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Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
- jimmydddd 2mo agoI never got into gaming. Never bought a console. Seems like I wasn't missing too much.
- Razengan 2mo agoOur kids are going to be so fucked..
- Folcon 2mo agoI've been wondering about this, in some sense we might hit a big cultural black hole where all these cool things that we've created in the last few decades just are functionally lost and all the amazing things of the previous generation that could be found on archive, roms, stuff on CD's / DVD's etc are what actually have cultural value going forwards Everything else is in this position of "actively at risk" where if someone isn't "keeping it up" it may just disappear, at least until it gets orphaned, in which case I suppose reverse engineering is back on the table
- wincy 2mo agoThank God for Fitgirl doing so much archival work with high quality highly compressed game releases. If you know where to look everything is available somewhere.
- inigyou 2mo agoFitgirl is a packing group. They take what other people have already done, and compress it (to a ludicrous degree). They should not be credited for anything besides the compression.
- drdexebtjl 2mo agoCataloguing and vouching for releases is very useful. I don’t have time or interest to figure out how to go on the Usenet and research the reputation of scene groups.
- Oxodao 2mo agoWhich is exactly what have been said: > so much archival work with high quality highly compressed game releases
- Razengan 2mo ago> If you know where to look everything is available somewhere. Until CPUs only run "approved" operating systems → mandatory age verification == government ID required to use any OS in a non-crippled form → browsers refusing to open "illegal" sites.
- pelotron 2mo agoUnable to open archive - copyright detected. [Delete File] [Notify Authorities]
- robrtsql 2mo agoI agree, but I feel like pointing out that any game that was distributed without DRM or that was successfully 'cracked' by pirates can also be found on archive and therefore might be carried over to future generations. Physical media isn't the only way. The real risk, IMO, is live service games that don't function at all without the server being online. There are games where fans have reverse-engineered and made their own server, but there are definitely ones that will slip through the cracks and be forgotten too.
- Oxodao 2mo agoI agree that live service are the main threat, but even so you should not have to rely on pirated software to keep using something you paid for. Also not all game ends up being cracked
- drdexebtjl 2mo agoThere are three categories of live service games for which fans have reverse engineered a server: 1) The server doesn’t do much other than connect the players, and most of the logic is either client-side or trivial. 2) The server contains a fair bit of game content (such as drop and spawn rates, maybe even NPC dialogue) and the community has done extensive packet captures while the server was online. 3) The server binaries were leaked at some point, and everyone agrees to keep it a secret and pretend they’re doing a clean-room reimplementation from packet captures. They are, but against the leaked server, not the production server. Having worked on a few of these projects, you’d be surprised at how many of the successful ones are actually #3. This is problematic because we can’t rely on data breaches for game preservation.
- ls1911 2mo agoYea, but there are bigger problems coming, this outage is just a temporary preview of the future. What happens to game preservation in 20 or 10 years when the authentication servers for this generation are permanently shut down? Millions of physical discs will instantly turn into e-waste.
- psp99 2mo agoe-waste is the last of the problems.
- wett 2mo agoFiguratively and literally!
- inigyou 2mo agoThe same thing that happened with all the Denuvo games so far: some hackers remove the DRM.
- drdexebtjl 2mo agoThat would be possibly illegal, requires someone highly specialized to care about each and every one of your games, and assumes there won’t be a crackdown on the openness and anonymity of the Internet that currently allows the distribution of pirate software. We need to have this right codified into law before we lose it.
- inigyou 2mo agoNot just possibly, the DMCA makes it a felony to remove or bypass any copy protection measure, even if it doesn't work very well.
- drdexebtjl 2mo agoNot every jurisdiction has the DMCA, so that’s why I said possibly. It’s definitely illegal in the US.
- softwaredoug 2mo agoRecently got a big fancy TV with 4k + Dolby Vision It’s a lot of work figuring out what movies support the format. And all the premium upgrades to Netflix, etc get them to stream premium formats. Then it doesn’t work and you’re spending 30 minutes debugging your TV, wondering why you’re not getting the amazing new restoration of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I totally understand why people just buy physical media. Games may be harder given software updates. But I’d pay a premium for a physical copy of mature games I love (like Halo Master Chief collection)
- inigyou 2mo agoYou can just pirate movies.
- frollogaston 2mo agoThis is how you get a movie that's really quiet for some reason and maybe in some forsaken format
- genewitch 2mo agoOh no! amplifiers and VLC/Mplayer!
- frollogaston 2mo agoYeah so now whatever setup you're running it on needs VLC, which is not a given and also has its own downsides, and you have to mess with the audio for it to still maybe sound bad if they screwed it up irreparably.
- genewitch 2mo agoso it might need to be redownloaded. I can only say in my limited experience i've only had this happen one, maybe two times, a really long time ago. and usually with cam, which is why some people are patient and wait for TS or TC rips of movies still in theaters. I've never had TV audio messed up. More common is bad subtitles!
- zombot 2mo agoNag your representatives ad nauseam to make laws against this.
- inigyou 2mo agoIt's shown again and again and again that nagging representatives doesn't actually work.
- Telaneo 2mo agoThere are more radical options involving representatives (and other figures for that matter) that could work, but those are generally frowned upon.
- inigyou 2mo agoIn general, two kinds of solutions to political problems exist: those that don't work, and those that are illegal. Because why would politicians want something that worked to be legal?
- jeroenhd 2mo ago> All I'm saying is it's all digital on the PC side of things, and has been for ages, but we have means of maintaining access to the games we love over here, and it's one of the reasons I've gravitated to the PC for quite a while now. It all depends on where you buy your games of course; GOG will let you download DRM-free installers, but if Steam goes down, your libraries goes down with it. They have made a vague promise that they would prevent that if the company ever went out of business, but who knows if they will keep that promise. Guarantees about playability went out the window the day free, easily-obtained updates came out on PC as much as consoles. At least on the PC side, there's a vibrant piracy community.
