this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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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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[–] Agent_Karyo@piefed.world 37 points 17 hours ago (19 children)

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).

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 3 points 14 hours ago (6 children)

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.

[–] Flatfire@lemmy.ca 3 points 13 hours ago (5 children)

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.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Flatfire@lemmy.ca -1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

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

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