Haven't read the actual terms but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Steam required publishers to make games purchased on steam available to the account holder perpetually regardless of what happens to the publisher. Some publisher says oh we're gonna yank this? That would make Steam look bad, and they have enough clout to just say no you can't. Publisher goes out of business and you just don't get any more updates. I suppose I could see Steam pulling a game and even auto-deleting it out of my library in some situations, like if there's a major security flaw.
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Playstation single player games will no longer be ported to PC
- Thread starter Flogger23m
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Back in the PS4 era, I paid less than that for a 1TB USB external SSD. Even though it was hobbled by the PS4's slow USB port, it was still faster than the internal spinny HDD
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Prince Valiant
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DVD is about 12 - 14. Blu-ray would be 20 - 30+ at slower read speeds. It'll ramp to 45MB/s or higher if the files are large and drive is fast enough. A quick search shows the US average as worse than that but, I'm not going to try and confirm either way.
Blade-Runner
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View: https://youtu.be/oSyQFSCEt8c
Kinda funny that they are freaking out so hard over loss of physical media. Maybe they should have paid attention 20 years ago when Valve started the trend.
The majority dont. People just like to be outraged. I have that they are getting rid of physical but I am not flipping out. I bet the people crying the loudest don't even by physical games. They proabaly only play CoD and Madden.
That was before the dark side of licensing became apparent. Steam also has the added benefit of being a private company, meaning their customers are gamers and game developers/publishers, not faceless shareholders. Less incentive to screw their customers over.
Very different story to Sony who just a few days ago pulled movies people paid for out of their libraries. People are now waking up on how bullshit this is and thats why piracy is on the rise again and more and more people are actually buying physical copies too, both music and movies, but that is just delaying the inevitable. Digital is the future, there is no question about it.
This is why movements like Stop Killing Games and such are so important. Steam was clearly an anomaly and other big companies are not willing to follow their example because screwing people over is more profitable. There needs ro be ground rules laid out that makes the playing field level again, make sure customers have the same rights to their digital purchases as they have with physical ones.
StoleMyOwnCar
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Agreed. People need to realize that Valve is a special case. Them doing almost anything isn't really comparable to another company doing the exact same thing, because the long term intent (and ramifications) will almost always be different. How long it will stay a special case after Gabe dies is also anyone's guess, though.
SecretStash
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Yes and if satisfying customers is actually good for business in the long term, but maybe isn't always in the short term and most businesses aren't patient (and admittedly there are some non-greedy business out there who just didn't have the luxury of time), but there are plenty of them who are overly focused on the quarterly profits.
DukenukemX
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You'll find out eventually. This sort of thing killed Xbox as a brand and will also kill Playstation. This wasn't a problem when digital ownership felt like you owned the games, but we've seen what's happened with the Switch 2 and The Crew. You can thank DMCA for that. I'd go back to buying physical games if it was offered and not priced higher than digital. I do have physical games on PC, but they are old games. I think the newest physical game I own is Diablo 3. We don't speak of Diablo 3.
I've learned over the years that convenience comes with a cost usually that's larger than the price tag. I have a PlayStation 3, 4, 5 and an XBOX 360. All work and play all of the physical games I have. I could come back YEARS, even DECADES from now and they still would work (wish I still had my Saturn, Sega CD and Dreamcast).
We've heard this, "What's the big deal?" so many times on this forum many of us could retire rich if it was worth money. Every single time the warnings end up being regrets. I feel this will be another one.
DukenukemX
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Depends on the media itself. Cartridges are amazing since you pop it in and the game plays. There was no loading time, except for Resident Evil 2 for N64. The move to CD's, DVD's, and Blu-Ray's have given credit to the idea of downloading games from a store. Laser Disc technology kinda sucks, but it was better than the 4MB games of the Genesis and SNES. Even N64 games with their massive 64MB was nothing compared to a 650MB CD. The Switch 1 showed that we could have went back to cartridges, but didn't.
View: https://youtu.be/kBTfo5xXH1c?si=-ctgThZiFl9nJ6JJ
Despite me being the biggest PC Master Racist here, I'm going to show off my console collection. I still have my Saturn, though I never use it because there wasn't many games I find interesting. I have two Sega CD's, but they're model 2's and not 1's. My model 1 Genesis doesn't look right in a model 2 Sega CD. I have a Sega Neptune where I combined a 32X and Genesis using a COSAM board. A Sega Nomad and GameGear, along with three Dreamcast's. I also have the 8-bit Nintendo and SNES. I do have a Genesis model 1 and 2 as well. A lot of this is due to people just throwing them away and me picking them up. Not the Nintendo's as I idiotically gave my original machines away when I was a teenager and regretted it and bought used ones from Ebay. They were broken and I fixed them. Even my original Gameboy was from Ebay broken and repaired, and then enhanced with louder speaker and better screen. I also have a couple of Gameboy Pockets and Advances that were again thrown away by other people and repaired. Even my Gameboy Advance SP was missing it's screen and I just bought a new screen and repaired it. I'm not even getting into my Playstation's and Xbox's I have.
