A community for PC Master Race.
Rules:
Oh yes, people are flocking to W11, flocking I tell you!
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Right? That's how bad it is. Although how that some major companies are having Linux distros as default installs, M$ it's kinda freaking out a little. It's like, how little can we do to make people happy and still steal their info.
These articles feel like cope. Most people arenβt as invested in physical media as our small corner of the internet. I doubt this decision will hurt Sony, and Microsoft and Nintendo will probably follow suit soon enough.
It's interesting, cause i just saw them mention this subject about gamers being mad at playstation in the national news in my country, so if that's anything to go by maybe it's causing more of a stink than we think.
Itβs just a vocal minority. Every single sales metric available to us and publishers says physical is dead.
That's somewhat misleading. You can't reduce physical media availability then point at it saying "look people aren't buying it" because they don't have access to it in the first place, by design.
I mean I'm sure since digital media has become mainstream there's a shift, but it was a planned force shift to increase profits.
Look at the url, this isn't cope, it's an ad.
Build/Buy an AMD machine.
Install SteamOS.
Alternatively for 1, you can wait for SteamOS to be working on Intel or Nvidia systems and build whatever you want after that. Or just use regular linux.
Bazzite (which is essentially SteamOS, but on a Fedora, instead of Arch [btw], base) works just fine -- excepting Big Picture / Console Mode, which is still buggy -- for both Intel and Nvidia.
I mean, Valve doesn't sell games on physical media in the Steam Store either that I'm aware.
Does anyone sell PC games on physical media?
Last game I can recall buying for PC and physical was Farcry. I never had to many either but the rest were all from the 90s like diablo, and command and conquer red alert. It all stopped when half life 2 dropped which was basically when steam became what it is now and that was 2004.
I think mine might have been Oblivion. Specifically the Shivering Isles expansion. Or The Orange Box. Oblivion and TOB came out in 2007, but Shivering Isles was at least a year after.
I'm not 100% sure that it's the physical media its self that's the issue, it more so that the digital versions require verification from a server to be playable.
Xbox and PlayStation can shut the server down and your digital game becomes useless.
Steam I think this might be a issue, but I don't remember hearing this happening yet.
GOG you buy the game and get all the files and executables, so if GOG goes out of business your game still run locally.
Last time I bought them was the Close Combat series from Slitherine/Matrix Games, which does war games.
checks
Looks like they stopped last year:
Dear Wargamers,
We want to share an important update with you.
Starting March 1st, 2025, Slitherine will no longer sell physical game manuals or physical copies of our games through our website. This marks the end of an era, and we understand how much these editions have meant to many of you over the years.
There is a trend away from Physical purchases to digital, and a decreasing number of new PCβs even have DVD drives and very few laptops meaning the potential market has been shrinking for years. This, combined with increasing delivery costs, environmental awareness, and more red tape on international deliveries, all combine to make it unviable. Β > For those who appreciate the tactile experience of a physical manual or a boxed edition, this is your final chance to secure a piece of wargaming history. You have until February 28th, 2025, to purchase from the remaining stock, after which these products will no longer be available.
News story entirely based on tweets. Garbage.
What do you expect them to do, actually talk to real people about the issue? Like do real journalism!? Pfft
Can't talk with real people about this issue, nobody goes outside anymore.
I mean, even talking to people right now is pointless, the change hasn't happened. Lots of people may claim they'll switch, but most probably won't.
Eyes Linux computers over Microsoft or Sony.
Aside from Nintendo, how often to today's games actually fit on physical media and not require downloading/patching to play?
Actually asking, I don't have any consoles.
Most games from my small-to-medium sized collection fit on a single blu-ray disc. Only some bigger AAA releases don't. I think only like 2 games I own have more than one disc - Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Well they don't always, but you can just use multiple discs in that case. I think final fantasy has done this as well as a recent example, but this has already been done since the days of games still being on CD.
Itβs significantly more expensive than simply having the rest be downloaded via an update.
With developers going under left right and centre, putting an even higher cost on their production is a death sentence.
That's not because of the discs lol. If you afford to spend 300 million on slop like concord, you can print discs. And a franchise like gta 6 can definitely afford them.
screw Sony and Microsoft. both deserve nothing
I'm sure the last time I bought a physical box for a game was a WoW expansion. I don't recall if it had physical media. Either way, unless you're looking to play games with anticheat, I wouldn't recommend Windows
Where do they get their physical releases from on PC?
It is actually entirely possible to have fully functional physical copies of PC games, albeit with extra effort.
You can buy DRM-free games, and burn them onto blu-ray discs. Of course, you're gonna need a blu-ray drive, but at least you're completely free to do what you want. You can also buy blank cases and print cover art for them. Again, a lot of extra effort, but it works and is fully independent from corporations.
Well you can actually own your games on pc even if they're digital. Games don't have to be physical to be able to own them, but on consoles physical is the only way to own, which is why it's considered important on those platforms. If consoles as a digital platform were as free as pc, it wouldn't be as big an issue.
Sure, if you only buy gog, in which case you donβt own any AA or bigger games from the last decade or 3. You donβt own your steam games.
Yeah i know, but at least the option is there, showing that it's possible. And with steam games you can always crack them, or just go the piracy route.