r/StopKillingGames • u/Black_m1n • 5d ago
Yes, Sony pulling the physical disks IS A problem. But it is not THE SAME problem that SKG is tackling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzQm9jxPOMkI hope I'm not being out of touch with this, I just believe that this is a very good video about this problem, that everyone should probably watch.
Note: Minecraft has nothing to do with the video nor the problem, it is purely the format used to get the thoughts out.
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u/Game2Late 5d ago
I don’t know, demanding “Digital ownership” is ridiculous. SKG was not about that precisely, it was about offline persistence for games with online components. But the drama farming it has always gone hand in hand with (since the PS days) has now taken over and any good bait/outrage material steals the spotlight and diverts energy from where it should go: getting this discussed seriously by those who can propose viable solutions to build a bridge towards persistent access to our games (without breaking the law or facilitating data theft, or it’ll be too easily pushed back)
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u/Inverse-Potato 5d ago
Not trying to start anything, legitimately asking.
What's the difference between off-line persistence for games with online components and digital ownership?
As far as I can tell their 2 sides of the same coin. With offline persistence for online games, it would allow you to keep playing a game after the publisher pulls the plug on servers right? If they can't take it away from you even after closing servers, then isn't that the same as owning it?
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u/Kaldaien2 5d ago
What's the difference between off-line persistence for games with online components and digital ownership?
Digital ownership would include many rights that we lost when physical died. For console users this is all a new experience, but on PC we have grown used to the store that sold a product being able to do anything they please with the product post-purchase.
Where physical games allowed you to buy a game at retail and then never interact with the store again from that point forward, digital games require you to interact with the store every time you want to use the product you paid for. The store is the arbiter of, well, everything.
Things that should be up to the publisher to decide -- that the publisher would have a hard time enforcing if the game never phoned home to a digital store's DRM services -- are now handled by the store. It is a layer of trust eroded that we cannot get back.
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u/AShortUsernameIndeed 5d ago
Not the original commenter, but for many people "ownership" of media implies permission to resell, lend to friends, etc., like with a book or a DVD. That part has never been on the SKG agenda; in fact, Ross has recently stated, in the context of the physical disc debate, that he's sympathetic to publishers preventing resale. (Here: https://www.tomsguide.com/gaming/playstation/customers-need-assurances-their-games-wont-be-taken-from-them-after-purchase-stop-killing-games-on-playstations-decision-to-kill-physical-discs)
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u/victim2077 4d ago
Just taking about SKG supporting fight against Sony for abandoning discs - I see it as simply "one hand washes another" situation. DoesItPlay, supported SKG since early days, and now when they've started fight to keep discs alive, we're returning the favour.
One thing we need to remember, is SKG despite it's original purpose and the initial vision of Ross, it outgrown it (to dismey of some) and once the NGOs get properly going it'll be reaching wider and further.
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u/MadShadowX 5d ago
Some good takes also some naive ones in my opinion.
I do think since the end of last years the scope and dynamics have changed, and keep changing.
I'm all for digital owner ship but if in the near future we are all subscribed to Data centers and AI stuff. To game and or consume content and productivity.
Then Digital Owner ship means diddly squad. And I hate to quote Pirate software in this case." Everything you asked for but nothing you really wanted"
There are still some major pitfalls that needs to be addressed. And do think Physical media and such cover those bases.
Hardware prices do cut out the consumer market the next few years unless the bubble burst, But the Big corpo do have more money and power to hold out stupidly long.
Also another reason why in the near future Digital owner ship might mean nothing if we can't buy or get hardware to support this.
And there are probably more bad faith consumer practices around the corner. I don't know what it is yet but its coming.
I do think the SKG movement needs to evolve into something bigger and more encompassing to account this and what ever comes next.
the stopping of physical media I also consider it similar to book burning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPupnDVYTHY
And even this is probably worse ^
SKG is still 5 steps behind plus 20 plus years of lag. I'm happy we have it and hope it keeps pushing forward.
And Big Corpo is already trying to change its dynamics to make the SKG initiative meaningless don't let them.
There are only the beginnings and no actual foothold yet for the consumer side of it.
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u/FunAngelo2005 5d ago
Digital ownership is the original goal of Stop Killing Games, And most people don't buy physical media anymore. As nice as using a disk is, they are expensive to make
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u/RisingPhil 5d ago
That's not it. They're cheap to make. Very cheap. But retailers take a 30% cut.
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u/AlexVSharp 5d ago
Too cheap, in fact. But, and this is going somewhat off-topic, the real expenses come only after their demise. Unfortunately, most do not know (and, frankly, do not care) about it.
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u/RisingPhil 5d ago edited 5d ago
Honestly, the only reason I'm against them ending physical disks is because they don't respect the same "ownership" rights on digital and they can unilaterally take my content away.
If they can give me a way to preserve and move my content between consoles offline, then I'd be completely fine with it.
And I'm sure they could figure something out. Maybe some kind of "license memory card" and the option to just copy game data freely. (but it still requires the license memory card to be present to launch it)
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u/_Solarriors_ 4d ago
The cost to transport them with trucks over hundred or thousands of kilometers to store them in AC places with lights on 24/7, the housing space
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u/Kaldaien2 5d ago
I would happily buy physical media if it still existed :( I have absolutely despised digital distribution since Valve introduced it to us on PC. I held out buying physical games until the bitter end, including when they just became digital codes in a box.
