alt Hacker NewsDiscs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales.
The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else around ownership I know I can count on Sony to still screw it up even with discs, like disabling a disc game with some online checks.
Replies
And also quality.
I wouldn't think that the copy of some movie Netflix is streaming to me will be 60-100GB over the duration of the movie. Not to mention when their services have issues and you're watching 5-10 minutes of low quality content until it settles and snaps up to full (streaming) quality.
"The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy."
I understand that this is the reality we live in, but I don't know how we have accepted it.
> And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy.
EU or any other gov can pass a law to allow that and we'll have the option.
It's a weird trajectory to see because with the music industry people have started catching on and either support sites that offer more durable forms of ownership or have straight up reverted to physical ownership.
I remember joke “you will own nothing and will be happy”, it is less of a joke now.
> The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy.
This is true for consoles, but on GoG for example you can download the DRM offline installer for the games you buy. So going purely digital doesn't have to be terrible on its own. But of course, for consoles it will be.