• Phelpssan@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The only question I have is what’s gonna happen as game discs are just becoming an access token to download the game and its updates.

    That’s a big concern. There’s communities trying to document which games are complete on the media and can be played from start to end without updates (so no major game-breaking bugs or huge performance issues) like this one:

    https://www.doesitplay.org/

    I’m also part of a FB group that collects cartridge information for Switch games, to document if there’s revisions with all updates included.

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CEABCBrPv1tWf89hSZqUunK0JW-sQo8XpxuvZhdtHQs/edit#gid=0

    • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      It’s good that people are worrying about this. Although, I haven’t heard of any disc game not being able to be played. I guess it would only happen if Sony/Microsoft go bankrupt or decide to close PlayStation/Xbox game updates servers.

      It ain’t likely to happen but it’s important to be able to preserve games for the future as they are part of history just like paintings.

      • Phelpssan@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I haven’t heard of any disc game not being able to be played.

        There’s a number of games that don’t come with the whole thing on disk/cart, usually including only the early stages and the rest needs to be downloaded.

        Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor are two fairly recent examples.

        • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          As long as you have a way to download the data that ain’t a problem for me, but if one day Sony or EA closes without giving the update data to be available for everyone that would be a problem.

          Still I don’t see the advantage for them to only put the early stages on the disc. Are they saving money this way?

          • Phelpssan@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Either saving on media costs (25GB disc instead of 100GB disc, maybe 1 disc instead of 2 if the game is too big), or even having more time to work on the game.

            Developer makes sure the early stages are properly tested, send the disc for manufacturing including only those, use the manufacturing time to tweak/bugfix/optimize more stuff the rest of the game.

      • kalleboo@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Tech Tangents did a video on disc games where either the DRM server is down or incompatible with the disk (e.g. the disc games requires an unsupported version of Steam). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZYy9KzFT2w

        It’s about PC games rather than console though, after Microsoft got huge backlash when they proposed online DRM for their discs and Sony said “we work offline!” and the PS4 crushed the XBone, that killed that idea for a couple more years