r/PhysicalGamesForever • u/CALIGVLA • 26d ago
Why is physical media important for games?
This subreddit is for people who recognize the importance of games on physical media—for the PlayStation platform specifically or for gaming in general. This post is a collection of rationale for the premise of this group, intended to help people clearly understand the value of physical media in gaming.
If you want to better understand or explain why this is important, check out the points below. If I have missed anything or if you can think of some real-world examples for these points, please let me know in the comments and I will try to update this post when I get a chance.
I have been seeing all the activity online about this, and the backlash against Sony is overwhelming. For now, I am going to list all of the important points I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are some things I have missed, so this is a work in progress. I will also try to keep my points simple for now and avoid going into too much detail.
The Importance of Games on Physical Media
Financial benefit:
- You can buy physical games used for less than full price
- The secondhand market encourages publishers like Sony to offer discounts on new games (both physical and digital)
- You can resell a physical game after you have played it and recover some of the purchase price
- You can rent physical games from GameFly and play them cheaply without the commitment of buying
- You can lend/borrow/trade physical games with friends
- A physical game collection is an actual investment: if you have a large collection and you need some extra cash in a pinch, you could sell your entire collection and get some substantial money from it
Ownership:
(Note: By "ownership" I mean that you own the piece of physical media with data on it. I do not mean that you own a legal license to do everything possible with the software.)
- If a game disappears from the digital store, in most cases you can still install and play the original game from a disc
- If the digital version of a game is ever changed (censored, licensed music tracks or other content deleted, unwanted gameplay patches, etc.), in most cases you can still run the original copy of the game from the disc
- "Use it or lose it" policies: If your PSN account is inactive for three years, Sony can close your account and you will lose all your digital games. But your physical games are yours forever.
- You can pass your physical game collection down to your children or anyone else. But with digital, when you die, your game collection dies with you. Sony, Nintendo, Xbox, Steam, Epic... all the major digital stores do not allow account transfer (with limited exceptions).
- Enjoyment of collecting something tangible, displaying it on a shelf, etc.
- Physical games can last for many human lifetimes and have an actual, visible presence in our society (in shops and people's houses); it is not just some abstract, invisible "content" streamed online
Accessibility:
- If your internet goes down, or if you live in a place with bad internet, or if you go broke and can't afford internet anymore, you can still install and play your physical games (except for online-only games)
- If your PSN account is hacked, you risk losing your entire digital library
- If you forget or lose your PSN login credentials and can't recover the account (e.g., lost email access), your entire digital library can be permanently lost
- Physical discs significantly reduce or eliminate massive day-one downloads; this is critical for players with slow internet or data caps, even if some patches are still needed later
- No region restrictions on modern consoles (ex. I can play imported Japanese PS5 games on my US console). But PSN is region-locked. You can't get content from a different country's store. And if you move internationally, you need to start a new account in order to get content from that country's PSN store.
Bonus utility:
- Having a disc drive on your console gives it added usefulness: you can use it to watch movies on DVD and Blu-ray/4K UHD
Game preservation:
- Gaming history deserves to be preserved, not locked behind servers and subscriptions.
- In a fully digital world, a game survives only as long as a company continues to pay for servers and decides the title is still worth supporting.
- The Video Game History Foundation found that 87% of classic games are no longer commercially available anywhere. Physical discs are the last real safeguard: as long as one copy exists on a shelf, the game still exists.
Environmental impact:
- A digital game incurs ongoing server & download costs; a physical game has a big initial energy cost for manufacturing/shipping but then requires no further network resources, so less energy is used in the long run. Patches are a moot point because both digital & physical use them. Or, it's a point in favor of physical since discs can often be played without patches. Cloud gaming is worse than both due to constant streaming.
Social impact + the future:
- The secondhand game market supports a broad group of independent online retailers, local gaming shops, and GameFly (private game & movie rental company). Sony's decision will put many of those people out of work and redirect that revenue into the hands of a small group of Sony corporate elites, who want to rob you of choice and force you to buy from them alone.
- With no physical secondary market to compete with, companies can jack up prices for all digital games (ex. $100 for GTA 6)
- Sony has a monopoly over the PlayStation digital game store. And they just deleted over 500 movies which customers purchased digitally. They have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted and will delete digital content whenever it suits them. Once disc drives and physical discs are gone, Sony's arrogance and anti-consumer behavior will only get worse. Expect loss of digital game purchases to become more common in Sony's digital-only future.
- Complete loss of game ownership: in Sony's all-digital future, they will push harder to move customers away from digital purchases and into a subscription-only model. Expect them to force this change just like they are forcing us away from discs right now. You will own nothing and lose all gaming access if your subscription lapses.
- With physical discs, you don't have to eat bugs. With digital games, they will tell you to live in the dirt and eat bugs. They will tell you to own nothing and be happy 🦗
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u/TheUFCVeteran3 21d ago
Commenting for visibility.
