whoops wong place
I’m shocked
Well… That goes against the theory of economics, Sony will learn the hard way, like they did with memory stick.
I’m starting to think consoles are cooked. The massive jumps in technology between console generations have turned into small incremental steps. The game quality has dropped (independent games and a few others are exceptions). PC’s used to be slow to boot and load a game vs consoles and also required updates to download, but now PCs are quick and updates are mostly automatic. Consoles used to be nice to just turn on and play without thinking about all that other stuff, yet now they require downloads and updates as well. Loading times aren’t much better either. Consoles used to also be very cheap compared to PCs, but now with the “next gen” being around $1000 the price difference isn’t that huge anymore - especially when you factor in modular updates that can be done to a PC to cheaply extend it’s life. One of the last hold outs for consoles were physical games and now they’re taking that away too.
I think you’re underestimating the number of people who just don’t want to take on the secondary hobby of building a PC in the first place.
I built my first PC 6 years ago, before PS5 was released.
My PC can still play new release AAA games at high quality graphics and probably will for a number of years still… when it starts to slack a couple hundred $ and it will be good as new.
Was pricey up front but in the end better quality, more choice, and longer lasting.
im never buying a sony title again.
Last Of Us 3 would be the only digital game I’d still buy for my PS5.
For the rest, no disc, no buy as I’m moving to Steam/Gog anyway.
“Last of us” :/
I haven’t bought a physical game in years. But I also haven’t owned a PS since 2 so fuck Playstation.
The PS5 probably won’t see any noticeable decrease in game sales, because pretty much everyone who wants one already has one, but I’ll be interested to see if gamers call Sony’s bluff for the PS6 or not.
I don’t have much faith in them turning down the PS6 if the calls to boycott Hogwarts Legacy is anything to go by.
It doesn’t even have to be a morals-based boycott like Harry Potter.
Practically, just as an amoral consooomer, there’s no reason to purchase a non-upgradable, barely-customizable gaming device which is confined to Playstation’s walled garden when you could buy an upgradable, highly customizable gaming device that you can do whatever you want with.
My primary console since my teenage years has always been a Playstation. That will change probably before the PS6 even comes out. I have a PS5, I probably won’t sell it just in case of any interesting exclusives. (Lmao, I know, magical thinking, considering there are still only 6 such games, none of which appeal to me enough to buy them). I’m planning to get a PC and buy everything I can on there instead.
Some reminders of Playstation’s bullshit other than just physical media:
- Removed the ability for you to back up your PS5 game saves to USB, forcing you to buy PS+ or risk losing your save data permanently if something goes wrong.
- Discontinued free multiplayer services, ostensibly to improve the security of their network after North Korea hacked their shit for releasing a movie about assassinating Kim Jong Un (or Kim Jong Il, I don’t remember). Morally, idgaf about mocking North Korea, but economically, I do give a fuck about paying a corporation $80 per year to cover their operating expenses for doing so.
- Discontinued most forms of customization. PS3 and PSP could install full-on user-made themes, or you could make your own, even customizing things like the sound the interface makes when you scroll through it. Now you literally cannot even set a proper background.
- Refused to manufacture their controllers with hall effect joysticks (which prevent controllers from developing stick drift). Both ridiculously-expensive PS5 controllers I bought developed stick drift, and I’m not particularly rough with them or anything, not at all prone to gamer rage lol. I bought a third-party controller (SZ-5005B) with hall effect joysticks and haven’t had any issues since.
I’m sure there’s tons more too. Also the PS5 interface just generally sucks shit, like sometimes my Media Gallery is on my homepage and sometimes it’s not despite me not changing any settings, or just other stupid design choices.
We’ll see. Boycotting a $1000+ digital only console will be easier than boycotting a $70 game. Will millions buy it? Of course. But shareholders don’t just want SOME of the money, they want ALL of the money. It needs to sell many tens of millions.
I think a lot less people care about consoles now. People are moving over to mobile, not necessarily solely Android or iOS, but stuff like Switch or Steamdeck.
