preservation is dope and all but i havent seen anyone really talk about the fact that a lot of gamers in rural areas wont be able to game anymore because digital only means you need decent net to download these 100’s of GBs in a reasonable amount of time.
Is there a chance this could happen?
Sure, maybe
All I’m saying is all my Barbie movies from the early 2000s plus pretty much every DVD I’ve thrifted that had minimum to no scratches has worked perfectly fine
For me at least, it’s worth the gamble
Before streaming, I was a big DVD collector. I bought nearly a thousand movies. I thought I was building a library. And I will tell you a secret:
DVDs rot.
The glue that holds the layers together can become opaque so the laser doesn’t read the disc properly or it can simply degrade so the disc falls apart or it can warp or expand so the disc won’t spin properly in the drive.
So, in addition to needing to keep antique hardware with delicate moving parts in working order to play these games or watch these movies, the media itself is degrading.
Yeah, your purchased digital movie might get deleted from the network over rights issues at some point in the future or the service that provides it might shut down. But if you buy a BluRay and put it on a shelf for five years and then decide to watch it, there is a decent chance it won’t work.
I love a beautiful Criterion movie box set or a game with cool box art and a manual as much as the next guy, but people overly romanticize physical media. The universe is governed by entropy and everything is falling apart.
I was already collecting DVDs because I was sick of streaming, might as well start hunting video games I haven’t tried yet as well so I can play them before they become lost media
People don’t realize how much this could change the gaming market.
When physical games disappear, it doesn’t just affect collectors. It affects the entire ecosystem around gaming.
Retro game stores? Many of them survive because people still buy, sell, and trade physical games. As physical media declines, some of those stores will have a much harder time staying open.
Collector’s Editions? If everything becomes digital, what’s the incentive? Are people really going to spend $200+ for a few digital cosmetics and a downloadable license? A huge part of what made those editions special was owning something tangible.
And don’t think retro prices won’t be affected. As fewer physical games are produced, the older ones become even more desirable. Supply goes down, demand goes up, and prices climb even higher.
This isn’t just about preferring discs over downloads. It’s about ownership, preservation, accessibility, local game stores, collectors, and the future of gaming as a whole.
There’s so much more at stake than people realize, and I don’t think the long term impact is good. #supportphysicalmedia
They genuinely despise the second hand market because they don’t get to double dip on profits. This is their way of trying to combat it since they can’t make borrowing/re-selling illegal
Fuck corporate greed and fuck late stage capitalism
Ok, we clowned Rockstar for this, but we need to have a serious conversation.
Why is it that that multi-media companies are trying to make physical media extinct and sticking strictly to digital?
We actually want to physically own the things we paid for, thank you very much.
PlayStation is ending production of physical game discs for all new games, starting January 2028.
From that date, new games will be available in digital formats only.