Games

What kills me is that discs have been useless essentially since the late PS360. I can put a copy of Castlevania Lament of Innocence in my PS2 and it works just like it did when it was new. Meanwhile, my copy of Oblivion on 360 has that funny bug where vampirism is uncurable because the vampirism questgiver is hostile. Without updates from servers, or at best downloaded off a mirror of a file hosting site, that disc has that bug forever.

Similarly I bought a copy of No Man's Sky on the cheap for PS4 ages ago, but it's a launch copy and the game on the disc doesn't even resemble current-day 2026 No Man's Sky. And that's before considering that a PS4 with a dead clock battery needs to reset its date & time on the Sony servers before they'll let you play again.

So the current disc-cancellation is undeniably really bad, but also physical games have been on a downhill slide for usefulness for about 15 years. Also I don't see anyone noting that the PS3 & Vita PSN stores are shutting down soon.

TL;DR piracy is the only preservation