So when I say modern game consoles are closer to PC than consoles, I'd like to think I have some authority on that subject. Modern consoles aren't anymore convenient than owning a gaming PC, and are getting expensive enough to cost the same as a mid range PC. The exception is the GabeCube, because that thing is stupidly overpriced. We all agree that Valve is just taking advantage of the hype and pricing it as high as people's credit cards are willing to go? The only reason to avoid a PC at this point is because you still game in the living room and you don't want a giant glow in the dark PC making it look ugly.
It isn't just here, but trust me when I say that Sony has pissed off the majority of gamers. They somehow pissed off Jean-Luc Mélenchon a French candidate who wants to give rights to people who own digital goods. It's not even a polarizing subject. The people who are for this are just a handful of people who are being edgy or something. You don't even see Microsoft jumping in and saying they'll remove physical media as well, because they can see the shit show Sony has caused. Microsoft was quick to jump onto $80 games when Nintendo did it, but isn't with removal of physical media. I'm not saying Microsoft won't remove physical media, but you know they're scared if they haven't announced it themselves. Even though we know the next generation Xbox also won't have physical media.
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PC owners know that their new PC will work with their old game library. Console owners have no guarantee of that; your PS5 dies and is no longer readily available? Good luck your PS7 probably isn't going to play the games in your library. Also, Sony just deleted a bunch of movies out PSN user libraries that they had "bought". I wouldn't trust Sony to have my best interests in mind.
Prince Valiant
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Resale of digital "goods" is long overdue, I wish the Frenchman luck in his endeavor.
Reality never ends up matching the ideal vision of it. All roads lead to lining publisher pockets at minimum effort.
Perhaps a portion of ps owners chose that console over a pc precisely for that reason?
Not to mention that sony regularly announces permanent deletion of entire digital libraries, despite the fact that content in question had been "purchased". If sony feels it has the right to do that for movies, that doen't exactly inspire trust that they aren't going to do the same for games.
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I have a bit of an opposite experience being more in the PC gaming spaces, my old floppy disk survival rate beign much lower than my steam-gog collection survival rate.
Just tried to install one of my oldest bought steam game, the 20 years old Company of Heroes, it downloaded at over 70 MB/s, 4x time faster than if it was on DVD, no need to find it and to have moved it over the years, to still have a dvd drive in the computer, pressed play and it simply worked, it is right now much better than my experience in my youth in the 90s trying to make your 80s physical game work on your new computer.
The 2000s bought on steam could have the best track record of ease and still working game over time ever, there is some people that took great care of their hardware-physical software collection, but for the general population, it probably went way better in that regard.
I doubt that in many people in 1996, launching a games they bought in 1976 would have been nearly as simple or in 2006 a game bought in 1986 and so on, just still having a working 5.25 inch floppy disk around would have been something.
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M76
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PC is different, you don't expect to sell your last gen PC with your entire corresponding game library when switching to the next gen one. It wasn't a thing even when physical discs were common. You just upgrade your PC and the same games continue working. You don't have to buy an "enhanced" edition to allow you to go from 720p to 960p on the new hardware, you just change the graphics settings.
How do you know the majority don't? Maybe you should be flipping out too, if nobody laid down for anti consumer changes it would be much harder for them to push them through. Imagine being more annoyed at the fact that people are upset than about taking away ownership.
Also, even if someone only buys digital, the mere existence of physical editions of games is a kind of guarantee of ownership. They can't revoke a physical game.
You can if the install requires a server on the internet to allow it to install or play. But there's obviously less chance of being screwed over.
Over the next 10 years I get the feeling there is going to be more of a push to finally allow proper digital ownership of licenses where you can trade what you own. Though I'm of the opinion the French politician Jean-Luc Melenchon that mentioned it recently is just supporting it to try and win young male voters for the 2027 election and has zero intention of going through with it (he's a not so closet communist).
At this point it should be absolutely clear that they don't. Not that they're alone in this.
