I just wanna say this is my opinion.

98% of the shit we deal with. Not just game shit, but everything....all boils down to these folks with power being utter rotten puss filled cunts.

Like honestly. Fuck disc. I hate em. I love digital. But fuck me. Let it be mine. Let me mod it (without cheating in it) let me play it on any console I want. Let it be my $80 of the game to do with as I want.

Like stop being such assholes. Why do these folks gotta turn into hateful cunts cause they got money or they made a game or media or whatever the fuck.

Consumers wouldn't be as pissed if they weren't being fisted constantly.

The problem isn’t with digital. The problem is with digital licenses and rights.

What nonsense. What matters isn't whether we use physical disks or not. And it's all digital anyway, you don't get many games on vinyl these days. The real issue is whether you own the games you buy. As GOG is proving, game ownership is something that publishers can easily offer, regardless of the delivery mechanism. If Sony would step up and do the same, maybe killing physical discs wouldn't be a problem. It's a trust issue.

Can we stop spreading the propaganda for them? Sony lied about digital sales by including digital-only games in their figures.

Every game with a physical release, according to their developers, makes most of their sales on disc (60%-80%) every single time.

If you vote with your wallet, it just means those richer than you have a bigger vote.

I have no love for discs. It's a dead technology. We should work on software ownership instead.

He isn't wrong how many people here buy from steam - it's rare if ever you get a physical release of a game on steam.

Now physical rights vs digital are the issue;

Buying a physical item means you own it and can use it whenever you want.

Buying a digital item means you buy the license to use that item. That's a concept that's been around for software purchasing for a very long time.

People want to own the digital item the same as the physical and not have the license pulled when a publisher decides to. Sony just doesn't have the trust of the gaming community for this.

the "choice" was shoved down your throats

"You chose digital."

Chooses DRM-free, piracy otherwise

"Not like that!"

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.

I had a PS4, witch was sold and didn't have coonsole for years. Then I got a PS5 and my account was deleted with all my purchases.

That didn't happen to my steam games.

The problem is the legislation around digital consumers rights.

Companies offer games as a digital download or physical disc.

Consumers buy physical disc out of a desire to preserve media.

Game is unplayable off the disc without a 98GB download that installs a digital copy of the game onto the hardware. Disc is essentially a physical license to play the game and is useless otherwise.

“You chose this”

Fuck right off. At this point, if a game isn’t either available on GoG or as a FitGirl RePack, it does not register as an option for me anymore. That is my choice.

What we want is DRM-free games, not your bullshit

Fucking morons

Chet Falisek has been on a crusade to have bad contrarian takes since he left Valve. His stance on Stop Killing Games was downright stupid.

I hate it as much as the next person here, but it was always inevitable. It was never a question of if, but when.

I know a lot of people look at physical media from a preservation angle, but in an era where games have a long tail of post-release updates and DLC, I'm not so sure they even serve that purpose anymore. If I want to replay my old games in 50 years, in many cases I probably don't just want to play the 1.0 that's on the disc. If I'm still dependent on the availability of a third-party download server to get the remaining data, do discs even still matter all that much?

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.

No, I made the choice for physical. I don't own a single digital game on a Sony console. Don't put this on me. I want to buy physical. I never wanted digital for myself. I always wanted choice.

Its just that I don't matter. I'm a minority and Sony don't give a fuck about me. It's not my fault Sony is stopping physical production. Its still profitable, so Sony could keep on doing it. But they don't because they want to fuck me over.

Damned be the man who blames the consumer and he can shove his worked at Valve credentials up his ass.

Friendly reminder that GOG exists and has a backlog of great games that can keep you entertained for ages. If you want to put your money where your mouth us, I suggest putting it there.

Buying the hot new thing no questions asked is how we get more of the Sonys of the world.

I agree physical games are dead, but I'm sure as shit not buying digital from anyone with a history of plucking purchased shit out of people's libraries.

"We constantly say voting with your wallet will make it so businesses will only create what you're willing to buy. ... Gaming is in the state it's in currently because the vast majority of gamers are okay with it? Have the wallets already voted?"

In this sense, Chet is right, the 'democracy' of consumers has prevailed, and the people have spoken. They said 'digital.' I myself have been a PC gamer for over a decade now and I can't remember the last time I bought physical media.

"You as the consumer have forced the large corporations hand, and you've told them 'Stop with retail.'"

But then Chet shows his entire rancid asshole by actively ignoring the power dynamics between corporation and customer. The corporation always has the upper hand because the customer CAN ONLY buy what the corporation is OFFERING to sell. The corporation is always, at all times, presenting the customer with a false choice. A customer who has shitty internet and has to purchase all physical media, they may be in the democratic minority but that doesn't mean we feed them to the wolves. But an ex-Valve writer wouldn't know shit about that, they haven't shipped a physical game since Portal 2. What choice did you give consumers for Counterstrike, 2023? Half Life Alyx, 2020? Dota, 2013?

Once you, apparently, regretted your decision to invest almost entirely in digital, you didn't start buying Crimson Desert discs while you could, nor did you abstain from making digital purchases altogether. Now it's too late, says Faliszek.

Suck my dick, clown.

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.

Ah yes the intelligent consumer who always has a choice and is never beholden to the whims of a completely dominant supply side economy.

When all options are rigged, it's pretty rude to blame "the consumer"

Last time I bought a disc it had just a downloader on it

Bullllllshit. I have bought multiple games in the last decade that didn't include a physical disc but a code for me to go download the digital copy.

That's not an argument to take the same choice away from future customers.

We made the choice for mostly digital in a world where physical was still available as a fallback. That's not the same situation as if it wasn't. The existence of physical media and a resale market does prevent some of the worst fuckeries of an otherwise monopoly, regardless if you ever bought or sold used games.

I actually agree that physical media is better for consumers. If I buy a game, I think I should own it. I should be able to sell it, lend it to a friend, or keep playing it decades from now without worrying about a company flipping a switch. Physical media is objectively more consumer-friendly in that regard.

What I don't agree with is the narrative that corporations had to force everyone into digital by sabotaging physical releases. That's not how I remember it.

Steam became wildly popular because consumers embraced it almost immediately. Instant downloads, automatic updates, cloud saves, massive sales, and never having to swap discs were conveniences people overwhelmingly wanted. Publishers certainly recognized the benefits for themselves—more control, no used game market, lower distribution costs—but they didn't invent the demand. They took advantage of a demand that consumers had already created.

In a sense, we shot ourselves in the foot. We collectively chose convenience over ownership because, at the time, it seemed like a worthwhile trade. Now we're living with the consequences of that decision.

It's completely fair to push for stronger ownership rights today. But I think it's a mistake to pretend that consumers were dragged into digital kicking and screaming. For the overwhelming majority of gamers, digital won because they chose it.

People keep pre-ordering absolutely everthing no matter the price because they need to have it the moment it comes out. THIS means companies can do whatever the fuck they want because people will let them do it.

The solution is so easy stop buying their shit. Yes you won't play on the second it comes out 6 months later its like 50% at least.

Nothing will change because people value convenience over change.