People want retail games and if the big 3 can’t cover that market a new and more sustainable subject will fill that space. Maybe it’s time to bring back physical media to PC, a more open system where publishers could make profit selling their retail games similarly to vinyls for music.
Optical media really isn’t your friend. I love it, I have loads of old games on optical discs and I bought a PS5 with its disc drive specifically because that’s how I wanted to buy the media. But I also back up what I can to spinning rust or solid state drives that can sit cold stored until I want them. Optical media will degrade. There are exceptions, like M-Disc, but the medium is slow and space consuming.
If the files are DRM-free as they said, then there’s nothing stopping backups. I don’t get why you’re trying to paint it as an either/or thing
I’m not sure I understand. Whether it’s DRM free or not has no bearing on the reliability of optical media as a backup format. Discs you write to are not generally as reliable as factory pressings, with some archival exceptions, so it’s not the ideal choice. I wasn’t making any argument about whether it works or not.
Removed by mod
I think you’re the one who misunderstood. The guy I replied to was talking about backing up digital games to disc. I mentioned optical discs have poor longevity, then you took it personally.
I mean, I have an external hdd I keep a backup of important files on, and an ssd I use to transfer things onto a second computer, and it’s just a full backup of my primary pc.
Fair enough. I didn’t assume you were doing that for data generally. My original comment was unnecessarily condescending in tone, sorry about that.
It didn’t seem condescending to me.
Personally I like having my cds put of nostalgia. I don’t spend all that time making multiple cds for large games like horizon zero dawn because I think it’ll stand the test of time lol. Most of the cds I had when they were the standard aren’t functional anymore, but damn if I don’t enjoy it when my little usb disc tray pops out.
It’s generally correct to assume the average pc user doesn’t make backups of anything. I once had a friend call me to their house in a panic because their work laptop ate shit and they had absolutely nothing saved externally. With a recovery company, he managed to scrape about 10% of his client data, and their bank lost a looooooot of reputation over it. Now their laptops do company-wide backups to a single cloud service twice a day. (I asked what they’re gonna do if the cloud service goes down and the answer he gave was “look for a new job” lmao)
I have other backups, I just get nostalgic for the days of Command and Conquer.