All of this is on the way out

A reader looks back at the history of digital video games and explains there’s little point in having physical copies anymore.

Some might say that Steam, owned by Valve, settled the debate between digital and physical gaming in 2004, when it launched with Half-Life 2. A game which, at the time, I went to buy physically from a local game store. Back then, gaming was mostly physical. You owned the disc and the game indefinitely. Or so you thought.

You would buy the game for Windows 98, then when the next version of Windows rolled out, half of your games wouldn’t work. It was great for some games and systems, but it really required a constant workaround to keep your library working. Sometimes the raw power upgrades would be a great benefit when your older games just worked.

This is exactly the same for console generations. Unlike today’s newest consoles, each generation required you to play your old games on an old console. Keeping an old console was part of the collecting process for diehard collectors. However, back to 2004 and Valve with Steam taking over as the place for PC gaming; its aim was to have your game collection move with you from PC to PC.

When you upgraded, you got the benefits from access to more power. I’m sure that there were a lot of gamers that resisted, but now in 2023 they have accepted it, going as far as to not buy games that don’t get a Steam release. To be fair, EA, Ubisoft, Epic and others all have their own launchers, and they work the same way, but not having your games all under the same roof can be annoying.

Digital has been mainstream and accepted on PC for a couple of decades now. Consoles have lagged behind substantially and have kept physical gaming alive. This is all changing at the moment, with a ton of games that have come out recently on discs which are nothing more than a code in a box or a disc which contains just a game license.

This has a portion of the community enraged, but I’d say the majority just don’t care. Broadband speeds are generally decent in the UK and I personally rarely buy games physically. I do play on all platforms, and I’d say I’m physical on just PlayStation and Nintendo, and even then it depends. It’s nice to have the option to buy a used copy from second-hand sellers when I want to save money or avoid supporting the game but still play it legally.

However, my point is that hanging on past this generation of consoles is pointless. I would like to see some changes come in, like the ability to trade in used games digitally, even if it was just pennies. Also, a minimum period the game will be available for, as some have been withdrawn from marketplaces after only a few years. Also, lower prices for digital games, as they don’t have manufacturing costs. It’s annoying to see digital games often more expensive than their physical copies when they shouldn’t be.

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However, for a diehard collector, it’s going to be the end of an era. Unlike other media that can contain the whole experience, like DVDs, CDs, and even vinyl, most if not all recent releases require a day one patch and to be always online. So even if you could get a physical copy, it wouldn’t be much more than a novelty coaster.

In 2023 we are also starting to see AAA releases skip physical releases entirely. For instance, Remedy stated that Alan Wake 2 is coming out as digital-only, to keep costs down for both the developer and the end user, and to allow them more time to polish the game.

Personally, I hope this does well as physical has been dying for the longest time. On Xbox and PlayStation at least. I still think that Nintendo can and should keep using cartridges for its different type of game experience, for the time being.

By reader @McSherlocks

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A reader looks back at the history of digital video games and explains there’s little point in having physical copies anymore.