The subject of the article is a total non-issue that it's trying to turn into a serious problem, seemingly through anxiety. If you're worried about your games

The subject of the article is a total non-issue that it's trying to turn into a serious problem, seemingly through anxiety. If you're worried about your games aging out, CD-ROMs did not protect you because the average Windows 98 game won't run on modern computers without significant modifications. > How can the boxed price of a game (or software) be the same as its Steam or digital version? In Capitalist economies, prices are set by producers and are significantly influenced by supply and demand. Prices are justified by people's willingness to pay them, and competition creates downward pressure. Games priced at $60 have to compete with $9.99 indie games on Steam, and justify their higher price through quality. > When you buy a game digitally, it never truly belongs to you; services like Steam or PS Store only allow you to download and play it. We're still grappling with what "ownership" means in a digital economy, but Steam's model is clearly good enough for 99% of customers. Even Nintendo (which always loved its physical carts) eventually had to admit that most buyers prefer digital downloads. They're willing to take the risk of losing access in the future in return for convenience here, today. > 20 years later, you can plug in your Atari cartridge and play, but you can’t be sure that Steam won’t go bankrupt and deactivate its servers. (Nintendo recently closed its shops, including for the 3DS, PSP servers are shut down, etc.) I have Steam games from 15 years ago that I could still play. But that's just it: I could still play them. Do I? No, I'm done with them and I'm playing something else now. I heard about the 3DS shop shutting down, but so what? I've got my Switch and I haven't touched the 3DS in many years. > The companies, with their excessive pricing, instead of selling their products once, turn them into SaaS with lifetime monthly subscriptions. Excessive compared to what? Also, most modern software buyers expect continuous updates, patches, security fixes, etc. after the initial purchase, so monthly payments for ongoing labor seem like a natural fit. When you buy a toaster, you don't expect the manufacturer to come into your house a year later and make improvements. > They sell games for $60 and then add microtransactions, turning them into service games. Some games do that, many do not. Our choices influence future behavior by game makers. I totally agree with you that microtransactions suck, and I try not to buy games that have them. > Without the people who dump and archive these contents, the old series you love so much could disappear forever. Beloved classics rarely disappear. Nintendo Online still offers lots of them on the Switch. But when you describe something as "forgotten software" (as the article did early on), you're admitting that hardly anyone wants to play it.