An executive at Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft has said gamers will need to get “comfortable” not owning their games before video game subscriptions truly take off.
Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get 'Comfortable' Not Owning Their Games for Subscriptions to Take Off::An executive at Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft has said gamers will need to get “comfortable” not owning their games before video game subscriptions truly take off.
My argument against this is that at least I own a license to the game rather than just a subscription. Steam still has and updates games that were made unpurchasable a decade ago. Hell, people still play rocket league on steam.
This is a separate argument altogether. Theres "own physically" and theres "own a license" to. If you own it physically and your physical media corrupts (which happens often to digital discs) did you own it any more than if you had it on steam? It's also illegal to make a copy of a console disc, btw.
What the article is talking about is not even obtaining a license for at all and games just being attached to a subscription
If I scratch a disc, or my house gets robbed, burns down, etc, it's gone forever and I need to buy a new game (or hundreds!) If I have a digital copy, I still have it.
I actually had to contend with this when my house was robbed and I lost all my DS, GBA, Dreamcast, and N64 games.
Plus, this idea that physical media doesn't have DRM is a complete falsehood. Discs and cartridges come with copy protection, region-locking, forced always-online DRM, etc. If that's not digital rights management, I don't know what is!
And a lot of games on steam don't have the DRM, you can just buy and keep the game files. I do wish they'd make it clear on the store page or give me the option to filter out DRM games though.
How many? Because I think the actual % might surprise you quite a bit.
Can you play the games by purchasing them and then not having to ever download them using Steam?
The only DRM free games are physical copies, otherwise you rely on a specific service to be able to play, even if it's only once (like with GOG), it's a form of DRM.
Tell me how do you but a game on Steam and play it without downloading it from their servers? 🤔
Downloading a DRM-free game from a web store is not DRM no matter how much you repeat that it is.
It is, you depend on a digital storefront to have a proof of ownership and to download the game in the first place.
It isn't. The files can be copied and distributed any way you like. Same goes for GOG. A DRM-free game is a DRM-free game. It can be copied.
What's digital about physical copies?
It's still digital. It contains digital data... come on, you can't seriously be unaware of this. Is a digital camera not digital because it stores the data on a physical SD card?
Physical media has DRM too. CDs, DVDs, BluRays, game cartridges all have DRM.
Your argument that buying something means it's DRM is nonsense. Buying something from a physical shop and buying something online isn't different. They both require you to hand over money to get the game files. They're either both DRM or neither are.
Yes it is as you depend on the goodwill of a digital platform. If Steam bans you how do you prove that you own the "DRM free" games you've bought from them and haven't simply pirated them?
Why would you need to prove anything? The whole point of DRM free is that you don't need to prove anything, you just run it.
By saying that you want a mechanism for proving ownership, you're essentially saying you want DRM.
If steam bans me, I run the executables that I've downloaded. Same as I would if I pirated it.
Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft can block you from playing your physical media, and yet you claim that isn't DRM, because the data exists on a disc/cartridge, rather than stored on an SSD.
You are showing a fundamental cluelessness of what DRM actually is.
Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft can block you from playing your physical media
Only if there's an online component to the game. If I go buy a brand new Switch and a physical copy of Mario Kart, there's nothing Nintendo can do to stop me from playing the game.