It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

It's not about physical vs digital games, it's about ownership

A few days ago, PlayStation announced that they'll stop producing disks for new games starting from January 2028, confirming what we already felt was going to happen: consoles are going fully digital, and the disk drive will cease to exist.

I've seen a lot of great discussions on the internet about this, but I can't help but feel like people are mad about the wrong thing, or completely misunderstand why this is an issue. They have the right idea, getting rid of disks is bad for everyone, but it's not about the disk and putting your games on the shelf... it's about Sony's attempt to completely kill ownership. People keep comparing this to PC getting rid of disk drives, but these two scenarios are not comparable at all. I'll get to that later.

Ownership as in the ability to trade

The biggest thing about owning something is the ability to trade it with whoever you'd like. When I was younger, I used to constantly trade PS3 and PS4 games with my friends. Whether it was to loan them a copy of the Jak & Daxter trilogy or to sell a game to someone I know, passing around console games is practically tradition at this point.

But companies have always been vocal about how much they despise used games. How could someone possibly buy God of War for $20 from their friend instead of buying it for $40 from the store?! Every dime spent on used games is a dime lost for the company, right?!

The decision to kill disks isn't some kneejerk reaction to anything, it's something console owners have been slowly building up to for the last ~15 years. The entire reason Xbox One flopped so hard and became a laughing stock was, among other things, because they tried to kill the ability to re-sell the disk you paid for, and forcing your console to always be online to verify your games. Apparently, they were just too early to try this.

This also isn't specific to video games. It's something literally every industry has been obsessed with to maximize profits. If anything, video games were late compared to something like the music industry, where not owning your music has been the status quo for a while now!

And now that we're catching up, the concept of "giving a game to someone else" will cease to exist. The next generation of young games will just accept buying a digital game off the store as just how games work now. You'll be there explaining to the young'uns how it used to be. How giving your favorite game to your best friend in school was the normal thing that they will never get to experience.

Sure, you could argue that disks on modern consoles are practically just licenses these days, but you could still pass that ownership to someone else, without it being tied down to one specific account or console.

Ownership as in preservation

Just a few days before this announcement, people in the gaming space were celebrating the release of Omnidrive, a mod for optical drives that lets you easily rip blu rays. That includes, you guessed it, PS3/PS4/PS5 games (though they're encrypted, but that's an issue that can be solved later).

Game preservation and emulation has always been another arch nemesis of game companies. They hate that you can ever play a game without being tied to their service or console, or even without taking permission from them! A lot of games have been de-listed for various reasons, many of them legal, but most have been straight up because the company never bothered to port them to modern consoles.

Most retro games would be lost media if not for people preserving them. This is a bigger deal than people give it credit for. Imagine living in a world where most games before 2014 have just been completely lost forever. SNES games I loved. PlayStation 2 classics. Even games that aren't that old! PlayStation announced that the PS3 and Vita stores will close next month, and there are tons of games there that you bet no company will want to preserve.

Last year, I bought a Playstation Vita and really enjoyed playing the games on it. You bet those games and ports will never be archived by Sony. Even PS3 games I loved like LittleBigPlanet and Asura's Wrath and Infamous have never been ported, and are on the verge of being lost forever if not for people spending time and effort grabbing them via dumping disks or hacked consoles!

My point: What happens if the PlayStation 6 comes out and has no disk drive and has incredibly strong security that makes dumping games impossible? Games could be lost for real this time. When PlayStation ever decides to make games streaming-only (more on that later), or decides to de-list a game, or decides to axe the PS6 servers? It would be a disaster. Imagine working on a game for many years then being told a couple of years later that it doesn't exist anymore. Not owning your game means they can never be preserved by the consumer.

Stop Killing Games is already fighting for consumer rights to keep games playable after being shut down, but nobody owning their games means that nobody can fight back to keep the games they bought, even through more extreme means.

Ownership as in having options

Even if you buy your games 100% digitally on consoles, it's still very comforting to know that physical games are an option should you ever want one. It's good that you're not totally trapped into buying games from the PS Store with prices only dictated by Sony.

You could always drive to a local store and buy a game that might be on sale. You have the option of buying a game used from someone on the internet. You could always go to that same store and trade your game for a small cashback.

Hell, where I live, the most popular game store has a rental system where you can rent a game and pay for each week you keep it. Some people still use that because purchasing a game outright is out of their price range. That too won't exist anymore. Your many options are now limited to one, whether you like it or not.

But PC is all digital! They accepted it with no issues!

Everyone who brings up the fact that PC has been digital and how that turned out fine doesn't really understand what's going on.

Yes, PC is digital, but there's a massive difference: we can still own our games on PC. You're not trapped to one ecosystem or one digital store, you have dozens of options. Most importantly, there are tons of DRM-Free games and stores out there. Websites like GOG, Itch.io, etc. let you download and play games without being tied to any service.

This means you can't have your license revoked or worry about the game completely disappearing for any reason. You can back up the game, modify it, play it on different systems, and generally know that 10 years from now you can probably get it to work and play it again.

But most people use Steam anyway, I hear you say. That's true, but you can still own your games on Steam. Very easily, in fact! Steam doesn't apply a hard DRM for games on their platform, you can bypass it and play your games offline without the launcher if you know what you're doing.

Because PC is an open platform, people have figured this out and will continue to figure out bypasses in case things go south (which they haven't so far, thankfully). All you need is to get something called the Goldberg Emulator, replace the SteamAPI file, then add an app_id.txt file. Done. You can play any Steam game offline (assuming the publisher didn't put their own DRM like Denuvo). I've done this a lot, and it is legal as long as you don't share your game to other people.

So no, platforms like PC losing out on physical games is not comparable to consoles losing physical games. PC gamers can still own and preserve their games through digital means, and honestly, I think digital is way better than having to use a disk. For console gamers, you just lost your only way to actually own your games. Now you're entirely at the mercy of the platform holders.