while i don’t personally use physical video game media anymore, i am interested in rights to digital media generally, and Sony’s recent announcement that they’ll stop making physical video games entirely put this topic at the front of my mind again. so i got to thinking, what’s lost when the public doesn’t have access to physical media of a video game, and what would need to be done to ensure that they don’t lose those things?
i needed to organize my thoughts somewhere, so i typed this up pretty quickly today. you’ll have to excuse me if i haven’t covered all angles of this properly.
preservation of old versions
physical media remains the only way to access the launch versions of some video games (in cases where the physical media is operational and digital downloads would always include a “day‐one patch”). while i do prefer to play on the latest patch of any given video game myself (and neither do i usually much care for speedrunning old versions of video games), i do think maintaining access to old versions of video games is important for the same sorts of reason that the original versions of those old Star Wars movies are still important. new versions of video games are not always better, be that for artistic reasons or ones related to accessibility or compatibility (as a consequence of them being executable software).
i’m only aware that downloading old versions of video games is a thing on Steam using a hidden console, and my understanding is that the publisher still controls whether or not this is even possible for any given version. i don’t think this is something publishers should even be able to remove access to. there’s something of a legal quagmire when it comes to patching stuff out of a video game that the publisher no longer has rights to, but even in this case i don’t think publishers should be able to remove access to versions of a video game that a buyer has previously had access to. i do think that users should be forced to agree to a disclaimer about the potential security implications of downloading old versions of software though.
playing multiplayer video games on old versions would naturally be restricted on official servers, which is why server software for all versions also needs to be made available to the public in some form unrestricted by DRM. both access to all versions of a video game and access to multiplayer server software probably aren’t things that the public will be able to get consistent and legitimate access to without government regulation.
this solution only works as long as the digital storefront continues to exist, so the long‐term solution is the complete removal of DRM.
offline acquisition and usage
digital media is super convenient if you have a good internet connection with unlimited bandwidth, but a lot of people don’t have that (because internet access still isn’t considered a public utility in too many places). when you don’t have that, it’s way less convenient that just coming home from the store with physical media. and while it’s not a big deal to bring your portable Nintendo Switch to a public library or something, for big video game consoles that need an external display and controller, lugging all those around to get them internet access isn’t generally feasible either.
before the proliferation of the internet and even for quite a while afterwards, Nintendo notably installed thousands of Famicom Disk Writer kiosks across Japan so people could go pay for a video game to be written to their rewritable media. while the video games written to those floppy disks couldn’t then be written to permanent storage on the console given that it didn’t have any, you could do that today, although bespoke kiosks and storage mediums would be impractical compared to being able to do this with any storage medium supported by the device and any computer.
the ability to acquire offline copies of digital media from retail stores or public computers even for closed platforms, and to use all video games and video game consoles completely offline, probably isn’t something that the public will be able to get consistent and legitimate access to without government regulation.
this solution only works as long as these methods of distribution would continue to exist, so the long‐term solution is the complete removal of DRM.
lending or transferring access
Nintendo actually lets you lend digital video games now, which is great; i’ve used it a couple times myself. however, it’s limited in how you have to be in the same family group or whatever, and also demonstrate physical proximity to the lendee. Steam also has its library sharing feature that gets a lot of use from what i’m aware. these are still not quite as flexible as physical media though, which you can just give or mail to anyone. the proper solution here is to permit temporary lending or permanent transfer of your access to any digital media to anyone else (obviously with adequate security controls in place to ensure someone with temporary access to your account can’t just make off with all your video games).
the ability to lend or transfer digital media licenses probably isn’t something that the public will be able to get consistent and legitimate access to without government regulation.
this solution only works as long as the digital account systems continue to exist, so the long‐term solution is the complete removal of DRM, which obsoletes this concept entirely.
rentals / trials
this is kind of a thing that already exists? some subscription services will also give limited access to some video games without a full purchase, but this is always bespoke and not a generalized system. i’m not aware of anybody offering a generalized “rental” system that gives temporary access (be it limited by calendar time or play time) to any video game, but it could absolutely be done, with the advantage that the storefront and publishers would actually get to see money from every rental instead of just the first purchase of the physical media from a rental store. these also often lead to full purchases of media that people decide they want to have persistent access to.
the ability to rent / trial any digital media at reduced cost probably isn’t something that the public will be able to get consistent and legitimate access to without government regulation.
this solution only works as long as the digital storefront continues to exist, but the notion of temporary access to digital media is inherently linked to DRM anyway.
permanent access to purchased media
there are many real cases of access to ostensibly “purchased” digital media being taken away from buyers after licensing agreements expire or digital storefronts close down, including from Sony very recently.
the ability to permanently retain access to purchased digital media probably isn’t something that the public will be able to get consistent and legitimate access to without government regulation. this solution only works as long as the digital storefront continues to exist, so the long‐term solution is the complete removal of DRM.
safety from account takeovers
the only way for users to ensure they continue to have access to their purchased digital media even if their online account is taken over by an attacker is the complete removal of DRM, which isn’t something that the public will be able to get consistent and legitimate access to without government regulation.
GFD i can’t imagine what your overall conclusion is here
no? i’ll spell it out a bit more plainly: the only ways to properly fix the myriad issues we all have with maintaining access to our legally‐acquired media are pro‐consumer government regulation and DRM removal.
physical media isn’t a permanent solution to all these problem either. all physical media will eventually deteriorate and become unusable; even optical discs like CDs, which were once touted as lasting forever if well‐cared for, are now well‐known to be vulnerable to unavoidable forms of “disc rot”. and even if gamers yelling at Sony gets them to backpedal on this decision, this doesn’t fix the problems with not only the destructibility of physical media, but also video games that can’t be played offline, which is already 4–7% of physical PS5 games (according to DoesItPlay). i truly don’t care if physical copies of video games go away, but i do care about losing the types of access and functionality that are currently only possible when using physical media, and those can’t be maintained without guaranteed permanent access to digital downloads and servers (which obviously isn’t feasible) or the removal of DRM.
but how would video game companies make money without DRM??
when someone can’t pirate a product because of your DRM and locked‐down platform, it doesn’t matter if they weren’t willing to pay for it anyway; they just won’t play it then. when piracy happens because it’s more convenient or functional than legally acquiring a piece of digital media, that’s when you’re losing sales to piracy. Gabe Newell himself has famously said that this is almost always why piracy happens, which remains tremendously significant coming from the CEO and cofounder of the largest video game distribution service for the open PC platform.
it must be said that piracy is not fundamentally convenient, and this is more true for video games than any other kind of digital media because executing untrusted code on your personal devices is dangerous! pirating media takes a very significant amount of extra effort and time, and time is money. there is real value to customers in maintaining a trusted and convenient distribution platform, and the market should be structured such that these aspects are what competition for selling digital media is focused on.