DukenukemX
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I don't know if it was mentioned here but Sony is removing 551 purchased movies and TV shows from PlayStation users' digital libraries on September 1, 2026. They're taking away Terminator 2. I'm pretty sure I have a copy of that movie on VHS, DVD, and somewhere on my hard drive.
Did you know the original NES had a floppy drive addon? Only in Japan, but I don't think floppy disks as an argument is valid. My original copy of Doom was on floppy and it was bad, but ID software freely sent me a CD version. Also my copy of Corpse Killer CD 32X shattered to pieces when I dropped it. Physical media brakes if not handled correctly. You know what else will eventually break? The SSD in the PS5 as they have a write limit. This is also why you make backups and should use them over the original. I use a burned copy of Sonic CD for my Sega CD over the original because I don't want to break it like I did with Corpse Killer.
The French politician is obviously doing it for clout, but that just means he can read the room. Unlike the gaming industry which has tunnel vision for the idea of removing physical media. This maybe another example of getting too greedy and losing everything. The gaming industry wants to remove physical ownership, but might bring about digital ownership. Can you imagine what would happen if people could sell their rights of digital goods on an open market? Imagine how quickly the price of games will drop once they can be resold? I could easily see Breath of the Wild going for $1. What's funny is this could spark physical media again since it would limit the amount of copies floating online. Unlike physical media which can go bad, the digital license is forever.
Also side note, why are we dumping Blu-Rays for SSD storage? Is Sony spitting in peoples faces during a time when RAM and SSD prices are insane? At least Blu-Ray is immune from this insanity.
Gog let you do this pretty well too, that does not change much from physical vs digital purchase. If the PS5 ssd drive break, you simply redownload your games....
Which steam game have you had an issue yet, because you did not had a physical version of it ?
bandwith is a big reason why, video cut scene would work but many game have in game engine one now, soundtrack can work of course but with modern compression they can be a small percentage of the asset size.
Ps5 bluray drive can do about 16/18 MB/s (slower than many internet connexion), while its ssd can do 5,500 mbs, 300 time faster, making game for which relevant part of the asset would sit on such a small bandwith medium (and with ram costly so limited buffering ability) would be hard.
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I think I remember Nintendo literally had requirements about loading screens.
Like the Quake 2 port cheats its way around this by comically saying "building" instead of "loading"
Because the disc access time and throughput is horrific and probably orders of magnitude worse.
sharknice
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Yep, it would be faster to load games by "streaming" the assets from the internet to memory than loading them off a blue ray disc. This is actually what I first thought game streaming was supposed to do way back 15 years ago when it was first attempted.
SecretStash
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Shhhh, don't give them ideas. The moment they have success with that is the moment the illusion of ownership is no longer an illusion. We will own nothing and the subscription to the DRM streaming manager will be complete.
The only reason you keep blu-ray or optical in general around is for install files. Which will of course be slower than many internet connections now but we've had little to no innovation in storage media for 15 years now. Blank blurays have not been economical for most of its history. I don't even know the prices for blanks now especially the 2-4 layer discs that could hold 50-100GB of data.
sharknice
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Flash drives are the new physical storage media.
They could in theory sell fully playable PC, xbox and playstation games on them. They probably are doing it for some PC games.
I bought a music album on one a couple months ago. It is fancy looking, shaped as the album name, and it even has USB-A on one end and USB-C on the other. It has a couple extra songs they couldn't fit on the CD, and has them all in botth WAV and MP3 format.
Nintendo have been using read-only flash since the Switch 1 at least and they could make 128/256 GB version for full sized AAA games.
We do still use it from time to time to ship software to some institution that ask for a physical to be delivered, for games a optimised for unused bit-rot resistant 128GB flash drive with encryption-security and fast enough to play from them would cost a fortune (small nvme harddrive price would give an idea), probably can get away for just less than $10 for very slow affair you would need to install from + the nice box price added to it and shipping, which is still a lot of money when you look at the steam summer sales price game tag competition that would exist.
Nintendo always high priced legacy title, full control on price for the single digital store make it work better.
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Prince Valiant
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They're cheap (or were, probably still are), lightweight, and stable. Sequential speed is livable. Copying a playable portion of the beginning and continuing to copy in the background is how I've seen many newer games handle it when they're large in size.
SecretStash
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Don't forget the aws snowball family for ungodly amounts of data transfer. J/K
Digital PlayStation 5 software sales account for roughly 80% to 85% of total game sales, vastly outselling physical discs by more than 4 to 1
that's all that needs to be said...the vast majority are buying games digitally...the uproar does not match the facts...should Sony keep physical discs alive to appease the 15%?
