Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future

On the contrary. It's been a very long process of boiling the frog.

I bought a physical release of Spore in 2008 and the game allowed itself to be installed a couple of times. Few years later I bought a single player RPG game for which I still own the CD but I'm not able to play it because I tied it to an online service and lost my credentials. All the games I own on Steam can be gone in one second and my children probably won't be able to get access to them even if they don't require online accounts, for which very many does.

There's a huge disconnect between online games that require servers to be played on - in which case it's sad but understandable that one day these will be gone and unplayable - and vast majority of games that are single player that still require players to be online and have credentials to some 3rd party applications.

GOG is the only vendor that actually lets you to own your games.

Steam is the only company that play fair with their customers, but I can easily see the future in which Gabe passes out and Tencent buys the company.

> But today, buying a console is an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer every microsecond you play a game.

We are fully aware of that, and that's precisely what we are opposed to.

I can buy an old PS2 with collection of games, plug it to a monitor and have fun with no hassle and without an internet connection. 10 years from now PS5 will be a dead brick, even with a bag full of games.

This is part of the appeal of Nintendo consoles - you don't need to connect them to the internet, and they are still terrific for local multiplayer.

I disagree. They are using that as an excuse, when in reality they simply desire more control. When Sony releases their sales numbers they never compare physical and digital sales of games that are offering both, but rather compare physical sales to everything digital including DLC and digital-only games to make the percentage of digital sales seem higher. You can't ever get a real comparison when there are options for both. Since it is true that physical sales are declining, they feel that they can do so without significant push back. Disc sales are still significant, and even besides the big companies there are tons of smaller companies that would gladly continue to order discs for indie games, limited editions, collectors, etc.

That said, I think you are quite correct about the "ongoing relationship with the manufacturer". This is just another step in the direction of seizing total control over things that people once considered that they owned.

I remember half life 2 sucked -- you bought a physical game disk in the store... and you had to create a steam account to play it. I thought they were jerks at the time because before that a physical disk was what you needed to play your game.

What they did was set a bad example, and then the floodgates opened for all the rest to pull that nonsense.

Other big companies set bad examples too. All the fashionable but flawed Apple UI designs get copied by everyone else. For example Tesla has a similar iphone/ipad UI in their cars -- but they are moving vehicles and you don't want to be swiping on a screen to defrost your windshield.

I really wish companies would step up and set GOOD examples and follow through.

[1] In November 2004, Half-Life 2 was the first high-profile game to be offered digitally on Steam, requiring installation of the Steam client for retail copies. During this time users faced problems attempting to play; part of legal issues that Valve had with Vivendi, who claimed that physical copies it published could not be activated as to it the game had not been released. The Steam requirement was met with concerns about software ownership and requirements, as well as problems with overloaded servers - demonstrated previously by the Counter-Strike rollout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(service)#History

I can see where you're coming from, but having recently replayed my childhood copy of MGS, all I can say is don't ask me for Meryl's codec number.

If physical releases actually go away, that dystopia comes to bear. Console publishers think that this is a step in the direction of further control over their library, which is laughable. They're killing the compromise, the other side of which was, "Gamers will mostly respect console DRM and not flood the zone with "Explicitly Fuck You" piracy." These companies are about to learn a hard lesson.

I never understood why I should prefer driving against some punks that spend their evening crashing into the other players on purpose or wait for online races to start.

But anyone is different.

It's the malleability and ephemerality of digital content that has enabled not just restricting people's rights, but destroying the authenticity of media by arbitrarily replacing its content. The reason Amazon could delete 1984 from your Kindle, is its digital nature. Nobody, except you, can delete a book from your shelf or change its content.

So if I get tired of my DVD movie collection, I could sell it or give it to my kids. If I ever decide I'm too old for the retro game cartridges I have, they could go to future grandkids. But my GOG games or Bandcamp music is stuck with me forever (legally speaking). Nobody would know if I "gave" them to my kids, but there certainly is no way to resell them.

Now this is still a rights issue, but physical media makes this easy (outside of keys/DRM as you point out) You always have the right to hand on a physical object.

It doesn't have to be a disc. It almost certainly does need to be physical.

Despite whatever rights you might have now or in the future they can just hand wave all that away with update to TOS. Sure, technically speaking it might not enforceable but realistically who is going to sue? Even class action lawsuits have very little teeth because the penalties are in the region of lunch money/pocket change. Now if Sony executives went to prison for a few months after each lawsuit that might encourage some behavior changes. Monetary penalties though? It's just the cost of doing business for them. And even if you do win, do you get to keep your account? Doubt it. Good luck trying to prove in court that you were shut down in retribution since it is their platform they can and will cut you off at their convenience. That's the contract you signed when you accepted those terms of service and there is no consumer law to protect you since it is their platform.

With discs there is no middle-man and physical things have longer-standing legal precedence when it comes to protections so it is the path of least resistance for preservation of rights. Average consumer has no lobbying power to write entire new laws over digital goods and whatever gets written is reflective of what is currently in place and right now the people writing these laws are on the level of competence that they read their email from printed out paper: a physical format. Fighting for physical makes sense because the people involved with enforcing that protection understand that format better than digital.

Valve and Steam Works games happily sold literal trash that were useless to anyone but the first person who redeemed the key. They destroyed the second hand PC market selling codes in a box with potential time saver installers. And they still needed online activation.

I too bought a Steam Deck and haven't looked back. It's still a normal computer even if Steam itself goes to shit, but all signs point to it steadfastly refusing to do that. Here's to hoping Gaben never dies.