? Trading in games or lending to friends hasn’t been worth it for a while. Trades are worth a handful of dollars and if your friends are adults they can probably afford their own game anyway. We cling too much to an era where people could still believe the earth would be fine. It’s a hobby, is it really worth it?
they can still support encrypted format usb sticks which technically doesn’t have storage limit. (then decrypt/then encode again when transfer to your console. as if they are downloaded from the server)
Like windows OS is selling on usb sticks.
That’s not really a physical release then? It’s basically one of those cards they have hanging up at walmart, but with an unnecessary box. And the whole point of the box is as a protective distribution method for physical media.
You will own nothing and be happy
I know people drive sales of digital media because of convince, hell I have bought a few movies digitally myself for this reason. However with the videogame industry you are truly right. You are dropping 60/70 bucks so that Microsoft, Bethesda, or whoever, can just yank these games from their platform for no reason. You are then left with nothing, maybe a backwards compatibility release on the next platform, but guess what, your buying that shit again.
It is truly baffling the lack of foresight, with clear examples of this issue such as Nintendo’s shops closing, and psn manipulating of backwards compatibility hardware over the years of PS3.
Saddens me greatly.
If it’s just a code in a box, does that mean it can’t be resold?
Yes
One day my mother called me out of the blue. She told me, that Amazon had sent her an email, because they had a very special deal on a video game, which was going down from 60€, to just 10€. And she was like, “It’s dirt cheap, if you want, I can deliver it to your address!”.
And I was like that’s very touching! Thank you, I really do appreciate it. What’s the game by the way?
So she looked it up in her emails… Oh, it’s a game called…
FALLOUT 76.
I bursted out laughing. I told her that this was like, the worst fucking game she could have told me and that it was no wonder she got such a special discount. Because this was just at release, when the game was such a train wreck, that retail stores and like, were slashing the prices just to get rid of the damn thing.
(I hear it’s good now? I played it for literally 10 minutes, and the game was so horrendously bad looking and so buggy, I never touched it again.)
We laughed about it, and I said, send it anyway, just for fun, might as well.
Two days passes, and there it is. Fallout 76, in my own hands. How jolly. So I open my package, get the game out and… you know what? It felt good! It was exciting, you don’t get that many physical releases on PC nowadays. They exist, but there is almost never a reason to buy them, because usually, you can get the game much cheaper on a digital platform. So having a physical game in your hands, for your PC, it’s a very rare thing and kind of nostalgic too. Even if it was that game out of all of them, I was still happy to get that physical thing in my hand.
So anyway, I get my PC already, open the box, and to my utter dismay…
…it was a fucking cardboard disc! With a product key on it!
To this day, I don’t know how to feel about it. Because on one hand it sucks and is wasteful but on the other hand… nah it just sucks, but I don’t know, there is something that I find really funny about having a whole plastic box, just to hold a disc shaped piece of cardboard in it. It’s not just a sheet of paper, no, there was some effort put in.
But hey! At least it was not a total waste from stop because this wasn’t just fallout 76 come on this was the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Amazon Edition of the game. So I got some cool official Vault Boy pins!
Thanks mom! :D
…makes me wonder if Starfield will come with a cardboard disc too. It would be a shame, because I really love the steelbook for this game. It’s so clean and beautiful. But to house a cardboard disc? One which you can basically throw away as soon as you use the key? :/
Look around and realize how you got here to Lemmy/kbin/beehaw/etc - you were betrayed by a few VC-captured executives that made profit-blinded, consumer-hostile decisions about an important product you used frequently. They ruined it.
Anyone here defending digital media or saying it’s not that bad or they should have done a digital lending system, you’re not remembering the recent past.
The only acceptable ground to give here is NONE. Physical media needs to start mandatory, or your purchases are never owned and you’re always at risk and at the whims of someone like Spez.
Alternatively downloadable self-contained installers like what you get from https://www.gog.com/
This.
Also, AAA companies shouldn’t be able to ask for pre-orders and them deliver botched games that require terabytes of network traffic just to be playable. Physical media should be playable (decent framerate and seamless-enough gameplay) from the beggining.
Microsoft tried to kill borrowing and lending, and this just seems like ankther attempt. Someone with a real presence on other sites (and is good at social media) should stir up a backlash.
I hate digital-only media. :/
No matter where you look in Media, digital copies have outpaced physical. And it´s not even close! So the step is not really a surprise. Also, some games are already essentially a digital copy, even if “some” game files get delivered on a disc. But the lack of a physical medium is not what sucks about this. It´s the fact that you link the purchase to your own account of whatever store it´s in and that´s it. No lending, selling or gifting once you activated the code. I actually prefer to buy cartridges for the switch because of that very reason.
But with digital downloads being so much more convenient and instantly available, I don´t see how any market forces would ever change this. Also, people pre order digital copies as if they worry the store wouldn´t have enough copies on launch day, which is also quite telling.
Yeah the bummer is the system they were going to implement for Xbox one was going to allow game lending which would have been a decent first step towards proper digital ownership of games.
