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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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What about... Physical media? Like, ordering a dvd from amazon with your game on it that you then play on a machine that's not even connected to the Internet?
I see some problem with physical media :
If we use DVD/Blu-ray we need a player to install the game (I really prefer to have one on my computer/laptop than nothing, but it's not how things work now 😭).
I totally prefer the physical media, but it's not perfect. To have something easy for consumer, the game industry need to do some change like : opti the game size, find a good method to update the game, and no DRM on the physical media.
Yes. That's how it was done before, no reason to not do this now. Wing Commander 4 came on 6 CDs. As you progressed through the game, you kept advancing through them.
As Blu Rays are read only, you obviously can't apply the patch there. The patches were always downloaded and applied to the game parts you had on your hard drive. What was wrong with that?
You need a device to read physical media to actually read physical media, yes.
It's not how things work because games that came on physical media had literally no advantage anymore at some point. With physical media just being used to speed up the first install in your always-online environment and bandwidth being no longer an issue, they just became obsolete. If I could have played half life 2 without steam using my disc, it would have been worth keeping. With the box being essentially just a bulky envelope for a product key, it turned out to be just a hassle.
At some point, steam will enshittify or shut down. That's when we will realize that online only distribution might not have been such a great idea.
You need a "launcher" just to download update, and it's not the most ideal for me. I prefer to have nothing between the button play (or click on the executable), and the game launch.
I agree with you, only online is totally stupid because the moment the service shutdown you lose everything. This is why GOG is good, because after buying a game, I can create backup on external disk. The only biggest problem for me is they don't have a good Linux integration for GOG Galaxy 2.
This is not perfect, but it's a better start than nothing. And it's difficult to do this because of DRM on other store.
What's wrong with just downloading a patch and pointing it to the directory the game was installed in?
Nothing, but you can be sure that's not how it's going to work. A simple example with Steam and certain games: you have one launcher with Steam, but you have another launcher between the game and Steam, and I don't see why that's necessary.
But the way you want to do it requires a bit more work, but nothing too complicated, and more and more people want something simple and easy to use, which is not the case with your proposal because they have to do more steps to be able to play.
But you actually can backup your steam games on a external drive.
Yes, but you can't launch the game without Steam (I think some game can be start without Steam but I'm not sure). And i prefer to own my game, and the possibility to change how i launch the game (with or without the launcher).
It's far from ideal solution, but you can create offline backup on steam and after steam fall, launch your games from it.
And yes, some games are launchable without steam. For instance Darkest Dungeon 1.
I remember the physical media PC game days. At the end, the games had horrible copy protection/DRM. I remember not having an internet connection for a while and I went to buy a game that I could play. All the games on the shelf had a notice on the box that said "internet connection required". Single player games needed to be activated, and if you ran out of activations you either had to contact the company to reset it or you were shit outta luck. I far prefer the combination of Steam and GoG.
I remember the physical media PC game days before those days when CDs had a copy protection that barely worked and nothing else. I got a game, headed home, installed it and played the whole afternoon without being online once.
That's true, but those days are long behind us. Now, games are released in an unfinished state and require, at the very least, a day-one patch for any hope of a non-buggy experience. It's sad affairs everywhere in all aspects of the industry.