- rjh29 2mo agoSteam for some reason gets a pass even though it normalized the use of DRM for PC games over 20 years ago.
- inigyou 2mo agoMost Steam games don't actually have any DRM. They just link to steamapi.dll for things like achievements, and that makes you think you can't run them without Steam. Some have DRM, of course.
- righthand 2mo agoWhat is the command I can use to run them without Steam then? If the game links to a dll that launches Steam and won’t play without it, then that is effectively Drm. Before I even play the game without Steam: how do I download it without Steam?
- Orygin 2mo agoThere are DLLs that remove any check of Steam running. Just keep a copy of one and use that on other games. Regarding the download, it's the same issue with physical media. If I don't have the DVD, how can I acquire the game?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- cautiouscat 2mo agoGaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s a massive profit difference.[1] On the PC end of things, it’s not as bleak. Services like GoG let you download the standalone installer, DRM free. I try to get any single player games I can from GoG, you should too. Support the corps that give you ownership. Buy those Blu-rays of your favorite films. Either to support physical media or to ensure you will have it until data degrades. 1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sESfDf0My84 https://youtube.com/watch?v=sESfDf0My84
- jerf 2mo agoGeneral principle: It is way easier to avoid lock in by not being locked in in the first place then to extricate yourself later. It's easy for me not to be locked in to a streaming video service because I had a DVD collection that predates them, and I maintained it instead of being on a streaming service, so I've got a personal collection. It's easy for me not to be locked in to a streaming music service because I have a CD collection started decades before they came into existence, ripped digitally, and I've got music I own already. There's more entertainment of every kind, including video games that don't lock you down, then you could consume in a lifetime anyhow. If you limit yourself to just what doesn't lock you in, yeah, you may not be playing GTA VI, but it's not like you'll lack for good games. On the one hand, buying a subscription service for $20/month does give you instant, temporary access to a lot of things... on the other, consistently putting that money into media acquisition over the same period of time will build up quite a collection in a few years. Remember that you don't just have to buy blockbusters... you can raid garage sales, you can buy used, you can pick up surprisingly cheap collections like [1], you can hit the Salvation Army... what you find may be haphazard but you can bootstrap a collection cheaply, and may find some surprising stuff on the way. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006LOC01G https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006LOC01G - but look at the used prices, not the new. There's a lot of things like this on Amazon where someone thinks they can get a lot of money for it "new" where the used market reflects the more accurate market reality.
- jasonjayr 2mo agoEven if the games are played off the internal hard drive with updates, there's a bit of "legal grey area" where enthusiastic fans of the game rebuild the code, and run the game with assets from the original media. "Technically" only folks with the original media in their possession will be able to play the original game.
- inigyou 2mo agoFor example the Ship of Harkinian PC port of Ocarina of Time. This requires a legal or illegal copy of the original game to run, so the copyright authorities don't crack down on it yet.
- sunrunner 2mo agoAre we sure that this is the reason the authorities aren't cracking down on it, and not that a game released in 1998 that also has a newer release on the 3DS just isn't financially valuable enough at this point to try to protect now? And it's getting an even newer remake, which is where Nintendo's concerns would be, I'd assume.
- inigyou 2mo agoNobody can be sure, but there is a consistent pattern here: decompilation projects can include as much code as they want and not get punished, but if they include assets they are taken down. I suspect it's actually because the authorities don't know what the project is, if it's only code, or they can't be sure it's an infringing derivative work (it is).
- drdexebtjl 2mo agoYes, because Nintendo is constantly taking down projects that cross the unspoken line and redistribute assets.
- frollogaston 2mo agoDidn't they shut down emulators for newer systems too? Those probably aren't bundling Nintendo's assets.
- minraws 2mo agoIf buying ain't owning, then p****y ain't stealing.
- haunter 2mo agoYou can say pussy on the internet
- inigyou 2mo agoThe word was "piracy" HN is the propaganda arm of a billionaire enrichment company, so it's understandable that someone might be unsure whether you're allowed to say that word here.
- nticompass 2mo agoWe all know what the word was, it was a joke to replace it with another word that has the same first/last letters that obviously wouldn't fit here. A joke about how words are censored all over the internet as a way to appease advertisers on various platforms.
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoIf said billionaire enrichment company was really upset about it, they would be able to detect forbidden words like piracy even when replaced. It's not that difficult, it's a problem that was solved decades ago.
- b3lvedere 2mo agoYarr
- frollogaston 2mo agoparlay?
- sunrunner 2mo agoClearly parent poster meant 'policy'. 'The policy isn't about stealing', referring of course to the Terms and Conditions being something to ignore when they cover anti-piracy but don't sell you anything.
- logseman 2mo agoAfter weeks of discourse where the physical token of the Compact Disc had become the all-important object of the fight, it's reassuring to see that we're back at the beginning, where it was clearly understood that you don't meaningfully "own" a game if you need to be online to use any of it.
- cyanregiment 2mo agoYou need to be online to prove you own it, which now means you don’t?
- inigyou 2mo agoYou need to be online to prove they currently will let you play it.
- cyanregiment 2mo agoI should at least get equity on each login. After 1000 logins I get the source code. This is too much like rent, it's not fair.
- knollimar 2mo agoUnless the party you prove it to is obligated to stay up forever and has service guarantees, yeah
- Telaneo 2mo agoOur only hope are the pirates.
- cyanregiment 2mo agoPart of the overall trend to eliminate in-person shopping and physical product ownership. In the end, 1 guy owns everything and we’re all batteries.
- Fokamul 2mo agoDon't buy golden cage BS products, which you don't really own. Consoles, Apple, Google, etc.
