This means you can’t pass the game around to your friends or sell it afterwards, which completely ruins the purpose of physical media imo. I mostly play PC these days so this doesn’t affect me, but it’s a disappointing direction for console games. At least they could’ve used an empty disc that has proof of ownership.

EDIT: Bethesda has confirmed that only the PC version won’t include a disc. Physical versions of Xbox will include a disc. Whew.

  • impulse@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    I honestly don’t get the obsession with physical media. That’s a thing of the past, my PC doesn’t even have a drive anymore.

    The only benefit I see is a reduced download size, but with day one patches sometimes being 40+ GB that’s also not always the case.

    It’s not like you own the game, just because you have a physical copy of it. Once the licensing servers are shut down that disk becomes a paper weight, and that is if it doesn’t require a constant connection to begin with.

    On the other side you could argue that it’s better for the environment if we finally get rid of all disks. Is it a huge impact compared to everything else? Probably not, but it is a step in the right direction.

    • the_vale@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I honestly don’t get the obsession

      Selling the game after you’re done is the biggest one I heard. If you’re playing a single player game that you don’t expect to want to do another run of, you can recoup some of the money. Similarly, some people prefer to buy somebody’s copy for 80% of the price they would pay on the digital version.

      • lightstream@lemmy.mlEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        “Selling the game after you’re done”

        I don’t think that’s been possible for years, has it? Games had activation codes since long before downloading games became the norm, and I thought that meant you couldn’t resell them?

        • NoTime@lemmy.oneEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Sure it is, just Google “pre-owned games” and you’ll probably have hits from whatever the main game supplier is in your country (GameStop, GAME etc.).

            • NoTime@lemmy.oneEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Ah, hadn’t realised you were on about PC gaming.

              Physical editions for PC gaming for me died a long time ago as I pretty much exclusively use Steam.

              Consoles however I always try and get physical where possible.

      • impulse@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        But just you then just buy a worthless piece of plastic nowadays, because the license key was already added to Steam, GoG or whatever?