“It would be great if people had to buy more of the thing,” says guy who makes money selling the thing.
Not to mention that as long as it’s a digital download, you don’t own the game - you lease it at a flat rate.
not true all the time. Plenty of games once you have the files are easily able to run. KSP is one such example. I can just copy the KSP folder to any computer and play the game.
Its the devs choice to require things like Steam to validate the game etc.
That’s fair. It often is the case though, and I think many people don’t consider that as being a problem because it just doesn’t occur to them.
I think Valve is an example of a company that does it well, since you can download the game if Steam were ever to go under, etc. and you can add non-steam games to steam. It’s almost unavoidable that they do it well, though, since steam is running on PCs (mostly).
But Nintendo does it badly. If Nintendo decides to stop supporting Switch downloads, my digital content will vanish (unless I root my switch, etc. but then I may as well just pirate everything). But, at least nintendo has a card reader for their games - if they got rid of it, I’d never truly own any Switch game and would also be forced to pay massively inflated priced for re-released old games, crappy switch ports, or Nintendo titles which almost never decrease in price or go on sale.
Would agree. Especially re:Nintendo.
One of my biggest annoyance is when you have multiple switches on a family account. If you use cartridges local co-op (or whatever it is called) requires two copies of the game (a cartridge in each). If you have the downloaded versions/digital download, then any device on the Nintendo account (ie: 2 switches for kids on a family account) can play against each other locally.
I don’t think you can cache/save a cartridge to a device to be able to do their local play feature (ie via ad-hoc connections in a car)
This article is about consoles, not PCs. Good luck copying your console game to another folder on the HD.
Even disk-based games on newer consoles often don’t include the full game; in many cases they’re just an installer, really, which then requires downloading the bulk of the files from the net.
I have backups of my games on a PS4, which is air gapped (because the USB interface took a shot of lighning and no longer works).
I have been able to restore them and play games/saves on this console.
Here: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps4-back-up-and-restore-with-external-storage/
FTA:
PS4 console data you can back up Backing up your data regularly is a great way to ensure that important data is saved. You can back up the following types of data saved to a USB drive.
- Games and apps
- Saved data
- Screenshots and video clips
- Settings
All user data saved on your PS4 console (excluding trophies) is included in the backup data. When you restore your backup data, your PS4 console is reset, and all data saved on your console is erased. If you want to return data without restoring your console, use USB extended storage or cloud storage.
I tried copying game data when we were replacing our PS4 hard drive, but it just caused a lot of problems (with games having to “verify” the installation when launched, which was a very lengthy process, probably longer than just re-downloading it would have been; I don’t know what it was actually doing). We were able to preserve save data, though.
Even disk-based games on newer consoles often don’t include the full game
That’s pretty rare despite being constantly mentioned in this thread. I can think of a few that are strictly multiplayer games or the Master Chief Collection which is just a huge net installer disc.
Otherwise games still become gold and are playable start to finish off disc. Switch games on the other hand have quite a few that require a download.