I’m reluctant to buy any digital games on anything but Steam at this point, and that’s because Valve has begrudingly earned my trust over 20 years of use. I do wonder what plans are in place for the point at which Gabe isn’t around to steer Valve.
I have zero confidence in any other game related corporation to have a long term view in mind, and especially not one in which the platform is designed to be consumer friendly.
I would trust GOG too. At least as long as they let you download offline installers.
Putting your trust on any company is already a mistake. The only correct answer is GoG, or other similar DRM free distributions. You don’t have to trust them, because it doesn’t matter what they might pivot to: you still have your downloaded games, and they still work without any connectivity.
Also, when you end up passing away, guess what happens to your steam library? You cannot pass it on to anyone else.
Idk bought 3 games on Steam just the other day and all three came with pop up when I went to install them to let me know that I was only License to use them.
While I bought 3 games on GOG same day and they only asked if I wanted to donate to their fund to keep games DRM free and letting me know that I own all my games I purchased.
Valve might be going to shit.
Is there anyway to backup our games purchased on Steam?
It’s a license to own a copy of the game because you’re not buying the actual game.
A license is ownership. That’s how all software has always worked, same as music and movies.
What remains to be seen is if courts will enforce the ownership in the light of the anti-consumer practices by publishers and developers removing people’s access to that which they have purchased.
This is a great video explaining everything from the guy who started Stop Killing Games.
I think if the license is revocable, then you never really own even a copy.
I only fully trust licenses that use wording like: "All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. " (from GPLv3) “Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.” (from ApacheV2)
Is there anyway to backup our games purchased on Steam?
Yes, you can copy the install folders and saves for them. Some can be modified to run without Steam fairly easily, some will need more involved cracks. Generally it’s easier to just redownload the whole game cracked and move your save files over.
Do you or anyone have steps for those cracks. I definitely want to play and keep my games without needing Valve.
You can download installers from Fitgirl.
You want the Goldberg Emulator, which is basically a replacement for the steam_api DLL that lets you play those games offline.
Mind you, not all games using Steam DRM will work with it, but many if not most will by just replacing the game’s steam_api DLL with the one from the emulator.
Alternatively, just prefer GOG over Steam for games available on both stores and make sure you download the offline installers from GOG and back them up - GOG itself is not entirely immune to the kind of legal shenanigans that would force them to delist a game from their store and remove them from a buyer’s games collection but, unlike Steam, their setup makes it impossible for such legal orders to stop you from playing that game if you already have the offline installer.
Got fed u with the fucking stick drift and Sony’s bullshit. Plugged my Rog ally that was taking dust to the TV, put bazzite on it. Now I can play what I want with a 20$ controller.
Playstation can go to hell.
I’m curious what PlayStation fans would think about changing from a disc plus download, like it is now, to a cartridge like Switch uses?
I think it would be a thousand times easier to get Sony on board with that idea.
What difference would it make?
I’m struggling to understand what this would achieve as well. They’re objectively more expensive to manufacture.
Every company that goes public stock shifts their priorities from customers to investors (extracting money).
Meh, most games are available on PC, and the exclusives that aren’t will come to emulators eventually. It’s worth paying extra for a PC that can run anything you like, including games, especially when you can install Linux and cut a ton of bullshit out of your life.
Digital isnt the worst thing, but how “ownership” is controlled can be. I wouldn’t blame Sony for the move but their method is garbage, and their past practices with digital ownership is too.
GoG on the other hand knows how it should be done. I have tons of games from them on a thumb drive. I’ve never actually needed to use it, but its nice to know I can. Major kudos to them.
That said, most of my games are owned on steam, which still has DRM, but at least I can play those games on a 20 year old PC, a modern one, a box in my living room, or on a multitude of hand helds. With Sony you are tied to a specific console and thats that. Good fucking luck when they stop selling that console.
DRM on Steam is up to the publisher.
Steam is DRM
Only if publisher wishes.
You can totally play games downloaded via Steam without launching the shop, if the game is DRM-free.
No. It’s impossible to sell a game DRM-free on Steam. They always require a connection to Valve’s servers to install, regardless of what the publisher wants. GOG lets you download the installer as a file that you can use wherever or whenever you want.