- inigyou 2mo agoBut that's all products, and even if it wasn't, consumer choice is mainly driven by marketing spend, which lock-in companies will always have the most of, because they extract the most money.
- b3lvedere 2mo agohttps://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2026/07/03/returnal-3 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2026/07/03/returnal-3
- inigyou 2mo agoError: Forbidden Your client does not have permission to get URL /comic/2026/07/03/returnal-3 from this server. What does it say?
- CM30 2mo agoSays how originally people played arcade games and didn't own them at all, since you were constantly putting in quarters to play more of the game. It's an interesting point, though not 100% accurate due to how there were early video game consoles at the same time as arcade games. Pong clones were common for home play in the early 1970s, and things like the Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600 date from the mid to late 1970s.
- inigyou 2mo agoAt least the owners owned them.
- hkt 2mo agoFor a golden decade or so, piracy was less convenient than paying: Xbox had subscriptions offering on tap games, there was only really one streaming service to speak of that had high quality content, music came from Spotify or YouTube, etc. We are back to where we are in the 2000s: the gatekeepers of large tracts of culture are behaving so badly that piracy is probably going to end it's lull. It is a shame for artists, developers, and anyone else who needs to get paid that companies running genuinely very good services have chosen to behave so badly.
- cgriswald 2mo agoThe services aren’t really that great IMO. They don’t always get you the quality you pay for. They hide their libraries either to keep you engaged with their app or to convince you it’s larger than it is. Most of them charge you even when you don’t use the service that month. But they’re doling out seasons an episode or three at a time to make sure you don’t unsubscribe during any given month. Some have renegged on their previous statements regarding password sharing. You pay for “screens” but those screens have to be for your household only. Their UIs and apps are often broken and are inconsistent between devices. Even when you pay for ad free sometimes there are ads “due to licensing issues” and almost all of them advertise their own shows or apps or podcasts before the content you want to watch.
- jneal 2mo agoIs this really newsworthy? This has been the case for over a decade.
- inigyou 2mo agoIt has, but recent events have shown that people need a reminder.
- spicymaki 2mo agoFirst, we need to make it illegal to say you are buying something when you are actually renting. Words mean something.
- inigyou 2mo agoThey did this in California. Solution: stores don't use any of the words now. Now the buttons say "add to cart" and "proceed to payment". Sometimes the button just says the price. I wonder if it's legal to build a completely scam store like this. You pick a game, you click on "$7", you pay $7, you don't get anything at all, and if you try to sue them, they point out they never actually sold you anything, you just voluntarily clicked on the button to donate $7.
- semiquaver 2mo agoYeah, did anyone really think that language policing would fix the issue?
- inigyou 2mo agoIt makes it a little bit more visible. So it isn't nothing. I can't wait for the first lawsuit to hit the news where the company claims because the button didn't say buy, they didn't have to sell.
- glaslong 2mo agoJudging by other comments, this hypothetical Scam Store sounds very much like trying to buy Minecraft from Microsoft already.
- frollogaston 2mo agoMinecraft is kinda owned once you have it. You can play offline forever, or even on offline-mode servers. What sucks is they killed a lot of paid accounts in the Mojang acquisition, so no more online-mode servers for them.
- 2mo ago
- sehw 2mo agoBuy games on GOG.
- 7e 2mo agoOwn? You don’t own someone else’s work. Even when it goes into public domain, you don’t own their creation. At that point, nobody does.
- pluralmonad 2mo agoI own everything I've learned. I also own some hardware on which I sometimes deposit this information for later retrieval. I own all of it, keys to nuts.
- trymas 2mo agoDon't be obtuse. I own a physical book, I don't own the IP of it. As long as I own the book - I can freely read it's contents 100 years from now. If I own[1] DRM protected ebook on a Kindle. Tomorrow I may not have that book on my Kindle (and I will not be refunded, because fuck the plebs) or may not be able to open it even if I have the file, that I bought with my money. [1] I paid money for it, just like the physical one.
- genewitch 2mo agoit's also wrong because i can buy a painting, or a custom song, or a poem, or whatever, and that's mine, no one else can come take it away from me. Isn't it weird how there's tiers to everything and they only benefit the top tiers.
- binarymax 2mo ago> "But owning a game on a disc today isn't really the same thing. It's still just a license..." Here's the crux of the problem in their own sentence and they don't even realize it. Owning and Licensing are not the same thing. If I own something, I own it outright. If I license something, I am leasing it. It does get fuzzy with media, I will admit. But we need the same protections as physical books and game cartidges. If I buy it, it is mine to use as I please and even resell or transfer. If that's not what the transaction is, then don't call it buying or purchasing, call it leasing or licensing. Require stores and publishers to use language that reflects the nature of the transaction.
- hbn 2mo agoThe issue with owning discs now is they tend to not even have the full game on them. They either shipped the discs before the game was done so there's something practically unplayable on the disc, or sometimes it's a demo and you have to download the remaining 95% of the game. The one advantage it has over digital for the time being is you can resell it, assuming they didn't lock a bunch of content behind a one-time-use download code in the box. And this isn't anything new. Mortal Kombat X came out 11 years ago and the disc had 2 characters and a basic tutorial on it. To get the rest of the game you had to download it.
- inigyou 2mo agoOwning and licensing is bullshit propaganda they feed you so you'll feel better about not owning, and you lapped it right up. For consumer products there should be no distinction. The right word for a consumer product is "rent". As in I'll "rent" this game. For $2 every week until I return it.
- pessimizer 2mo ago> Require stores and publishers to use language that reflects the nature of the transaction. After this law is made and they change the word without changing anything else, that won't save the past. They'll probably even market test some nonsense word that won't even make people feel like they're being ripped off.
