Spyke
lemmy.ca

It's been interesting, watching the lag here. This feeling was felt by many who played games on PC 15 years ago when DVDs were starting to become less common and games were expanding in size. I distinctly remember buying a game I was excited for only to learn now I had to spend part of my data cap on downloading it. What had even been the point of buying the boxed copy?

98
Matty_rreply
programming.dev

I remember hiring games, and reading the manual inside the case on the drive home. Just feels like everything is lacking soul now in the name of convenience.

23
lemmy.ml

Not the convenience of the consumer but rather that of the provider. They don't want you to pirate their games, not even sharing the disk. We don't own what we pay for anymore.

19

Which is funny, because those are exactly the kind of anti-consumer practices that drive people to piracy.

9

Steam did pretty much fulfill the promise of cheap digital games. Though we're definitely fucked once they (or the game publishers) decide to fuck up their ecosystem or just not do the really big discounts anymore.

10
Natanaelreply
infosec.pub

Some publishers have mentioned that the cards available are too slow for their games (the internal storage is much faster).

0
village604reply
adultswim.fan

That's a crap excuse. Load the data into ram on startup or local storage on install.

7

Exactly. Cards can't be slower than an Internet connection.

5
Natanaelreply
infosec.pub

Installing from the card would still be slow though 🤷

0
AtariDumpreply
lemmy.world

I remember hiring games…

What games did you hire? I wonder how good link would be at gardening. I know I’d take Mario as a plumber. Samus as an exterminator?

7

Skyrim for me. At least I got the physical map! But it was kind of plasticky. Made me miss, say, the cloth map that came with Never winter Nights.

14
Someonelolreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

To me it's because a physical copy means ownership and control of what you bought and paid for. You can display it, make a backup, lend it to a friend, play it without a mandatory internet connection, or sell it later. Sure I didn't avoid buying digital only games on PC but I specifically sought out physical console copies of certain games because it meant I could recover some of my expense if it turned out it wasn't what I wanted.

13

Well that’s just not true, you can buy a physical game that is still subject to DRM and have it tied to an account so other people can’t play it.

6
lemmy.world

What had even been the point of buying the boxed copy?

Some have historically come with art books or figurines or other tchotchkes. But less and less, as the focus has been on digital delivery.

6
Flatfirereply
lemmy.ca

Oh sure, that was more of an echo of the feeling of being tricked than anything else. Those are usually special/collectors editions anyways, and there's reasons beyond needing/wanting the data that you'd buy that.

3

Not really, way back when the default was cool maps and such. Not just "special edition".

2
Hawkreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Resale. You can easily sell these again, which is not possible with a fully digital copy.

3

Hardly. If the only thing in the box is a code, then it ends up tied to an account. I know that's not the case with the Switch, but it wasn't what I had really directed the sentiment towards

2

If this follows that, we'll just stop buying/selling all physical games.

2

You reached the end

Anon buys a game for the switch 2 | Spyke