What even are physical games in this day and age? Sure, you can buy a disk but if you still need to download a zero day patch that takes approximately a buttload of time to finish before you can actually start playing, then it isn’t a physical game. Don’t even get me started on Nintendo’s links in a box. Perhaps we should start calling them physical DRM.
Eh, Nintendo games are still pretty complete on the cartridge.
But the real value of physical games is that you can resell them. So even if they’re essentially just “links in a box,” you can still sell/loan that to someone else and they can play. You can’t do that with digital-only media.
It works on the honor system, which is just a fancy way of saying it doesn’t. Mainly because nobody wants it. Turns out reselling, as a concept, doesn’t really make sense when games go on sale all the time.
It certainly does, or at least trading does. There have been times when I want a friend to try a game, but they’re not willing to buy it. If I could swap a game with them (or just gift one), then they could.
Why would I swap a game for my friend to try it out when the next sale will probably happen in a couple of weeks? Literally yesterday I bought The Master Chief collection for a fiend for 10 USD. The second-hand market only really applies to anti-consumer companies like Nintendo where several years old games still retail for launch price.
Honestly makes sense since you can then produce the boxes much earlier and ship them and go through all that physical distribution nonsense without worrying about patching from whatever is on disk to the actual finished product. Especially since I bet physical gamers want the game on day one too.
What even are physical games in this day and age? Sure, you can buy a disk but if you still need to download a zero day patch that takes approximately a buttload of time to finish before you can actually start playing, then it isn’t a physical game. Don’t even get me started on Nintendo’s links in a box. Perhaps we should start calling them physical DRM.
Eh, Nintendo games are still pretty complete on the cartridge.
But the real value of physical games is that you can resell them. So even if they’re essentially just “links in a box,” you can still sell/loan that to someone else and they can play. You can’t do that with digital-only media.
You can if it’s DRM-free.
Not legally AFAIK.
GOG’s EULA allows you to legally transfer any games as long as you destroy all not transferred copies.
How does that work with the licence grant in their systems? Is the burden of proof on you, or do they have a mechanism to transfer that?
It works on the honor system, which is just a fancy way of saying it doesn’t. Mainly because nobody wants it. Turns out reselling, as a concept, doesn’t really make sense when games go on sale all the time.
It certainly does, or at least trading does. There have been times when I want a friend to try a game, but they’re not willing to buy it. If I could swap a game with them (or just gift one), then they could.
Why would I swap a game for my friend to try it out when the next sale will probably happen in a couple of weeks? Literally yesterday I bought The Master Chief collection for a fiend for 10 USD. The second-hand market only really applies to anti-consumer companies like Nintendo where several years old games still retail for launch price.
weren’t there a few titles where the disc was effectively nothing and the whole game just downloads anyway?
Honestly makes sense since you can then produce the boxes much earlier and ship them and go through all that physical distribution nonsense without worrying about patching from whatever is on disk to the actual finished product. Especially since I bet physical gamers want the game on day one too.