- jjice 2mo agoOne consideration I have on every purchase I make is that I own it, like actually own it (with exceptions where necessary, of course). Internet access in something that shouldn't need internet access is a downside. It's a way to mess with the purchase you made. If my e-reader had a bad battery after years of use, I should be able to replace that battery myself without issue (personal skill allowing). I purchased it. Why wouldn't you be able to? I haven't yet found reason for this in consumer devices, except because they want you to send it in or buy a new one from the manufacturer. Every time we see something like this, it doesn't get enough eyes or care from those who use these platforms. Sony takes your movies away, Xbox requires you be online, Amazon updating your books automatically without asking you, etc. My favorite that I repeat constantly is all of the BS that BMW has done over the years: heated seats subscription, proprietary bolt heads, ads in the infotainment. If you buy a BMW at this point, I'm sorry, but you had alternatives and I don't feel bad. The scary part is when enough people accept it that everyone else in the industry follows suit and then the outliers are the ones that respect you. If I purchased a physical disc, I'm not even asking for the source code (which I'd love), I'm just asking that I can run the damn software I bought, but you can't even do that now. Viva open source and right to repair. Make the educated choice when purchasing software and hardware, to your benefit, where appropriate. Of course, the proprietary system is what you need/want sometimes, but I bet most of us don't most of the time.
- mwkaufma 2mo agoIt's not strictly true that all physical disks are just license keys - those are marked on the packaging.
- adolph 2mo agoNormalize usage of "have been granted a limited license for" instead of "own." The word "own" implies all manner of things that don't exist for things like Xbox games, Kindle titles, etc.
- K3UL 2mo agoI keep seeing article like this, that look like they have been written by these companies to push the opinion. People saying "who cares because you cannot play it anyway" instead of "discs should be less dependant on network to gain another advantage". But the case for physical disk is not (only) about playability, it's mostly about ownership and the fact that you can actually lend it to someone or resell it. It's also about retail, and it's about collectors. About people with a slow or limited connection having access with that much less to download. Another thing is also that if I have a physical copy, I have the right to a digital copy. So a non-working disc might not always be the end. But if I have a digital copy and they take it off the table, I do not have this right and it is gone forever.
- erelong 2mo agoSounds more like a complicated subscription or renting scheme than ownership
- adverbly 2mo agoSomething something layoffs?
- steveBK123 2mo agoThis stuff is turning me into a physical media pre-2010s truther more and more by the day
- binaryturtle 2mo agoI never upgraded beyond the PS2 (and I was a heavy console gamer back in the days), because all the "needs network", "needs account", "needs certificate to be valid", etc. stuff is entirely scaring me off investing my money in any of that. Now, my motto is: if I can't run it safely in an emulator and download the files from some "abandoned wares" site then I don't care. And I have zero moral problems with that.
- queenkjuul 2mo agoThe death of the used games market is still a big deal, even if said used games still depend on the manufacturers' networks and licenses being valid. A digital only world where Sony and Microsoft have the only say about pricing and used games are no longer available is a downgrade for users even from the already-bad status quo
- mawadev 2mo agoI wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, country, email and email verification code later I had to do captcha which is clicking and holding down a button. "Help us against the bots" it said. I unironically spent 5 minutes clicking that button, then being stuck in a loop with "please try again" while my gf just sat there watching me. Well I turned off MCC and gave up. I don't want to know what life is like having xbox hardware
- epistasis 2mo agoThis is my experience with all Microsoft software. The worst thought out, buggy, untested pile of crap. There's something seriously wrong in Redmond. At least with linux, you can search on the web and find a forum post telling you the magic incantation. With Microsoft, you will be forced to consume some second-rate engineer's unmanaged, barely workable, edge case until it might or might not work. Office on the web is a horror show this way.
- Lord-Jobo 2mo agoIt’s like they dump “bad at programming and don’t care about it” juice right into the water supply.
- dartharva 2mo agoAll problems with Microsoft products are design and intent problems, not engineering.
- bitmasher9 2mo agoThe design and intent are bad, but let’s not discount the large amount of bad engineering too.
- wetpaws 2mo ago[dead]
- ramijames 2mo agoI'll never buy one of these systems because I want to be able to play my games in 20 or 30 years. I just bought a Nintendo 64 and a Wii and it's great just being able to play my games with my kids and know that in five years nothing will change.
- unfocso 2mo agoThe absurdity is that back in gen-7 we had everything figured out: PS3 used the (free) servers only for matchmaking and all online games were hosted on the consoles themselves. The matchmaking servers are still up and working, and everybody plays with better latency thanks to the prominence of fast fiber. No internet? Games work offline and support LAN if you have a switch and a couple of consoles. In 2026 I can still insert any used disc I bought in my ps3 and it will generate a (offline) client-side license for me and let me play and update the game with the disk inside just as a "proof" of still owning it. If I'm online I'll get patches, else I'll just get served the version on the disc. (Btw, ps3 also has a print spooler and can natively rip CDs and serve them while acting as a NAS. Or, you can stream games to your psp with remote play. It was truly a "let's cram everything we can inside" era and more like a proper pc with a mediacenter interface)
- sd9 2mo agoI wanted to play an old call of duty game to reminisce about my childhood. I tried Modern Warfare II and Black Ops, but it’s impossible. You get into a game fine, but every single game is just full of cheaters - not just cheaters with fairly benign (yet unfair) things like wall hacks, cheaters that literally change the physics of the server for all users in a completely unworkable way. I’m not sure whether this is because of the PS3 client-hosted server model, or just poor coding from COD. Either way, I gave up eventually. It was a brief passing thought one evening; I’m sure if I really wanted to I could figure out a way to play properly. But you can’t just put the disc in and play online, at least in my experience.
