Comment by CodesInChaos
5 days ago
Unfortunately many game disks only contain a downloader nowadays and you often need to bind them to an account to play. Plus the version on disk without updates is probably buggy. Baldur's Gate 3 Collector's edition is an example that has a disk, but isn't really any better than a Steam key.
On the other hand you can back up a DRM free download, like the games on GOG, despite these being a purely digital download.
So overall I don't think the physical form matters that much compared to DRM.
I'm not sure how BG3 Collector's Edition might be different, but the game is DRM-free on Steam.
It's disgusting how a previously open platform for gaming (PC) was turned into what it's become with Steam. Young people either don't know or don't care that it used to be the norm to buy and install a game without a middleman "service".
That argument has been harder to make with time. A couple years ago I made the difficult decision to get rid of some old game copies. I wasn't realistically going to use them ever again, and the sentimental value for me is entirely about the memory, not the media. Part of my steam collection is nearly as old and it is on track to greatly outlast. It is also significantly easier to own and use in just about every aspect, even if it is technically just a revocable license.
Beyond that, Steam and the digital media model allowed a great many people to publish games that wouldn't otherwise have been able to publish games. It made the indie world of games possible. It also did more than anyone to bridge the platform gap between windows and linux.
Steam was beneficial for small devs who otherwise had no good distribution options and were way too easy targets for piracy.
Otherwise, it's just a pain. Like my favorite PC game Age of Empires 2 was a CD, then when they finally remade it, it was like oh you gotta sign up for Steam first, and now you gotta launch this adware to play your game, which btw is an entire Chrome browser, and sometimes it'll refuse to launch your stuff too. Then several game publishers made their own Steam-like launchers except even worse. The situation is worse now, good thing I don't really care about video games anymore.
I'm really worried about what will happen to Valve when Gabe retires.
I can see a bean counter making a very convincing case that it's cheaper to go back to Windows and avoid all this Linux reverse engineering gubbins which isn't bringing in an immediate profit, especially when they're giving away all theirs efforts by open sourcing Proton.
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PC game piracy was pretty mainstream back then. It was a real problem for video game creators.
But Steam is also more annoying than it needs to be, especially forcing updates and not letting you transfer games so it's not comparable to owning a disc.
Yes and gamers keep hailing Gabe as their savior just because hes not quite as bad as the competition that has shown up since then.
Definitely not the case with the PS5 version, which I can install and play offline to my heart 's content.
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