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digital_clover digital_clover

Are you comfortable with video games, as a medium, moving towards digital distribution?

Considering DRM, the used game market, and the lack of having a physical copy of the game... what are your thoughts?

Asked over 3 years ago in Online Services Platforms: Online Games (Online) Tags: digital distribution, drm, downloadable games, console, used games
masteroftheclaw masteroftheclaw
Level: Bronze

Best Answer

I remember when the "next gen" consoles hadn't come out yet and there was talk of DLC and the like. I was extremely worried because it seemed like gamers would just be taken massive advantage of to buy tiny add-ons.

The idea of downloading entire games seemed it would take a while and you could lose it at any time. At least, this was my thought.

I am a collector of video games and so I highly prefer and enjoy physical copies of games. Yet, I have transitioned just fine into this current gen of gaming. I now buy DLC and have even purchased games that I now only have digital copies of. It's a huge step for me, since I am someone who felt they always "needed" the box, instruction manual, and disc (for collector's sake more than anything else).

As long as the companies can keep me feeling like I "own" the game though I only have bytes of data, then I think digital distribution will continue to grow and benefit more people.

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Answers (9)

  1. I'm happy with it, plus it (sort of) means less possible piracy. So the developers can get the income to continue working on games for our favorite systems. :) Plus, the whole "It's with you all the time thing" is pretty awesome, compared to holding the physical thing if you want to play a game. (Last point mainly goes aiming at portables.)

    MechadudeMechadude
    Level: Bronze

  2. Digital distribution, certainly. The type of digital distribution is up for debate however.

    I'm not comfortable with a rental model but I think that over the next ten years that'll be the "new DRM" argument. The industry has an uphill battle making a "good version" of DRM which offers the users an advantage. Steam does a good job of this by offering to let you download any of your games on any machine, but it's far from perfect.

    We'll also find that the technology isn't quite ready yet in some less developed countries where DSL / Cable are not widespread enough. In more economically developed countries we'll end up running against bandwidth caps and packet shaping as the ISPs push back at this "slice of the financial pie" that they're not "in on", much like what's already started in Europe and we've seen the start of in the States.

    davidwhitneydavidwhitney
    Level: Bronze

  3. I don't think the physical medium of games will ever go away. Don't get me wrong, I love Steam and I think it's a really good way to handle digital distribution for the PC. But I can't see console gaming doing away with discs, Microsoft and Sony have poor DRM policies and a number of people have lost all their downloads due to expiring accounts or what not. I would much rather own a disc than have a download on a hard drive that could fail and then somehow not be able to download it again.

    Wghj551Wghj551
    Level: Bronze

  4. Sure. That's how I get most of my games these days anyway.

    PratzStrikePratzStrike
    Level: Bronze

  5. Yes, completely.

    ldurrantldurrant
    Level: Bronze

  6. Not really. It's nice to have a physical disk to use because if you download all your games, it's too easy to have your hard drive fail or something and then you won't be able to recover them, and even if you can your saved games will be lost and you'll have to re-download the game. With a disk, you own the game (barring hackable DRM even though it's not totally legal). All the data is in your hands.

    miquonranger03miquonranger03
    Level: Bronze

  7. i prefer cases and booklets. so no. but if the industry goes that way. ill probely conform...haha

    lashes2asheslashes2ashes
    Level: Bronze

  8. I think we will eventually see video games distributed digitally, but I don't think it's going to be for a while, especially in the mainstream. Think how big the games are now, you're talking about gigs of information that sometimes take a while to load into my PS3. Could you imagine trying to download that file from a site? It would take hours if not an entire day with current download speeds and connections and could you imagine how pissed you would be if your connection failed right at the last minute.

    I think we are going to be stuck with actual games for a while longer, but publishers are figuring out easier ways to get extended life out of a game with multiple DLC packages.

    delriodelrio
    Level: Bronze
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