- david_allison 2mo agoWorse: there's unpatched RCEs for Modern Warfare II: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-10718 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-10718
- HDBaseT 2mo agoValve needs to grow a bit of a spine here. The Call of Duty series is one of the worst offenders, effectively every game outside of the last 2 years has so many bad CVEs' and remote code exploits that even opening them on your PC is unsafe. Playing the official matchmaking on even something as recent as Black Ops 3 will have your computer compromised in minutes. Yet they are still on the store front, they never go on sale. Black Ops 2 has been out for well over a decade and still wants full price for it on Steam & its unsafe. Playing Call of Duty games on PC is probably the most unsafe thing you can do with your computer, outside of downloading malware itself. Valve should delist these games from the store if they are effectively unplayable. They should ban Activision from selling new games on the store if they cannot make older titles even remotely safe. It's pure neglect, most of this stuff is fixed by the community with a few lines of code.
- hndhyc0bdt 2mo ago[dead]
- dwedge 2mo agoI don't have a console other than an old PS4 rarely used and I was going to buy a PS5 until the recent news. Now I don't want to buy xbox because of this post. So, what's left? I have a kid and little time and I haven't been a "gamer" since I was a teenager but I want to be able to play maybe 5 or 6 games (co-ops, FIFA, GTA) without downloading anything. It's even more annoying for me because I often have phases of only playing every 2 months, so it's always true that I would need to update first.
- doublerabbit 2mo agoEmulation. Tons upon tons of games just sitting there. Your kid isn't going to know what it was like to play it back then, throw them the classics and sigh in relief knowing that's he's not being tricked in to corporate exploits such as loot boxes, skins and the likes. My eight year old nephew loves my old mega drive.
- frollogaston 2mo agoOld consoles, old games, or no video games is a solid choice too
- zoba 2mo agoAsha Sharma where are you? Keep up your reputation as a great new Xbox CEO.
- paxys 2mo agoThe fight should never have been about physical vs digital, but about ownership. If I buy a game/movie/book/song, regardless of where or in what format, I should be able to: 1. Keep it forever without the risk of remote deletion. 2. Use it while offline, unless internet connectivity is strictly required for the experience. 3. Move it between my devices. 4. Backup and archive it. 5. Resell it. 6. Pass it on to my children. Beyond that I don't really care what the container for the bytes is. If the game isn't sold on a disc I can easily burn my own. Every publisher can offer all of this today, but they choose not to. And proprietary devices/formats means the free market isn't going to work in the consumer's favor. The only thing that can fix the problem is legislation.
- pferde 2mo agoDidn't you hear? Buying is not owning, according to these corporate criminals.
- 2mo ago
- nsxwolf 2mo agoPhysical is mostly a lie once you go past PS2, 3DS etc. It confers a few benefits over digital, like trading and selling, but those are illusory as well, as we see here.
- zerohm 2mo agoFor most modern software, you are not buying a product, you are buying a window of service. You are entering into an agreement that the software will be supported for a reasonable amount of time. Bugs will be fixed, you might get some additional 'free' content. Games got to the point of being so large and expensive, they crossed this threshold long ago. A single player offline game like The Witcher 3 has had what, about 30 updates? And those games are constantly being dwarfed by seasonal, micro-transation games. The single release game was an endangered species a long time ago.
- shevy-java 2mo ago> But owning a game on a disc today isn't really the same thing. It's still just a license, and Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo can either intentionally or, in this case, unintentionally prevent you from playing that game, even if you own the physical copy. I am pretty certain that there are different legal requirements nonetheless. The author kind of tries to mitigate the danger of big corporations forbidding physical media. Does he think that these corporations have the good of the people in mind? Or are they more interested in milking their cash cows? Thankfully I am not the target audience anyway. I don't give my money to these greedy corporations to begin with. Them disowning people further here, by killing physical media, would just have been another stepping stone towards a movement away from these big corporations anyway. I don't have time to play games anymore anyway due to old age, but if I would I'd much rather support Indie games - with physical media.
- djray 2mo agoThis is false. You don't need an internet connection to play from disc: https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect-network/using-xbox-one-offline https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect... You can play digital titles, too, as long as your console is set to "Home". I played Forza Horizon 3 for days without internet a couple of months ago.
- tonymet 2mo agoIf you are offline, it will work for a few days that’s right. If you are online, and the rights service is failing, it will revoke your key. The trouble is, you would have to know about the outage first and go offline before attempting to play.
- djray 2mo ago> If you are online, and the rights service is failing, it will revoke your key. Do you have evidence of this? I've played Xbox for 25 years and never seen this.
- inigyou 2mo agoTFA
- tonymet 2mo agoi’ve tested it , that’s how i found out. If you run your dns it’s easy. Set licensing.xboxlive.com to 0.0.0.0 . The entitlement only lasts a few days. If the online check fails and you’re otherwise online, it gets revoked . Nearly all DRM systems are fail-Closed not fail-open.
- djray 2mo ago"If the online check fails and you’re otherwise online, it gets revoked" That's not being offline ;)
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- puelocesar 2mo ago"When Sony announced that they were discontinuing physical discs for PlayStation, I was less outraged than many. The reason I felt this way wasn't because I loved what Sony was doing. I think it came from an understanding that physical media ain't what it used to be." But you are mixing Sony and Microsoft here. Sure, both are bad, but many PS disks are totally playable without internet connection.
- fryanyway_swe 2mo agoI mean yes, same with Steam. Same with PS. GoG is the only DRM free ones.
- lzmp 2mo agoSome Steam games don't have DRM.
- jijji 2mo agothats why i never bought a game in my life and never intend to... if i want to see how a game works, i could download an emulator and run it via the emulator from a public rom under linux. If I am really interested, i could download a 512GB retropie torrent/magnet and then copy it to a microsd card and run 70k games on a raspberry pi 4... historically, at least for me, games never worked... i spent more time fixing why they didnt work or debugging them in memory to patch them to get the game to actually run then actually playing a game. This is circa 1983-1987 too so maybe we have progressed from there, but obviously not much.