M76
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Sure if you swallow their bullshit hook line and sinker. They manufacture the 80% number by including all in-game purchases, DLCs, subscriptions, digital only games etc. It's not a comparison for digital vs physical game sales of actual games. One could say it's a completely irrelevant number they are using to justify ending ownership. I'd guess the real number to be the exact opposite on consoles for games that actually had physical releases. As in physical copies winning by at least 66 to 33%. Especially worldwide since the PS store has no regional pricing, so it ends up being sometimes 100-200% more expensive than physical media in poorer regions.
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUfX8W34ZK4
"Sony's favorite stat is that digital software sales are roughly 80% of its game sales. That number is technically true and completely misleading. Circana, the industry sales tracker, reports that 82% of PlayStation 5 consoles sold in the United States were the versions with a disc drive.
When Insomniac Games got hacked in December of 2023 and Sony's internal documents leaked because of it, those documents showed that 31 of 33 major first party releases sold the majority of their copies on disc. Uncharted 4 was 83% physical. Ghosts of Tsushima sold 51% physical. Demon Souls 70%. Spider-Man 66%. God of War Ragnarok 76% physical. Miles Morales 66%. ... Sure, when you look at the size and scope of what's available on the digital store, what with all the games, the microtransactions and the DLC, like it makes sense because there's just so much more available. And yet, we still see a large percentage of game sales as physical edition. That means physical game buyers are still there. Physical games are very much still a viable part of the gaming marketplace.
But look at how that trend got made. Sony shipped a cheaper digital only PlayStation 5, and called it your choice. Sony sold the PlayStation 5 Pro, a $700 console with no disc drive in the box at all. The disc drive is a $79 accessory that spends long stretches out of stock. Retail bundles quietly swapped discs for download codes. We see this with expensive collector's editions now, too. You make physical inconvenient, expensive, and scarce for 5 years and then gesture at the digital sales chart and call it preference."
Folks, we've seen this narrative play out before: a portion of gamers are outraged at a company's decision, are convinced that petitions and YouTube rants are striking a mighty blow... but the decision moves forward regardless, and the world doesn't come to an end.
It's not just because the company is too big and powerful to be fazed. It's because those petition signers and outrage YouTubers forget that most people are not, in fact, like them. They don't swear eternal boycotts or paint dystopian pictures of the future. They're college students who want to play their favorite shooter after class; they're parents who want to get a game for their kids; they're anyone just looking to blow off some steam after a long day. They might like discs, but they likely don't care that much about it that they'll refuse to buy a digital copy from the PlayStation Store.
And more importantly, this won't lead to the collapse of gaming as we know it. Yes, it'll be a pain to play that 20-year-old game you love; no, it won't ruin console sales or prompt a dramatic surge in "unofficial" emulation on PCs. I want Sony (and Microsoft, and Nintendo) to make it easier to run vintage games without subscriptions, but I also know its business doesn't depend on your abitlity to run SSX Tricky on a PS6. How many of us would play a classic more than a few times before leaving it behind again?
It's not just because the company is too big and powerful to be fazed. It's because those petition signers and outrage YouTubers forget that most people are not, in fact, like them. They don't swear eternal boycotts or paint dystopian pictures of the future. They're college students who want to play their favorite shooter after class; they're parents who want to get a game for their kids; they're anyone just looking to blow off some steam after a long day. They might like discs, but they likely don't care that much about it that they'll refuse to buy a digital copy from the PlayStation Store.
And more importantly, this won't lead to the collapse of gaming as we know it. Yes, it'll be a pain to play that 20-year-old game you love; no, it won't ruin console sales or prompt a dramatic surge in "unofficial" emulation on PCs. I want Sony (and Microsoft, and Nintendo) to make it easier to run vintage games without subscriptions, but I also know its business doesn't depend on your abitlity to run SSX Tricky on a PS6. How many of us would play a classic more than a few times before leaving it behind again?
You do not give the outrage enough credit. Yes often it leads to nothing and people move on but there are examples where the outrage had lead to changes. Hell when Xbox was trying to do the same digital only shit people got pissed and jumped ship to Sony camp. After the glorious success of Xbox 360 the Xbox One was the start of Xbox's death spiral which it never recovered from, the PR hit was that big.
