Therumancer said:
Actually it's quite true, the bottom line is in your last comment about "requiring activation, which is all that are released these days". Given that little development services like STEAM are the best option, but a gilded cage is still a cage. In the end you wind up having or controlling nothing. If a service like STEAM goes down, it takes all of your property with it, and as untouchable a juggernaut as some of these services seem right now, nothing lasts forever. I can take a disc of a 20 year old game, pop it into an old computer, and play it any time I want to. STEAM goes the way of the dodo, even if they removed the requirement to run through them I won't be able to access my media anymore.
And yet Steam has lasted longer than a lot of physical media has, not to mention the fact that there's a ton of smaller titles out there that can only be procured through digital distribution. Yes, if Steam somehow suddenly tanks (highly unlikely. In fact, the idea is wholly retarded at this point.) then I won't have access to my games. If my house burns down I'll lose access to my book collection as well but that doesn't make owning a house a bad idea. Especially if it's a wonderful house that somehow spawns a ton of awesome books for cheap. Yeah, that analogy got away from me, but the point remains. Your precious physical media is no more secure and safe than my digital media. I control mine just as much as you control yours.
In general, acceptance of digital downloads is largely due to a younger generation that has known nothing else, and honestly does not know any better.
Right. We'll talk about 'younger generations' when you've beaten my scores on all my old C64 games.
Likewise, we've already seen that those running services can cut people off from their content on a whim. We've had people banned outright from their digital libraries due to accusations of cheating in a single game. If someone like Gabe decided to ban you from STEAM entirely, he could potentially cost you thousands of dollars. I'm not saying he'd personally do that, but the fact remains that he COULD do it, and we've already seen situations where things like this happening though services run by companies like Microsoft and EA, which demonstrates how little control you have over your own digital property, and that control is a big part of why the industry has decided to push this technology so heavily.
Oooookay, now I see where you're coming from. The loony bin. Would you like some tinfoil with that conspiracy theory? First off, it's cute how people who have been "banned outright from their digital libraries due to accusations of cheating in a single game" are all innocent and shit. Of course those nitwits are going to claim outrageous shit like that in some ill-advised attempt to gain the favor of public opinion, trying desperately to unfuck what they themselves fucked up. Valve and others are in the business of making money. Killing off a revenue source without cause is not something that's anywhere near their interests. They're greedy, they're callous, they're capitalistic... and they're far from stupid. This means that they're going to be damn careful about keeping as many customers as they can.
In short, if you're 'losing control' over your games because of some service-wide ban, you've screwed the pooch so hard that you frankly don't even belong near a computer. Your little conspiracy theories notwithstanding. Cute, but not particularly near the truth.
A lot of tripe about Gog and abandonware.
What? What the hell does 'generosity' have to do with anything? And you do know that Abandonware is not legal, yeah? All those examples you've mentioned is simply straight up piracy. None of which have anything to do with digital distribution anyway.