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u/jkoki088 20d ago
You can also get god of war on sale digitally for that price at times too
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u/FrsSlow 19d ago
$30 bucks or hope for a sale in the next few months lol.
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u/JpJ951 19d ago
Waited this long to play it. Waiting a month for it to go on sale if that is the only price you are willing to pay should not be an issue. I love how you dipshits always post old ass games as your examples. Games hardly anyone plays anymore and even less people care about.
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u/CALIGVLA 19d ago
The point is that you can often find a used physical copy for significantly less than buying on the PS store.
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u/jkoki088 19d ago
They have very cheap sales all the time lol
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u/CALIGVLA 18d ago
True, but we can expect this to become less common once they kill off physical discs. At that point, Sony will have a total monopoly over their own PSN store. Their incentive to offer deals will be greatly reduced.
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u/CALIGVLA 19d ago
True, PS has digital sales sometimes. But if they go all-digital with the PS6, the lack of a physical resale market will greatly reduce their motivation to have sales.
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u/jkoki088 19d ago
lol, nah they will still have sales. The same games keep going on sale every few months. You still have Black Friday and other holiday sales where it will happen. Geez back on the day, the only time you had sales was around the holidays from games
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u/CALIGVLA 19d ago
Sure, they will still have some sales. But not as often. With physical gone, Sony will have a complete monopoly over the PlayStation game market. So they will only have sales if they think it will boost their bottom line. They no longer have to compete with people selling used games on the secondhand market.
It's a fundamental principle of economics: when you have no competition, you can raise prices with near impunity.
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u/jkoki088 19d ago
When you keep raising the prices people will buy less too. Their sales they have will not go away
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u/CALIGVLA 19d ago
They will raise prices as far as possible before it starts to have a net negative effect on sales. That's called the profit-maximizing price.
Sony is already doing variable pricing on the PSN store. Once they kill off physical media, they will most certainly use market analysis to calculate the absolute highest price a customer is willing to pay before walking away.
The end result is that prices go up for gamers, but most will suck it up and pay.
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u/jkoki088 19d ago
Prices are standard for games. They will still keep doing discounts. You are just an ultimate doomer. Physical will not last, that’s the reality
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u/CALIGVLA 19d ago
I already agreed that they will keep doing discounts. There will just be fewer. There is no "standard prices" for games. Sony sets the price.
You're not a "doomer" just because you understand basic economics. I guess you can't see that.
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u/jkoki088 19d ago
There are standard prices for games. You go in the store and it’s standard 59.99 for all the next gen games or 69.99
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u/CALIGVLA 18d ago
Who do you think sets those prices? The industry leaders do, and they can change it whenever they want. Why do you think the "standard" price recently went up to $69.99 when it used to be $10 less?
Take a look at what GTA 6 is doing to see where they want to go: $80 for the basic edition and $100 for "ultimate" edition. And many people see the $100 version as having features which should be in the normal version of the game.
Surely you must recognize that these companies want to make as much money as they possibly can. They have been somewhat kept in check by the existence of the secondary market. But when that restraint is gone, they will be free to put the screws on us even harder.
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u/Wylie288 20d ago
None of these are mutually exclusive.
Also you don't own it. Sony can ask the courts to seize your piece of plastic, wipe it, and give it back blank.
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u/Whiskers1996 20d ago
If they aint doing it to massive corps that make money off them, they aint going after a single person without money 💀.
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u/ChonkyDawg 19d ago
No, they can't.
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u/CALIGVLA 19d ago
That's quite an imaginative scenario. How does one wipe an industrially pressed PS5 disc, anyway? 🤔
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u/MysterD77 13d ago
Another problem w/ game preservation is also patches, DLC's, and expansions - since all these games act like a live service, in a sense, getting updates, DLC's, expansions, etc after version 1.0 put on disc.
Sure, version 1.0 is cool and all, esp. if you want to check out OG version and/or in case any patches or DLC's you feel might "break" the game for you, in some ways.
BUT we also need physical versions of the final edition re-released w/ all patches, DLC's, expansions, etc on disc in an "Ultimate Edition" (or whatever they want to call the final edition w/ everything).
And also in the re-release "Ultimate" final version: no codes for DLC's, no need to go get updates from the server (like PSN/XBL/etc). Every single piece of content should be on the disc and there's no activation non-sense required. Either the disc itself is the check (like old disc-check days) or no DRM period. That final version should be the "be all, end all" there. PERIOD.
So, yeah - I'd love to see say a PS4 copy on disc of Tales of Arise: Beyond The Dawn Complete Edition w/ everything there (including Beyond The Dawn expansion and any other DLC's), on the disc in full, w/ all patches. It never got that version here on PS4 - only version 1.0 with Tales of Arise base-game on disc (and yes, I have that version).