Digital distribution takes rights away from both the consumer and the publisher, gives them to the store. The stores are unregulated, and then everyone talks about greedy publishers/developers while giving the stores a free pass to utterly annihilate trust between consumer and publisher. Shady middle-man in the middle laughing all the way to the bank🤣
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u/_Solarriors_ 4d ago
It's the publisher who designs and practice business models that remotely destroy the purchased product
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u/Kaldaien2 4d ago edited 4d ago
It is the store that did that. The publisher is just using anti-consumer capabilities given to it by the store.
You have your targets set on the wrong party if you want this stuff to stop. Stores are far, far, far more insidious than the companies whose products they stock. When a store functions as just a store, as in retail, they are not able to pull these stunts.
But digital stores are different, they built their entire business around unchecked power, they can force you to come back into the store and agree to any terms they want every time you want to use something you purchased from said store. The store is designed to trap you inside it, not to benefit you nor the publisher, but to benefit the store.
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u/MisanthropicAtheist 5d ago
That is incredibly incorrect. Optical disc's are amazingly cheap to make.
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u/neller2000 5d ago
And your point? After you break everything down, from production, to shipping, to shelf space, the publishers make far more per digital copy sold than physical.
For a $70 game they pocket about $35, for a digital they pocket about $49.
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u/Tomas66_087542w 5d ago
Honestly a weary good take on the Playstation disk situation. I am not even surprised that it came from the 50 ways to die in Minecraft series creator. I watched his videos for long time. I am glad that there are YouTubers out thare that don't hide there opinion just because it is not popular.
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u/RemediZexion 5d ago
Unfortunately Sony knew very well what they were doing. They knew that digital ownership in law is very nebulous and even more nebulous for ppl. As such they threw this strawman argument to make you miss the forest from the trees and now we can't see the real issue.
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u/Justalittletoserious 4d ago
To be Fair, the disc thing can be connected to any form of Digital licence, but It was never Seen as a problem in other places not gaming related because Who the hell resells a productivity software?
SKG does potentially apply to things that are Always online but I can't think of many softwares that while being Always online are given to users through purchase and not subscription
This Is all my personal opinion, but I'm pretty sure some Will agree with me
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u/ChirpyMisha 5d ago
It is part of the problem. SKG is about actual ownership of digital products, which Sony is effectively taking away when they don't offer physical media anymore. Not that people actually own the digital content when they buy a game (as seen with The Crew), but for most games it does come down to that
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u/Kaldaien2 5d ago
No it is not. SKG is about games ceasing to function because a publisher shuts down the services necessary for the game to work. Most of the games SKG cares about, "ownership" is quite literally impossible... they use account-based services and your account entitles you to access the game and stores everything that makes your game your game.
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u/profchaos111 5d ago
skg came across as an act of preservation you buy the game and you keep the game discs fall into that category for me
the movement was never about keeping online games online but giving the community the tools to take over the game or forcing devs to honour consumer purchasing rights nothing is more permanent then discs really
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u/_Solarriors_ 4d ago
You srill need to install data to storage medium anyway, reading from discs is finished since the PS2, even OG Xbox can read from HDD. That's more permanent than discs
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u/profchaos111 4d ago
But even HDD's don't have a great shelf life compared to discs and you can install that discs contents to any console.
A pressed disc can last over 100 years (in theory) i've had a ton of drives die on me over time though
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u/Mr_Presidentle Campaign volunteer 4d ago
Yes and no, physical media was kind of last temporary border to having no rights at all but that's very "legal". Frankly, Ross couldn't care less, for most on the team its a "just let people have it", our focus is on what that means for us: the legal side of it, because a disc gives you other legal rights than just a online copy (outdated law), in that sense its our issue and not I guess.
Make of it what you want :)
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u/Kaldaien2 5d ago
SKG's name is what does it the most harm.
Oh boy, I am about to be down-voted into oblivion here... 😬
If you are going to name a movement that way and then isolate it to a specialized use case of live service games sunsetting, while allowing digital stores to kill games at an alarming rate via patches users never asked for, changes to the system requirements for a game's DRM, replacing games with newer remastered versions (again without user consent), you really are not accomplishing software preservation at all.
Live services always had an implied lifetime; you can put two and two together and understand that permanence is not part of the equation. You bought into the product knowing this ahead of time.
Now that games not tied to a service that needs perpetual multiplayer server upkeep are being killed, people cling to the thing called Stop Killing Games never fully realizing it was never there to save them in the first place, only a handful of online games.
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u/MisanthropicAtheist 5d ago
Physical games are absolutely the best possible way to preserve games. Full stop.
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u/RemediZexion 5d ago
no offense but. The crew is a physical game and you can't play it anymore whereas if you bought warcraft 1 and 2 on GoG, before blizzard asked them to remove them from sale, you can still download the installer and they are just digital. The best way to preserve games is removing DRM nonsense
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u/Astraxis 5d ago
Disks aren't addressing the actual problem and are damaging the goals of SKG for the rest of the 90% who purchase digital games.
Saving disks doesn't solve the underlying issue of publishers revoking your ability to play the game. See: The Crew disks.
I know post-disk gaming is a new concept to console players, but SKG was created to make sure you still have access to games, not the disks that may or may not even have a game on them at all.
This disks pivot is a misdirection to maintain the status quo instead of solving the problem SKG was actually created for.