- Reubachi 2mo agoI appreciate your experience/take on gaming. If you where to start gaming again (at least, as the current vendors intend) you'd find that the bugs you had to account for in the 80s have been (generally speaking) resolved as a byproduct of the DRM/Cloud streaming propagation we're all complaining about. IE; consolidation of vendors, locking down the way a game propagates, restricting the lifetime of a game, made it "easier" to play games the absolute one way the vendor intends. This gives them the excuse of "Well, we designed the game to be played via perpetual license through only this platform, we can't support or claim responsibility anywhere else". Which is to say, your comment made me think that the reason the industry is the way it is isn't because money/lawyers, but more because some product managers decades ago began pushing for consolidating/defining video game lifecycles.
- tonymet 2mo agoEvery modern media disk since DVD has had revocable DRM . That means you have never owned the disks. (Only Audio CDs and laser disks were owned digital media). With games, a synchronous right’s check is made every time you insert the disk, and if you haven’t played recently, the entire game installation is downloaded. The disk is only used for rights, not for playback. With movies, thankfully the rights check is done offline on your player, but a background online check can revoke your player’s keys, and revoke your entire collection. What’s more, a revocation can ship via another disk. So you can unplug your Blu-ray player for 2 years, insert a new disk, and lose your entire collection.
- tonymet 2mo agoNot sure why I’m getting downvoted. It’s true, and on topic? It’s also relevant, with all the discussions about owning your own media. Weird.
- Reubachi 2mo agoHN and other comment/article aggregation tools use votefuzzing to obfuscate the API to deter spambots. Not saying that's happening here, but 99 times out of a 100 it's either a spambot or the autofuzz, not someone deriding your opinion.
- tonymet 2mo agoThanks I’ll look into that. The past few months I’ve had really suspicious downvoting so I’ve been suspicious.
- trinsic2 2mo ago>But owning a game on a disc today isn't really the same thing. This is an important point distinction that many people of physical media are missing or being distracted by. All this backlash could be put to better use by supporting game ownership. You can't play the game you own if the product has to phone home. I'm not getting why people are up in arms about the physical product while DRM is in place that prevents you from playing it.
- Steve16384 2mo agoI don't understand why anyone thinks that just because they own the disc, they will always be able to play it. It's still full of DRM!
- tripleee 2mo agoMost physical games currently are fully playable offline: https://www.doesitplay.org/ https://www.doesitplay.org/ What would stop me from playing it, outside of the hardware dying?
- Steve16384 2mo agoAs I said, things like DRM or the game phoning home to check it was authorised etc... Equally so, games that I've downloaded from the internet (e.g. Itch) are fully playable offline. The "physical disc" argument is irrelevant.
- surcap526 2mo ago[dead]
- Wowfunhappy 2mo agoIsn't this problem specific to Xbox and PC? I know for sure that first party Nintendo games are playable 100% offline, not sure about Sony?
- nirvdrum 2mo agoNintendo Switch cartridges don't have this problem, mostly. It's the reason I buy physical for the family library. Nintendo's digital licensing is terrible (slightly less so with Virtual Cartridges, but miles away from Steam Family) and doesn't really work for a multi-Switch household. But, I was traveling for work and brought the non-"home" Switch with me along with a copy of Breath of the Wild on cartridge. I fired it up on the airplane, ready to go. And then discovered that because I had bought the DLC and the DLC license check couldn't pass, I was locked out of playing at all. It's given me pause on buying any other DLC on a Nintendo platform.
- Wowfunhappy 2mo ago...huh, do the online license checks only happen if you have the cartridge sharing stuff enabled? Wondering when/if I would run into this, I haven't yet. But I never use their "virtual game card" system, I only have one Switch and I think the whole thing is overcomplicated and too limited.
- genewitch 2mo agoi have flaky internet and i am always able to play my virtual cards. I've never had an issue with wifi off, either. I just assume it needs to phone home because everything does, but it doesn't need to phone home to play right then. Now, i got my kid another switch and he decided he wanted his own account tied to the family nintendo plan and now i am learning what a pain the virtual cards are. If he had just let me put my account on his switch he could have all the games i have, but that's not what we went with ;-)
- nirvdrum 2mo agoWhile not great, the virtual cards are an improvement, unless your kid and you never play the same games. One Switch gets to be the home console and doesn't need checks. The other would have to be logged in as you, which requires a license check every time you play. But, save files are tied to the account and you can't move them between accounts. If you use cloud save files, you and your kid are going to be bumping into each other all the time. Then, if you introduced a 3rd Switch, only one of the non-home Switches could play a game under your account at a time, even if they're different games. I know 3+ Switches sound like a lot, but Nintendo was pushing the Switch Lite like the latest Gameboy. Maybe you concede and decide to buy the same game multiple times to avoid all of this. Well, there's no gifting. You need to enter your billing details into your kid's Switch and buy it there. Assuming you don't want to leave your credit card setup in their Switch, you get to go through this whole dance every time you buy something. Virtual cards let you avoid a lot of this nonsense for two weeks. You'll rapidly get annoyed having to keep the original Switch and the new one in close proximity to do the exchange, but it'll work. But, it's nowhere near as nice as Steam Family or the iOS Family Sharing.
- maxglute 2mo agoTBH can't wait for consoles / console exclusives to die, as long as there is piracy (and steam) pc gaming prices stay reasonable, hardware pricing will eventually sort itself out.
