“Why Owning Your Video Games Has Become More Important Than Ever”
honestly not that worried about it. if they try to fuck me with licensing nonsense i’ll just pirate it.
Same importance as owning anything else I buy.
and now, in this corner of Heaven…
All you need now is an endless hot wing buffet, a bottomless bag of only the dankest of nugg, and a troupe of nymphomaniac nudist college cheerleaders with no gag reflex and daddy issues.
all i’m saying is that you are living at least 1/4 of the dream. you even have somewhere to play them vs having them collecting dust in boxes in your attic.
How important is owning your own games to you?
Let me put it this way: I have nearly 5,000 games on Steam. It’s the one source of media I have no problem investing money into, because I agree with how Valve is providing the service.
It’s convenient, user-friendly, and easily exportable. I can go anywhere in the world, download my games and save files, and pick up where I left off. Which has been made even more convenient with the advent of the Steam Deck.
If I paid for a game, it’s in my library forever. Even if it gets removed from the Steam Store. And the regular sales/discounts ensure I can afford to have such a massive library. I would be severely in debt if I paid full price for my entire library.
If/when Valve loses Gabe Newell and the new CEO prioritizes profits over customer satisfaction, I will gladly switch to pirating and hoarding my own games.
I’m very much against subscription services and I firmly believe in owning everything I drop money on. I don’t play console games anymore because they’ve all been pushing subscription services, and with Sony in particular trying to push for people to not own games anymore? Fuck PlayStation.
This is also why I won’t use Epic Games. Their predatory business practices and poor customer service shows what a terrible company they are and I refuse to support a business that degrades and exploits the customer experience for profit. I will gladly pirate any exclusive they keep off the market, or wait until they show up on Steam in a year or so.
If everyone voted with their wallet, Epic Games would be forced to confront the fact they need to make changes to compete with the online gaming market, or go bankrupt.
Fairly important and it’s grown with age. I wish I could get back all of the games I sold bc I was too poor to have them and newer games.
As much as I use emulators for travel, I have repurchased a bunch of old consoles and I love booting them up.
While nostalgia fuels a lot of this for me, I’m also passionate about preservation for everyone.
I send money to DE for Access to premium currency in Warframe. I don’t have to. I know I don’t own it and my privileges can be revoked at any time. I balance this with the free to play entry and my enjoyment of the content therin.
OpenWF is there for you if you ever need it.
An offline backup for when they kill the servers or ruin the game otherwise, a moddable version, one where you can replay cut or past content, get anything you want for free, one without any fomo or timers, etc.
OpenWF
thanks never heard of it!
maybe it’s just me because im old but the photo itself shows why I have zero interest in owning a game, or any physical media (a someone who had vinyl originally, then tapes, seeing the back of both those was a joy. I’m also seeing “kids” return to analog cameras but that will pass, like bell bottoms.
a physical game that needs online authentication, or a server for collaborative play are all only here for a “short time” anyway, physical media aside.
I’m a reader more than a gamer, my books are all digital with no DRM, most of my games are digital from GOG and no DRM and are all single player, my music is all MP3 or flacc , zero streaming. It’s why I get pissy when phones don’t have an SD card, I can throw a TB of movies, books etc on a card and have another with me if I want but you streamers have killed it :)
Not that much since I rarely have any interest in replaying a game, but then again I never buy them for full price, I only buy them very cheaply on Steam sales. I have no idea why anyone would pay $60+ to “rent” a game, I’d just ISO it alongside buying it in such a case
I feel like if you rarely have any interest in replaying a game, you would be the most in support for owning your games, so you could re-sell them.
Since I don’t come from a culture of selling games that thought never occurred to me, when I was a kid we’d just share our games with each other, so I guess I never saw it as a source of profit, as an adult I don’t know if I would even bother with the effort of trying to sell a video game for whatever little money you could get for them
Pretty important. If I paid real money for the game, I want to have it to play whenever I want in the future. I try to buy on GOG whenever possible, and I keep games I particularly liked archived on my NAS. For games that I’ve bought on steam that I really liked, I download the Fitgirl repack and back that up. If you can’t legally own a copy of your game, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands.
And I have half a mind to to get a stack of archival blu-rays to back up some of my all time favorites, kind of just for fun and bookshelf fodder.
But I’m no archivalist saint, if a game sucked I feel no need to keep those files around.
Tough one. I’ve been playing video games since pong. I tossed a big stack of 5 1/4 floppies when I realized I’d never have another drive installed that could read them. Same with 3 1/2 floppies. I still have all the CD/DVD’s I’ve ever bought but have ended up re-buying on sale through steam or GOG when I needed a nostalgia hit because they just worked on modern systems without a bunch of tinkering. I can download just about any game I once had on either sized floppy and run it in dosbox. On modern systems, I’ve been on playstation and steam. Bought the PS5 with a disk drive and have installed PS4 disks but have yet to buy a PS5 disk, only digital which I prefer. I hate trying to find the disk, then find the case for the disk for the game in the machine. I also question what you own on modern games. Do you really want to play some of these games without the day one patch, or even the one month patch? What to do really own with a No Mans Sky launch disk if hello games disappeared and it could not be patched?
On the other hand, though I’m too much of a data hoarder to sell games used, I understand the desire. And having a kid that always wants the newest game for birthdays/Christmas but grandma has no real way to buy him the game specifically, I get physical for something to wrap and have under the tree.
In theory, I want to own my games but the history and reality of video games makes that a much more nuanced question…
I like the idea of being able to pass down my games to my children. I had over 20 years of games for them to play. Currently, I only buy physical media if the media is present on the cartridge. I still buy Nintendo games, but I won’t touch the Game Key Cards. When it comes to PC games, I go with GOG first. If it’s not there (yet), I will relent and buy it on Steam.
