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.

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

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.

I'm all for people having discs if they want them but, man, I do not want that shit cluttering up my life.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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 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.

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 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.

I like this, sure

Maybe something like CD/DVDs that Verbatim has, the ones made our of stone so they can last +100 years and are I think 50GB in space?

I miss being able to easily share fully functioning games...

Its easy to pirate and even legal in some places...

But I might buy physical discs with games if they are featured in some physical store!

Again as someone said I dont know about how DRM works on discs but we cant have that

A perfect standard has to be developed first. Go.

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.

No, it's not beneficial. The difference between consoles and PCs is that PCs have an open infrastructure, which lets you back up your data to any medium or service you want.

For example, if Steam goes out of business and doesn't release the DRMs, they will easily be cracked. You cannot say the same for consoles.

Most laptops don't have an optical drive any more. I haven't looked at desktops.

You can obviously buy an external USB one, or sell things on USB thumb drives, but...

Audio optical media sales peaked a long time back and have massively declined since then.

https://www.statista.com/chart/12950/cd-sales-in-the-us/

Quarter-century back that they peaked.

Successor physical audio formats haven't caught on.