I cant remember if I had Dark Souls on a disk or not but I remember how ASS games for windows live was.

I played Demon Souls and Bloodborne on disks and was happy to be able share / resell the games. Discontinuing disks is obviously a shameless anti-consumer move.

Anyway, I might start a new Elden Ring run. I recently finished my first run and now I want to follow a guide to do the NPC quests I missed (all of them)

Discs degrade over time anyway.

This is a silly abstraction that deflects from the actual argument about licencing contracts.

If you’re that concerned about being able to play old games don’t bother with legality.

Let’s just say that regardless of the current situation, I’ve been enjoying all my Sony games digitally for a while now. If you catch my drift.

You will own nothing and be happy.

I really thought this was going to be more of a creeping death situation for discs on the Playstation. Disc player for the PS6 only as an addon, none at all for the PS7; winding down production near the end of the PS6’s lifetime and shutting it down in the first half of the PS7’s lifetime. I didn’t expect such a “bold” proclamation. But they have a near monopoly in the console market (Nintendo is still relevant but serves a somewhat different market; Xbox makes themself more irrelevant day by day). The consumers can’t really protest… Do you want to buy a new console? Well, these are the conditions: only digital games, online gaming access costs money, and … I don’t know some other rent-seeking scheme…

I “own” most of my Souls games on Playstation digitally. I bought them that way because it was convenient; I had the console, which cost me a marvelous 0€ (or years of family IT service), and 20€ Bloodborne GOTY seemed like fun. The sad thing is that from the very beginning I never really expected to own them like my many books. I knew that it could be revoked at any moment, close my Playstation account for some spurious reasons, deactivate my games via the internet because of some licensing or some other reason to spite me. What was I going to do in that case? Litigate with what time? With what money? And on the grounds of what laws? But still, it was convenient in the moment.

We need consumer protection in the media landscape, especially in video gaming. I really hope that we will get some, but I’m pessimistic… Stop Killing Games was stopped by the EU Commission due to such blatant lies by lobbyists. And quite frankly, Stop Killing Games is such a milquetoast, basic thing in terms of consumer protections. We actually need much more than that.

My mind paints such a grim potential future for video gaming… You know Nintendo is gonna follow Sony in the digital only sooner or later, just like they did with paying for shitty online service. Also, you know Gabe Newell is not gonna live forever, and one day you are gonna read the headline: “Steam IPO expected to hit…”. In a decade or two… maybe you will only be able to rent games, always online; you have to pay a yearly few and – okay enough about that grim future; it’s making me sad.

I do still have hope, mostly because of piracy ☠︎. Someone will always share the newest media; sharing is caring. It’s almost as if sharing (media) is an intrinsic human quality… As stupid as game encryption gets, someone will always crack it. Denuvo got cracked via Hypervisor, which is not elegant, but it works. “Proper” cracks of all sorts of games still continue; voices38 makes proper Denuvo cracks, no Hypervisor required. Also, GOG games get shared all around easily, and they don’t seem to be going bankrupt. I had some sort of further point here; ah well, media, and especially games, will always be available even if the industry goes in a darker direction.

(Thanks for reading my rambling…)

I’m still addicted to Elden Ring. I started yet another RL1 run. This time with another restriction: I’m keeping every base stat (Vigor, Strength, Endurance, etc.) at 10, with no boosting of these base stats. It’s sometimes known as “True Level 1” or “RL1 on stat boosting”. This severely limits the weapon selection. Makes you super squishy and nerfs your damage output even more.

It’s going well for now… I sped through the linear path to Farum Azula. Morgott was far too easy, seriously - Fromsoft he has too low HP, and Fire Giant was way harder, since I needed to fight him hitless to have enough damage output using the Red-Feathered Branchsword (it’s like the Red Tearstone Ring). For now I’m having fun, and I think Any% is going to be manageable, but DLC and Malenia are going to be rough…

I don’t know what I’ll play this weekend, I started Wanted: Dead yesterday but after that and today’s session I’m at 118 minutes and I think I might do something I basically never do - use the Steam refund policy. I don’t have time to play shit games these days. There are too many good ones to waste my time on something I’m not having fun with. I hate runbacks and time wasting and this is a game developed by people who apparently adhere to the 80s game design school of “what is a checkpoint?”. I’m not interested in a game that has me redo gruelling sections of 10+ minutes of wave after wave of constant combat before retrying a miniboss that can kill you almost instantly if you slip up once. I’m sure there is someone out there who loves that type of challenge, and good for them. To me, the combat in this game isn’t even juice that’s worth the squeeze to begin with. Stiff, clunky, awful controls… ugh. And don’t get me started on the writing and voice acting, some of these characters sound like old TTS - not even AI! I thought Road 96 was full of terrible voice acting but this might be a new low water mark.

We’ll see what I pick next. Probably The Drifter, although I did actually pick up Hell Is Us and Salt and Sanctuary on the sale too, so maybe I’ll play an actual Soulslike soon?

I’m personally the wrong person to ask about physical media. I haven’t bought a physical game in something like 15 years. It’s not like games sold on discs are complete anyway these days, with the prevalence of day-one patches and DLC and continued post-launch support with patches and updates. I think we should focus on game preservation like GOG is doing instead: DRM free offline installers you can save on your own physical media if you want.

That sounds much better to me than churning out discs that degrade anyway and 99% of the people find more of a hassle than a benefit.

None to play atm. But on the second question, imo it’s curious to say the least that the decision came as interest for physical medias seemingly is gaining traction.

Also lest we forget:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA

No souls like currently. But just modded my switch, so I’m finally getting to totk and mp4.

As for Sony. Been a huge PS fan since the PS1. I have 1 physical ps5 game, everything else is digital and I’m still pissed about ending physical. So, next I’m putting a spare 500gb hdd into my ps3 and modding it. Just got a sd2vita so I can mod my vita. And I’ll probably look into modding the ps4 next. Any future PS5 games will be on disc, and used. Already canceled plus over a year ago due to the price hikes. Sony lost a multiple decade long fan with this boneheaded move.

Stellar Blade this weekend and fuck Sony, I had the sneaking suspicion this would be their last generation with discs but it still sucks.

Now there is no point to getting a PlayStation over a PC imo.

I’m a collector and am sad about another loss for physical media. I don’t want a system that will be useless when the servers eventually shut down.

I hate this company more every day. Even if my game library is mostly digital now, I’d prefer having a physical copy for my favourite media, always. as it has been said before this is an anticonsumer move, coupled with the threat of account deletion after 3 years of inactivity. With the ai craze balloning the costs of PC components… it’s looking shitty ngl. Don’t think I’ll be moving to PC any time soon.

I’ll be playing more Khazan later today. Hopefully!

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