As mentioned the xbone fiasco was 13 years ago and still hasn't been reversed by the leadership there. Just because some companies get away with things doesn't mean they always will. Nintendo can get away with it for awhile given their customer base but it doesn't translate well beyond that base. Given the current economy and the endless push for online, consistent subscription type revenue a lot of gamers are tired of the nonsense and changing their habits. The gaming industry has long hated the used market and continually fails to see how that used market props them up. The easy money era is over but I don't think raising their console multiplayer services to $80 or more a year will help them keep subs or recover their wasted money on the Concords of the gaming world.
Look at the gaming economy, the game pricing these days. PC product sales are almost constant in the past two years. Steam summer sales don't really offer much new because the games were on sale at the same price two months ago. Going digital only will allow the game companies to keep prices higher in theory but competition and the economy will force them back down in time. That or only the big dogs like gta, fortnite etc. will stay alive. If they don't do something stupid that causes drama, boycotts and whatnot.
The Xbox One fiasco hurt both due to timing and Microsoft's particular implementation. It was clamping down on used games and offline use (it wasn't going digital-only) in 2013, when physical media was much more important and fast internet connections weren't quite as ubiquitous as they are today. Moreover, Sony capitalized on Microsoft's mistake where you won't see the same response here... because Microsoft is almost certainly planning the same thing.
I'd add that the Xbox One represented multiple strategic failures beyond the initial approach to copy protection. Forcing early buyers to get the Kinect was arguably the hugest mistake as it priced Microsoft out of competition until it relented several months later... when it was too late. There was also the insistence on pushing media features and the Windows-style UI to the point where people wondered "what about the games?" If DRM was the only fiasco, Microsoft would probably have fared much better.
The "often" in your reply is the key. Internet outrage only matters if the issues resonate with the mainstream audience. If they don't, you're just screaming into the void.
DukenukemX
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We've seen this happen before but it killed the Xbox brand. Not only that, but Microsoft retracted hard before Xbox One was released.
Don't know if you've been paying attention but some recent games on the PS5 have sold 50% physical copies like Demon Souls? When Sony says that most people buy digital, they're not wrong but that includes indie games that don't get physical releases and online games. Uncharted 4 was 83% on physical discs. Sony done fucked up.
Nobody said gaming would collapse, just Sony.
One mistake the gaming industry continues to make is thinking that gamers are stupid. When this happens it backfires spectacularly. My belief is that Sony wanted to make games $80 like Nintendo and Microsoft tried, but saw the backlash and are now turning to maximizing returns in game sales. By removing physical discs, they get more out of their $70 games than ever before. No used market, no Walmart or Amazon putting them on sale.
Sony knows that if you own a PS5 that you're not about to dump it for PC. Especially with GTAVI around the corner, which Sony will prove that nobody cared about physical media when GTAVI breaks record digital sales. The reality is that when PS6 is released, Sony might not see the same sales numbers as previously. But this proves that the gaming market will be just fine without consoles because consoles are technofeudalism. Unless some laws are passed that forces Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft to allow other stores to sell games on their platforms, you will see the death of game consoles.
That logic applies to even new games. Don't look at old games like Classic WoW and Runescape which are still very popular today.
M76
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Nothing to see here, stop protesting, it clearly doesn't work!
If they're telling us it doesn't work and mainstream media they own says it doesn't work that means it works!
Currently SONY cannot post anything on any of its social media accounts without getting ratioed to hell and community noted.
Keep up the pressure.
It's not 2005 anymore, social media users are not a small group of outsiders, they are very much representative of the wider population. If something if this unpopular online it will be unpopular amongst gen pop too.
I won't rehash everything, but look at my earlier reply; the Xbox One's failure wasn't due solely to that botched initial DRM approach.
Some have, but be careful about choosing statistics. Four fifths of Uncharted 4 copies were sold on discs? Yes, because it was a PS4 game first released in 2016. The PS6 won't arrive until 11 or 12 years later. A lot has and will have changed since then.
I'm sure Sony likes reducing or eliminating used game sales, but I haven't seen math (I've been looking) suggesting they make a large enough dent that they're a major factor behind a digital-only push. It's more likely the costs of making and distributing physical copies combined with the technical limitations of Blu-ray. If the latest Call of Duty game takes between 97GB to 160GB, and your home internet connection is multiple times faster than a Blu-ray drive... do you charge more for both consoles and discs for a worse install experience, or avoid all those problems by going digital?
Also, have to love the irony of claiming that gaming won't collapse, and that only Sony would be hurt... while in the same reply claiming that consoles will completely die off unless manufacturers allow third-party stores. That's a nice choice, but it hasn't hurt consoles in the download era and isn't guaranteed to change much even if regulations force otherwise. Apple and Google still dominate app downloads on their mobile platforms despite sideloading options and regional requirements.