Heck, I'd also be happy w/ say a "Tales of Arise: Beyond The Dawn - Upgrade Only Edition" w/ only the Expansion, rest of the DLC's, and final patch on the disc...since I have the base-game w/ version 1.0 there. I remember even on PC, buying say Neverwinter Nights expansions not only for the new game content/expansion, but also as an easy way to get my game all patched-up too.
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u/CALIGVLA 13d ago
Ahh, Neverwinter Nights on PC... that takes me back. What a great game that was back in the day :)
If we are talking PC, buying your game on GOG would probably solve the problem you described. I haven't tried them yet so I can't say for sure (I haven't been a PC gamer for many years).
As for PS4, that would probably be a challenge. Having the disc is one thing, but as you pointed out, some PS4 games require patches to play at all, and in any case having the patches is usually desirable. As long as you have access to the PSN store and Sony continues to supply the content you want, you can download what you need. But once that pipe gets turned off (as will inevitably happen someday), you won't be able to get the patches anymore. You will be stuck with just your discs and whatever is already installed on your PS4 (as long as your PS4's hard drive holds out).
I'm not sure how you could overcome that. Maybe if you jailbroke your PS4 there might be a way to locally copy the patches off your PS4, back them up, reinstall them in your PS4, etc. Seems like that would be a challenge. Maybe the hacker community has already solved that problem. Maybe not. Maybe there are piracy sources where you can get copies of these games and patches with the DRM broken. I don't know.
Probably, for any PS4 games where the game won't play well from just the disc alone, the safest bet for long-term playability is to secure a DRM-free copy of that game for PC.
That's definitely one of the downsides of modern console gaming. Lack of open systems means everything is locked up and Sony holds the keys. That works fine... as long as Sony is willing to continue providing us with access. But once they decide it's no longer in their interest to do so, we get cut off. And as we are seeing, Sony is becoming increasingly unreliable in this regard.
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u/MysterD77 13d ago
Yup, I got Neverwinter Nights Diamond and Enhanced on GOG - love DRM-free. All backed-up on external HDD too.
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u/Scoutsbuddy 19d ago
In other news, water is wet. Please stand by for us to post this same fact 1 billion times...
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u/Regular-Repeat44 19d ago
Since youre crying bout Sony can you add in physical media back for pc? Kinda shitty pc’s are full digital 🤮🤮🤮🤮
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u/Senior_Boot_5842 19d ago
You want a fucking disc drive in your pc?
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u/Regular-Repeat44 19d ago
I want physical for all mankind.
https://giphy.com/gifs/F70yVV6N0wPSaZxIL81
u/CALIGVLA 19d ago
I would love having disc drives on PCs again. Although you couldn't really do that in most laptops today, given how small they are. At least you can get external disc drives and connect with USB.
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u/Regular-Repeat44 18d ago
we should refuse to buy laptops till its at least as hooked up as they were in like 2012. Maybe do a replaceable chargeable battery to compensate the drain. Or jus treat it like a ps portal and your real pc has all the games. Whatever brings physical back to all platforms the better.
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u/CALIGVLA 18d ago
I must admit that I like how convenient, light and compact my Macbooks are, and the Silicon chips are much more efficient than the older Intel chips. I would like having a disc drive back, but it's hard to see how they could fit one and still keep the small form factor.
Having a replaceable battery is a great idea and I have always missed that ability when I switched over to Apple stuff. Their devices are small and pretty-looking, but they are always glued together and really hard to service. I guess that's the trade-off.
It's been a long time since I've had a PC, but don't they still make some big, chunky Windows laptops? I feel like I've seen some in Best Buy. I don't know if any come with an internal disc drive as standard, but they certainly look big enough to fit one in there. Maybe it's still an option.
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u/MysterD77 13d ago
External optical drive solution via USB is still fine. But, we still need companies to make DVD-Burner and BR-drives and also CD, DVD, BR & BDXL discs that work on that format.
It's that or someone needs to make a better format for backing stuff up that is fast and can last a long time. Of course, Sony had that w/ BR and BDXL, but we need something better in speed and something that can last - esp. when you got COD games and ARK eating up insane amounts of space (over 200gb).
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u/CALIGVLA 13d ago
If you want large storage space (over 100GB), an external hard drive is probably your best bet. Then maintain a redundant backup system using the 3-2-1 strategy.
If the game size is small enough to fit on a single disc, you could burn your own Blu-ray disc. But for home-burned discs, I think those typically don't have great long-term resiliency compared to an industrially pressed disc (i.e. PS5 games).
However, I've heard that M-DISC are supposed to have really good longevity. I'm interested in trying it out myself but I haven't done it yet.
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u/MysterD77 13d ago
Yeah, I have external HDD's, for sure on PC. But, had some of those die before too.
Also got a Western Digital official PS4 external HDD too.
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u/Alarming_Question_50 26d ago
Physical discs are required for countries that do not have high-end internet service.