I was like you, and I ended up choosing Steam, mainly because I can play the game on the Steam Deck that way.

If a game I own ever gets delisted on Steam : first off, it's unusual for Steam to remove it from your library ; secondly, I would just pirate a copy if that were ever to happen.

Any game for which that strategy fails, would also never have a physical release on PlayStation anyway.

Also, Steam sales (or key resellers) are cheaper than second hand disks ; and I never sold any of my physical games anyway (though I might now that I re-bought them on Steam 😂)

Pretty much all steam games that don't have secondary DRM can be made to be steamless with tools like the Goldberg emulator (Disclaimer this project is meant for games you own and have permission to replace steam on, it's not a piracy tool, but you can use it to archive installed games). PS5 games are two decades out, at minimum, to be emulated.

Thanks to collectors and scalpers, the secondary games market is pretty much nonexistent for modern consoles. So reselling isn't going to get you enough to buy anything really.

I am a long time PC/PS5 player and what’s pretty much put me off of PlayStation permanent are two things:

1. PlayStation implemented online license checks every 30 days. So year from now when they shut off the PS5 back end states like they have with PS3, your games will no longer be playable.
2. Sony intends to lock multiplayer features behind third party facial recognition software globally in the somewhat near future.

a lot of steam games dont have DRM (those that dont use steam features like multiplayer). You can buy a game, move it out of the folder to test if it runs, and if not, refund it

i know at least one game that offers an offline version on itch.io that is DRM free

I'd say GOG --> Steam. Physical media isn't real anymore. Most PS5 games download an entirely new set of binaries at initial launch and refuse to run unless they have been updated. So the disc is mostly useless.

I've been buying games on Steam since 2003. I still can play them all.

The only thing better than Steam is no DRM (GOG). Everything else doesn't exist for me.

Just get them on Steam and then if the day ever comes that Valve yanks them away from you it'll be morally acceptable to pirate everything you've already bought.

Steam Machine in the next year if the price is under 1000$ with 2 controllers.

Zero chance.

Tinfoil hat thoughts: at this point, I wouldn't trust Sony to honour the ownership of a physical copy forever. There's nothing stopping them from implementing a system that checks whether your account owns a license for the game that's on the disk, or prevents the console from launching a delisted game. All it takes is a firmware update.

If preservation is the main concern, I'd check whether the game is available at a 100% peg leg discount (as insurance against corporate-sanctioned theft), then buy it on Steam. Even if Gaben turns to the dark side, PC will always be a more open platform than PS. People love pretending that Sony is still the company that released this epic burn, but that was over a decade ago.

Many games are sold on 1st party storefronts. Sometimes even indie ones, like Rimworld. I’d say they are less likely to yoink the game since they own all the rights, and they’re often downloaded as DRM-free executables.

So I’d check, in order:

• GoG

• The game dev/publisher storefront.

• Some storefront with a DRM-free download. I noticed EGS (for example) does this for many of their giveaways.

• Steam, as a last resort.

I wouldn’t trust PS5 discs though.

…But you should consider practicality, too.

In practice, your PS5 is going to be your most powerful machine until you get a bigger PC with a GPU. And FYI, the Steam Machine will not be $1000, not even close.

That, and launching less intense games on your Deck is way more convenient if bought through Steam. Otherwise you have to deal with some intricacies of Proton and controller remapping to get them running.

So the PS5 discs aren’t impractical. Steam isn’t impractical. They should launch for a reasonably long time.

PS5 physical and sell if you are on the fence or only play on playing them once

GoG if there’s an option

Steam otherwise?

There is no need to be so strict so just mix it up and do it all.

None of us can predict the future, so we don't know which games will end up on GOG one day, but your plan seems solid enough based on what we know now and what you value.

I never sold any of my oldies goldies, so, physical copies just take space.

My prefered method is to generally buy games on Steam and if I consider one of them a classic that I might want to return to in the distant future, I'll buy then again from GOG and store them on an external drive.

I've been a gamer since 1985 and all games that still work from 1980-2000 are mostly ones that were pirared, had no copy protection, or had a really simple protection that just checked if you had the manual of other peripheral. i.e. the ones that can be transfered from one storage media to another.

GOG copies probably have the greatest longevity.

I treat any digital platform - and for all practical purposes, that includes disks these days - more or less equally. Realistically, what are you going to do if you have 200+ games on GOG and the company “becomes evil”? Download them all and store them on your hardware until the rest of your life? It would be easier to pirate a game from your lost collection when you need it. I personally see little value in DRM-free games because of that. Besides, GOG doesn't even support Linux.

PS5 discs have some advantages though:

• Retail-store discounts can go very low.
• Or you can buy used discs.
• And you can resell your discs.

I'm in a similar position, and I simply wishlist games and buy them when there's a discount on either platform.

Piracy.