Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Submissions have to be related to games
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No excessive self-promotion
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
Digital only, cheapest price that isn’t Epic.
I prefer not to devote myself to any one storefront, and while Valve is very altruistic I think healthy competition is one of the things that keeps PC gaming storefronts at their best.
Even on consoles, I prefer to go digital; saves bookcase space.
All games now are digital. Just because you have the disk doesn't mean you can play it. It's just a trinket now. This question doesn't really work anymore. Maybe 10 years ago it makes sense to ask, when physical disks actually contained the full game, but now the disk is mostly just a code to access the digital copy. If you want to have a physical display of your games, sure buy a physical copy. That takes up far too much space for me though, so I stick to digital. I'm exclusively on computer though.
PC? All digital.
Consoles? All physical
I do t play games on console all that often so I’d rather the option to pick up a cheap used copy. Plus I could play that game any number of years down the road when the servers are long shut down. But on PC I just want to click the button and the game installs and opens.
PC: Digital if on a trusted platform like Steam or the game is free. Otherwise I'm just not buying the game.
Console: Physical, as I can resell the games I purchased.
Do they even make physical PC games anymore? Last ones I bought were either discs that immediately downloaded an updated copy of the whole game, or the box just contained a download code.
For the switch I buy physical, but it may be the last console where that makes sense.
Disks are for games I want to be able to pull out of a box 10 years from now and go "oh man I remember this". I have the box from a DSi that I filled with GBA games, and a shelf for Switch and PS4 games that, when they're retired for something else, it'd be nice to come back to once in a while. My daughter has gotten into my GBA games lately, so that's been nice.
PC games, they're so much more available. Steam is steady, GOG is steady, I feel I can leave it to them to keep and I'll have any particularly treasured games 10 years from now, anyway.
On PC I'll buy digital because worst case if it comes unavailable I'll torrent a copy.
For consoles I am staunchly in the physical camp because it is more likely I'll be able to play those games in 10 years when the maker has shut down their store.
GOG>Steam>digital>physical
Digital, haven't had a working disk drive in like 10 years, two laptops ago was broken, previous and current laptop just don't come with one.
Does a disc even matter these days? There’s still a 100gb patch and likely internet connection required?
Here's my perspective as a PC player. Even back in the early 2000s, discs were mostly just a form of DRM. When you install the game from a disc, 99% of the time, the installer copies the contents of the disk to your hard drive, then the disk just acts as a key in order to "unlock" your installed copy. No-cd patches just make the game think the disc is inserted when it's not.
Today, the only difference is the delivery method, and it's where things can get a little hazy. Steam is where I own most of my games, and I do like Steam and Valve, and consider them pretty trustworthy in terms of large tech companies. But, even so, because the only way I'm really able to get games from Steam is through their servers, there are situations that are out of my control where a game that was once available to me, no longer is.
This is why I'm starting to prefer GOG. They have a zero DRM policy, and offer offline installers for most of their games. Meaning, if I purchase a game, I download that installer, load it onto a thumb drive, and I effectively have that game forever, no matter what happens to GOG, the developer, the publisher, etc. I have a couple of games that have been lost to time officially, that I can install as easy as the day they came out because I have that offline installer. It's as good as having any CD game.
So, bottom line is, CD, no CD, I really don't care. Give me the installer, and guarantee I don't be locked out of my game because of something I can't control, and I'm happy.