Topic: Digital vs Physical games

[lobsterboy]

Digital all the way.

[RedDeadRejection]

I lean towards digital too these days. Only buy physical if cheaper.

[Crimson]

I haven't bought physical copies in many years, but now that publishers seem more prevalent on reiterating consumers' non-ownership of digital games, I become more and more sceptical. There's no stopping them removing games from digital stores or libraries. I often go back to replay older games - especially when the norm for big titles as of the last couple of years have been to release unfinished and unpolished games to the public. Big corps will always think money first and they know gamers will always come back.

Of course, I expect future consoles to come without a disc-drive at all...

[has gone odd]

Well this is the issue, digital can be erased and removed whenever a publisher feels like it. Nintendo and Sony both closing handheld stores so you cannot reclaim prev bought titles. Emulation is great but sometimes these games are tied into online services.

Real mess but as you say, remaster, re-release and get people to rebuy.

Moreover, with physical, since developers cannot be arsed to make a complete game, unlike most in ye olden days, your game cart requires a day one patch or some crap. So when that store is closed you are stuck with a buggy broken physical cart .. which at least has some resale value, on the brightside!

[Schmidt]

Yeah with publishers removing games when they feel like it, quietly dropping patches that censor old games and moving more and more towards this model of games never really being "owned", I still prefer physical copies.

The one issue is that a lot of games printed to disk are broken and incomplete, with a day one patch then required to get them fully working. Lots of people have been playing Stellar Blade with their PS5's offline because the day one patch crammed in some last minute censorship.

Steam is the one place where I'm comfortable with digital only as Gabe Newell seems to have no interest in anti-consumer behaviour.