this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Steam Deck
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You never own any game, unless you code it yourself. You might hold a CD in your hands, but the game is still owned by someone else. You only have the right to use it as noted in the license you agreed by purchasing it.
It’s true. Every book, movie, game or piece of software you’ve ever used (unless you made it yourself) has been subject to some kind of licence, that can be revoked.
Sure but no one is going to come in to my home and take my physical books away in the same way that can happen with online digital services.
You can reverse this logic though. If you lose or damage your physical copy it’s gone forever, digital copies can mostly be redownloaded/recovered anytime.
I had never thought about this but this is a great argument in favor of digital vs physical.
Still I prefer owning my games when given the choice.
One issue is that, unless you (can) back them up yourself, digital goods can be changed. If I bought The Twits on Kindle, it literally wouldn't be the same book that I read as a child because they decided that words like "ugly" are too much for children. Even if I bought it before they censored it - it would be "updated".
Good argument too.
I guess they’re adavantages and inconvenients in every situation.
What you’re talking about could even happen on a physical game receiving an online update.
It's a great argument for backups. I don't think clod/DRM based services are the best backup - certainly they're not a complete backup system.
If you have a local system and/or communication failure, or bandwidth limitation; how long to restore the backup?
A backup on a local storage should be possible to plug into another computer and access fairly easily.
Ideally your backup system will give some resilience against many types of risk scenario, especialy for the data you care most about or can't go for a long time without. The fact that it's harder to backup DRM stuff is a limitation - so I'd avoid DRM unless i don't care about the thing.
You have no idea what you are talking about. You can own and resell any physical piece of game media. If you have a gameboy cartridge, nobody can take that game away from you. Also if you have DRM free game files from gog, nobody can take that away from you.
The only case where this disgusting lincense shit is possible, is when games require being online and logging in to unlock the DRM.
Your physical media will degrade over time and you will eventually lose access to the game you bought physically. There’s no correct answer in this, unfortunately, and is fully your opinion. You can own and resell your physical media until it no longer functions and then where are you? You’re in the same boat as the person who bought digitally and lost access to their license. Even DRM free games from gog are only around until they stop hosting your download. If they stop hosting it and the hardware you own with your copy on it fails, you will again own nothing.
This argument applies to almost anything that's possible to own, though. What happens when your bike degrades to the point that it's not usable as a bike anymore?
1000% it does. But if your tires wear out you can buy new tires. If a chip wears out in your game boy color cartridge, are you going to replace it? Is there a shop you can bring your old PS2 disc to that can restore lost data?
Edit: I think a bike is a flawed analogy because you can repair a bike. You can’t repair an old physical game if it breaks. You can buy a replacement in both cases, until there are no longer bikes or no longer copies of old games still functioning and I’ve got a hunch that bikes are going to be around a lot longer than any physical media.
I think it's a pretty apt analogy. A game boy cartridge is repairable if you know what you're doing and have the replacement parts. Not to mention that older bikes aren't necessarily going to be able to use more modern parts.
I guess you could be right. I don’t know enough about chip repairs I just figured mechanical parts would be easier to find and replace than a cartridge.
Although, at least with DRM-free games you're given all the tools to preserve the game yourself if you want to.