- callamdelaney 2mo agoHaha say you want to play co-op with your buddy or girlfriend or something and you just shelled out 59.99 or whatever for the latest microslop product.. You just connect a controller right? Nah, on ps5, you need to setup a whole ass sony account, and then login to it, and then you need a new microsoft account to link that sony account to, and then maybe, you might be able to play couch co-op.
- frollogaston 2mo agoEven local Halo or CoD on the 360 was confusing. Same thing but the accounts were local and weirdly tied to the controller (or something, idk). PS3 was plug n play though.
- ndesaulniers 2mo agoI encourage folks with a PlayStation 5 (or 4) to participate in the blackout by unplugging their console for the week of August 23 at 7:00 PM your local time and run to August 31 at 7:00 PM your local time. Hopefully that helps send a message. We should irrevocably own our games, not rent a revokable license. And we should have price competition from multiple store fronts.
- jbstack 2mo agoWhat message are you trying to send? "Oh look, a bunch of people who have already given us money aren't using the thing they paid for for a week, and we can maybe even save a bit of money by reducing our server load"? Am I missing something? Why should they care? If you really want to send a message, don't buy a PlayStation. If you own one already, don't buy anymore games. That's the only message corporations care about.
- frollogaston 2mo agoDo they still sell those at a loss and profit from the games? Guess you could buy a ton of them and only use them as doorstops.
- asdff 2mo agoWhat like le reddit blackout?
- inigyou 2mo ago"le reddit blackout" was the beginning of the end for reddit, so idk what you're trying to imply here.
- frollogaston 2mo agoI think the implication is that the blackout did nothing, and Reddit didn't care. Like this message that really says "I will buy the PS5 anyway."
- tripleee 2mo agoThere's a good site for this: https://www.doesitplay.org/ https://www.doesitplay.org/ Xbox is the worst about having a dependency on the internet to play your physical media.
- jbj 2mo agoI was recently surprised to see that AOE2DE captures my microphone on ubuntu even when I toggle the in-game settings to not do so.
- frollogaston 2mo agoMultiplayer game will desync if you don't say "Doritos(tm) Dew it Right"
- ThePhysicist 2mo agoI think Valve is just going to kill Xbox in a couple of years. Basically Microsoft is planning to make the next Xbox an "ordinary" Windows computer with a different UI as well as vendor-locked hard- & software. So essentially you'll get a (maybe) slightly discounted small form-factor PC for the living room that only runs games from the Xbox store, which will be more expensive than the same games on Steam. Now, everyone laughs about the "ridiculous" pricing of the Steam machine but once hardware prices come down they will make a second generation that will be an unlocked PC in the same form factor and probably just as powerful as the next-generation Xbox. They might even pass on some of their supply side bargaining power to the end user. Then you will have the choice between a fully locked down Windows PC that only plays Xbox games for 1,000 USD or a fully unlocked Steam machine that plays everything from the Steam, Epic, GOG store, can install regular games and even lets you do work on it, for probably around the same price. Built by a company that has the highest gamer trust of any company we know. Guess this will be a no-brainer for most folks! They have everything to pull this off as well, the brand, the trust, the gamers, the store, the platform, the money, the market power as well as experience with hardware. My take is that they wanted to pull this move already but the AI craze made that impossible so they are using the first-gen Steam machine to learn about the market, but I predict that once prices come down we'll see an announcement, they can time it to match the new console generation by Microsoft and Sony as well. The market should be in a great state by then as well, lots of folks were essentially priced out of the GPU market and NVIDIA won't even release a new generation of gaming cards anytime soon, so all those people that have the buying power but don't know where to put it would flock to a new Steam machine if it can deliver good performance for a reasonable price. And the thing is Valve will have the power to make sure studios optimize games for the Steam machine as well. Really don't know what Microsoft is doing here, they turned one of the most profitable and beloved gaming platforms into something that seems to be in a death spiral, people are already speculating they might sell the whole thing off eventually.
- frollogaston 2mo agoThe Steam machine costs like double an Xbox
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- dmitrygr 2mo agoSeems Microslop forgot the #1 rule of selling bits and bytes: buying from you needs to be easier and less painful than opening thepiratebay (and possibly installing an emulator)
- DevKoala 2mo agoI am so glad i jumped out of the Xbox ecosystem back when I did. I was such a loyal fan, but the Xbox One made me go from an avid gamer to a casual gamer. I thought I was done with gaming until I picked up a Nintendo Switch back in 2018 and I rediscovered the joy. I gave Xbox one more chance with the Series X and that was the final nail in the coffin. I only play on Switch 2 and Steam OS nowadays.
- WhyNotHugo 2mo agoI buy games via Humble Bundle when possible. They give you a link to download a DRM free copy, which I store away in a large drive. In practice, I often end up playing those games on the Steam Deck, but I know that in 20 years (if I keep that drive alive), I'll be able to easily spin up wine and play those games just fine.
- benjaminoakes 2mo ago> They give you a link to download a DRM free copy Please say more
- platevoltage 2mo agoThis is why I don't really understand the outrage with Sony getting rid of physical discs. I guess the argument is you can sell you disc later, but at the end of the day, owning a the disc isn't the same as owning an NES cartridge. Once the servers are down, that's it.
- izzydata 2mo agoThis is why I only purchase digital games at high discounts. It might be worth $60 to own a piece of physical media that can be played at any time without internet. However, to me the value of a DRM license that can possibly be taken away at any moment is very little. It is ridiculous that they attempt to sell digital games at the same price as a physical game.
- wren6991 2mo agoIn this situation it's completely moral to go pirate the games on a different platform. Illegal, but moral
- devil1432 2mo agoPeople focus too much on discs and cartridges, but too little on licensing and drm. The disc is meaningless if you cannot run it after drm servers died. Also, very often the game on the disc is unplayable because of lack of day-1 patch. Meanwhile you can burn games you bought from GOG on a cd and play it 10 years later without internet connection. So the physical vs digital discussion is completely irrelevant to the problem.