I mean yes… kind of. You can go to your library in gog and download (slowly speed-limited and broken into 4 gb chunks for some damn reason) which means no client needed.
But steam does have games that are DRM free after that first install. Ones that you can copy directly out of the folder and put them anywhere and run. Steam no longer needed.
There is a list here https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam although it suggests its about 600 games more that arent on the list yet.
The 4gb chunks is so you can put them on
Blu-rayDVD discs for storage. Back in the day large games came on multiple discs.Edit: Also it’s probably more what the other guy said about format, fitting on a DVD is just a bonus.
I always thought it was legacy support for FAT file systems. If one was so inclined, you could break a large file down into chunks yourself using a compression tool.
That reason honestly makes a lot more sense than blu ray compatibility
You probably mean DVDs since they are 4.7gb. Bluray capacity is closer to 50gb per disk I think?
Yep I did, but the other guy is probably closer to the truth of it. Fitting on a DVD is just bonus.
We really need a c/confidentlyincorrect comm for people like you
Ehh, pretty sure they know what they’re talking about, they just have what I consider a really bad take about it, and present it as absolute fact. Because yes, you need a connection to steam to “install” a game from steam, whereas you can predownload a GOG game and then not need a connection to install. Which doesn’t really matter to most people, since they don’t care about having the game use an official installer, as opposed to either an unofficial one or just archived game files, but it is a difference.
Then they’re being deliberately obtuse to make a point. Valve treats downloading and installing as the same thing so needing a connection to “install” a steam game is functionally no different than needing a connection to “download” the installer from GOG and then installing the game. Once Steam has installed the game and it has no actual DRM you can just copy it wherever you like. GOG gives a much better package for storing your games but that doesn’t mean what Steam does is DRM.
I guess it’s the right place to ask even if it’s not really related to Sony and my move away from them.
I download and install my GOG games through Heroic and then move them to a hard drive after I’m finished enjoying them.
If GOG one day disappears, will I still be able to play the games that way or do I really have to separately download the offline installers which are separated in many files?
Two things:
- GOG games DO NOT HAVE DRM to play. That’s their store’s unique value proposition. So if you still have that machine with that OS all working you can keep on playing those games forever even if GOG no longer exists. In practice in my experience of over 3 decades as a gamer, you’ll start having problems soon enough even if you refrain from updating that machine’s OS, as the OS version stops being supported as do the apps in it (for example, somebody from my family had Windows 8 until recently and eventually Google mail stopped supporting his browser version and there was no newer version of the browser that still supported Windows 8 - btw that person now has Linux) plus eventually even the machine hardware fails. Point being that an installed game is generally locked to the machine it has been installed in and the OS in it, since during installation it has probably configured a bunch of stuff in places like the registry (it’s not as bad in modern Linux were you can probably get away with just moving the entire home directory and hope for the best, but in Windows it’s still pretty bad). So you’re better off backing up the offline installers.
- I don’t used Heroic but I do use Lutris and the latter has an option to save the game installer when it downloads it from GOG during a direct “install from GOG”, so emaybe Heroic has it too. Given that the files Lutris lists as downloading when I “install from GOG” seem to be chunked just like the offline installer ones from my account page in GOG, I bet those files are the offline installer ones.
Realistically, you’ll always be able to download the offline installers from the high seas anyway.
will I still be able to play the games that way
Most of them will probably work, but there’s no real guarantee. Depends on whether the installers dumped critical files into your system / user folders.
I believe Steam games, even in offline mode, can only be run on systems where you have installed Steam and logged into it. If you copy the game files to a disc and give it to a friend, they would not be able to play it.
You’re wrong. It depends on whether drm is enabled. If it is not, then the game files on the disc would work. It is the publisher’s choice whether to enable drm.
As the other comment says, if they can explain how I can install a game from GOG without connecting to their servers, I’m happy to concede the point 😂
Guess Im done with Playstation moving forward.
They know you won’t leave, you’re all junkies at this point.
