Opinion Why you should never buy physical games

[Clout]

In this episode, I explain why I no longer will buy physical media for console games. Check it out.

 

[TechParadox]

Rebuttal: So basically, buying physical means you have to deal with storing the media, protecting the media, and potentially having to install from that media anyway. If you lose that media, you're SOL on being able to replay the game later down the road. Buying digital means you don't have to worry about storage (other than disk space on your system's drive), and you can always reinstall it later, right? Well, if you didn't back it up onto a different drive, then so long as you have a working system and the company will let you re-download it for that system, and so long as you have decent high-speed Internet then you're good to go. But what about those older games that you "bought" digitally? If you check the purchase agreement for your digital downloads, you'll see that in the majority of them you're not buying the game. You're buying a license to play that game on the specific platform. Want to play that PS1 classic game you paid for on your PS3, but your old PS3 crapped out on you? Tough break, chum, you can't play it on your PS5. Who knows, maybe you'll get lucky and they'll remaster it, so they can charge you for it yet again. Oh, you have a PS3, but your Internet is down, you don't have a backup, and you only bought the digital version of the game so you can't reinstall it? Tough break, again. Same thing goes for any sort of Xbox/360/XBOne game - if you don't have a physical copy, it's not currently installed on any of your drives, and your Internet is trash, you're dead in the water. And that doesn't even touch on things that might get altered after the fact in games courtesy of censorship patches or things that the producers may deem need to be removed from the game, down to removing the game from your system entirely like what Sony did with PT.

I'm not saying there aren't advantages to digital-only distribution. In today's instant-gratification world, it sure as hell beats out having to go to the store and beg the clerk to check in back for one last copy of the new hotness, or pre-ordering online and praying that the game makes it to your door on day-and-date. And yeah, trying to maintain shelf space for stacks of cartridges and jewel cases is a task in and of itself that is massively lessened by being able to store a bunch of games on a multi-terabyte drive. In a perfect world, purchasing a physical copy would then allow for the game to be registered to your account with an access key provided in the box, so you could have the best of both worlds and still maintain your right of first sale on the physical copy. But in the grand scheme of things, if you can't lay your hands on it, you don't own it, so if you're buying digital-only, just remember - it's just a long-term rental for a large up-front price

 

[PGen98]

Sadly physical games are becoming less and less relevant in today's world, but as a collector of video games and a stubborn person in general, I'll never stray from my physical media. Even my movie collection. I've converted every DVD and Blu Ray I own to digital, but I still buy physical and convert them so I still have the physical media but available to watch on my Plex server. I appreciate digital distribution, but I know that I don't OWN that copy, I only have so long as the drive stays alive and the store allows me to re-download it should things go wrong. Otherwise I'm paying for a loan of a game that might just vanish tomorrow. So thanks, but I'll keep on buying my games and knowing that I own it, even if the context of ownership is continually changing.

 

[Demon_skeith]

Each has their pros and cons, but I much rather buy them. Though I'm sure there will be a day where I have to buy digital and never truly own what I buy.

 

[Ash]

I'm not touching digital games unless I 100% know I'm going to like the game (Rockstar games only basically). Not being able to return a digital game is a huge turnoff

 

[BigPete7978]

I have been all digital since the launch of Xbox One and PS4.