- frollogaston 2mo agoIt's relevant because most game publishers won't want to hand out a DRM-free copy. So it's either a digital one phoning home or a physical disc/cartridge that they assume most people won't reverse-engineer. GOG is an exception to the rule and doesn't have a wide game selection.
- JacobKfromIRC 2mo agoEven on GOG, it's usually illegal to re-sell games you bought to other people, if I understand correctly. It's a minor point since there's no technical barrier to resale, but that's one difference between physical games and DRM-free digital games. There's a small number (~100?) of commercial games that also allow resale through Creative Commons licenses on itch.io. you can use filters like "assets-cc4-by-sa" plus "code-gpl3" to find games like that, but there's a lot of possible license combinations so it's difficult to see all games like that at once. I've also seen a couple of digital commercial games that allow resale but had some other restrictions (e.g. forbidding reverse engineering), from Humble Bundle, if I remember correctly, but in those cases I didn't know that was allowed until after I bought the game, so searching for games like that seems pretty difficult. Maybe there are games on GOG that allow this too, but I don't know how I'd search for them.
- frollogaston 2mo agoExactly the type of reason some people want literal physical discs. You don't own the data on the disc, but you own the physical disc and can resell it, totally legally and practically allowed. And the disc has anti-copy measures so it's really a transfer, not a copy.
- ferroman 2mo agoThey proposed terms. You agreed. They act on them.
- Alien1Being 2mo agoMicrosoft is software imagined by someone like Hegseth...
- koalak 2mo agoXbox was great when you could purchase and really own the game. Bringing them to friends houses to or trading them with each other. Can't do that with download only,
- holtkam2 2mo agoI have bought every generation of Xbox since the original (I had it in 2005). This is a dealbreaker for me. Won’t be buying their next gen system.
- nc55g3g 2mo agoThis is exactly why I switched to PC/GOG years ago. No DRM, no mandatory online check, just install and play. The consoles have been slowly boiling the frog on this for a decade. People are finally noticing.
- BLKNSLVR 2mo agoI have a new rule that I will attempt to follow: For every game I purchase, I shall also download and archive a pirated version. If it is not possible to download a pirated version, then hold off on the purchase until it is possible. This works for me as an ~18 years 'sober' reformed gamer, so there's nothing I'm desperate to play on release. My plan is to collect a bunch of the best games (within my small-ish bubble of interest) of the last X years, and play through them in retirement, time and interest pending. This excludes me from online-only games, which is OK with me. I'm not saying this rule will work for more 'active' gamers, but I think it might be something to aspire to.
- cadamsdotcom 2mo agoUnfortunately I've long since opted out. But that means they just don't even know I have money to spend, so I am not able to signal the market in a different direction until a viable option emerges. Feels like a macro failure.
- Taikhoom2010 2mo agoXbox failed aggregation; Microsoft should exit the business. https://open.substack.com/pub/taikhooms/p/xbox-game-pass-and-aggregators-and?r=2pgab7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://open.substack.com/pub/taikhooms/p/xbox-game-pass-and...
- eleveriven 2mo ago[dead]
- ZedZark 2mo agoI guess physical media isn't enough after all...
- jogu 2mo agoThis article touches on why I think a lot of disdain for Nintendo's game key cards is misguided. They're functionally equivalent of what Xbox/Sony consoles have been doing for the past 2 generations but at least provide clear labels and marketing that the game won't function without online activation / downloads.
- everyone 2mo agoWhy anyone ever buys that shit is a complete mystery to me.
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- arslan9063 2mo agoYou will own nothing be happy I guess
- brumora_dev 2mo ago[flagged]
- masfoobar 2mo agoMaybe I'm an old fart - but I miss when you could purchase a game and play it. No need for internet or signing up. Insert, press power, and play. I understand times have changed. You cannot just insert a cartridge or CD\DVD and run. Games are so large that running off a disc is not good enough anymore. They need to be installed on a hard drive. I wouldn't be surprised that some games are so large they require more than 1 bluray disc. However, they should still work "out of the box" Well this should be the case for single player mode. For multiplayer then you may need to create an account, etc. I don't know. Just seems that even when you purchase a physical copy it does not contain the full game. You still have to access the internet to download additional content. Truth is ownership. Do you really "own" your physical game? I mean you own the Disc it's on but the contents all go through the games console and their services. You essentially own the rights to play the game! It's nothing new with Microsoft since Windows 95 (even 3.1) and their end user license. You never owned it. It's just times have changed, now. Microsoft are not just trying to control your computer via its operating system, but to control the whole computer itself. Why is this any different for game consoles? Do you really "own" the console? I mean I am willing to put money down that one of the 3 Companies would lock you out if you tried to do something on Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo's latest systems that "you shouldn't be" Let that sink in. You spend how much on a console... and it really is not yours. Oh, and how much do you spend on games... and it really is not yours. Yes.. physical or not! None of this surprises me. However, I do not know what the solution is, either. Well, other than if you purchase it, it is your copy! If it isn't, then why should I spend over £/$40 for these games? I believe this is a chunk of the reason why I am not a gamer anymore. There are some games I still play but I don't know if I will every play the latest and greatest of games including GTA6. Maybe one day. If I made a game - I would still follow the old method. Maybe use Steam. If you buy it then you get the files. It's yours! You can play it! It would work without the need of the internet! Could some people pirate it? Sure. However, I am confident that if the game is good or atleast enjoyable then I would have received a nice sum of money - or atleast allow people to buy me a coffee through my website if they enjoyed it. The biggest power is consumers have is our wallets. Say no if you disagree and don't give them money. I am willing to do such a thing. Sadly, the majority don't care. They just want ease of use. This is not just about games, but many things.