alt Hacker NewsI’ve come to realize there are definitely people out there who have no interest in playing games, they just want to own them.
A child doesn’t think about ownership, he picks up a controller and plays a game. And when the child has grown bored of the game, one day they just never touch it again like a discarded toy, moving on to something else.
It is adults, reminded of their own feeble mortality and impermanence in the world who try to grasp at things like permanent ownership, they long for something that can’t just be torn away from them on a whim. But in life, everything is ultimately torn away from you, there is nothing you can do about it.
Some try to disguise their hoarding as “preservation”. Nobody cares. Even if you had some carefully curated museum, these old games would just be exhibits people look at for a bit with passing curiosity. Nothing more. You didn’t even make these games, why do you care so much?
Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
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The vast majority of consumers don't care or think about this at all. It's a loud and tiny minority who imagine this great injustice will lead to some groundswell of rallied consumer support if they just write more blog posts about it.
In reality, if people get continual access to a digital game, the hypothetical case where they might lose access to it isn't all that troubling. And even if the license was specifically a year-term rental or something, most people wouldn't flinch because they go on with their lives after finishing a game.
It's also so convenient to ignore all the reasons the current system is the way it is.
1. Digital goods are just bits and free to copy and distribute online. Publishers use DRM because piracy is otherwise prevent, and they have a right to protect their IP.
2. Publishers can distribute the content that they develop however they see fit. Gamers who didn't make the game aren't owed something by right. Don't purchase the game if the license terms aren't amenable to you. It's a game, not a vital good.
3. Disk drives are a pointless pain-in-the-ass to manufacture if most people don't want them anyway.
> Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
I've enjoyed games that came out 20 years before I actually played them. Many games I enjoy are years old by the time I play them. I wanted to play The Crew. Doing that officially is literally impossible now. Maybe I'll get to play it if the pirates can do their magic.
Somebody needs to preserve these games so that people like me can play and enjoy them in their own time. I'd like other people to share in that same joy.
Would you write this comment, if you were speaking of books instead of games? It comes of as incredibly thoughtless to think of games as nothing more than discarded toys, when they are complete creative experiences filled with artistic value. Games are worthy of preservation for the same reasons books are. It's a shame people like you haven't realised that.
I'm in the same boat with the sibling comment. I currently play games that have been released 20+ years ago. In 20 years I want to be able to play the games that are being released now. That's what preservation is, not hoarding. Should I just stop playing older games because I wouldn't be able to play newer ones in some years? This seems entirely unreasonable to me. I can read books that have been written hundreds of years ago, I can watch movies that have been made 100 years ago. The same should be with video games. And it used to be this way.