fun fact, DVD read speed is officially rate at 1.3MB/S, so your internet is not even all that slower than installing from Disks.
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I hate digital stores. Can we go back to PC games on discs?
- Thread starter tekomandor
- Start date
Yeah it's funny. It's gotten so bad that many pc cases don't even have disc drive slots anymore. When I bought a new case this year my choices were surprisingly limited.
Idk why people bring up GTA V. Ofc installing new games off fricking DVDs when consoles are already enjoying BDs is ass backwards as hell lol
Idk why people bring up GTA V. Ofc installing new games off fricking DVDs when consoles are already enjoying BDs is ass backwards as hell lol
That sucks OP. Hopefully game sizes will be reduced next gen when they don't need to duplicate game data to make it load faster on consoles thanks to SSDs.
When it comes to "simple" plug and play games, I guess the Switch is the closest it gets to buying a physical cartridge, plugging it in and loading the game instantly.
When it comes to "simple" plug and play games, I guess the Switch is the closest it gets to buying a physical cartridge, plugging it in and loading the game instantly.
They aren't your video games, since you dont actually own them.
Oh nonono. I definitely don't miss the physical stuff.
I'm not sure I understand what the problem that you have with Steam is, tekomandor , can you elaborate?
I'm not sure I understand what the problem that you have with Steam is, tekomandor , can you elaborate?
The mere idea genuinely annoys me.
But even talking just about "installed" titles, the idea of having to track down a physical copy somewhere any time I'd want to reinstall any of the 1000+ titles in my library irritates me to no end.
I bought this PC six years ago, I deliberately chose to not put an optic drive in it, thinking that I could work around the issue if ever needed.
Guess what? I didn't miss that absence once.
Not even a quick, sporadic "Oh well, i need to work around this". I literally forgot physical discs were a thing and I was happier for it.
PPffff........analog casette tapes or punch cards or bust!!!
I'm pretty sure I have more ownership over stuff I buy on GOG than a good chunk of DVDs that can't even be activated because the site that checked the keys authenticity doesn't exist anymore.
Good lord how quickly we forget (or maybe OP is young) the insane amounts of hoops we had to jump through with physical releases sometimes. It was very rarely "put the disc in and install", especially if the game was a few years old. Hell, a ton of the old games simply won't work because of authentication to servers or incompatability with newer systems. Thank god for digital stores!
I'm honestly not sure if I have a working optical disk reader in my home, except maybe a stored old laptop in the attic. It became an issue when I wanted to rip the CD OST from Life is Strange lol.
That definitely happened at least once, so I shrugged and downloaded it.
I have a few PC big boxes around, but not many. But I do still have many older games in CD ROM and DVD formats in jewel cases or those DVD style boxes. The big PC boxes were awesome to me. I remember when they used to be more of a necessity, when a PC game would require like 6 floppy discs, and the discs would take up most of the room. I remember playing Willy Beamish on the Tandy 1000 PC, and it had like 6 or 8 floppy discs. The box was fairly weighty because of it.
But, with CD's the boxes became lighter and more empty. Unless the game came on multiple CD's. But sometimes publishers would include bonuses in the box, like giant manuals, compendium style books, art books, or a walk through, or a mini figurine. Max Payne came with a really nice cloth mouse pad. It was great when publishers would include surprise things to fill up the empty boxes. But there were times, when you would just get a big box game made out of flimsy cardboard with a single jewel case and a registry card, or an advertisement.
the problem is that with disc drives, I don;t think many prebuilt systems include them unless they are specified in a custom build package on their websites. Blu-Ray drives are still a nice thing to have. But PC publishers will never release anything on Blu-Ray. Couldn't a 64GB-128GB USB 2.0 thumbdrive just work well enough now?
Imagine all those unfortunate people unable to play Pro Skater on their PCs.
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Big games tend to take around 2-4 hours to download on my connection but that's still going to be more convenient than having to stay at the computer to swap discs in and out as a game installs. USB sticks would be a more convenient alternative to discs these days for people wanting/needing physical medium, though much more costly to produce than discs even in mass I assume.
No. Even console users are moving away from physical games.
I don't even have an optical drive anymore.
I don't even have an optical drive anymore.
OP
OP
Steam can occasionally forget that a game has been installed or that space has been allocated for a download if something unexpected happens during said download. This is basically fine when it takes 30 minutes to download a game, but not when it takes multiple days. Steam support is useless and written for people who can casually download a AAA game in the time it takes for them to go eat lunch.
Coming from a time where that was my daily routine, I "enjoyed" it so much that when I was given the chance I re-bought at a cheap price digital copies of my old physical games.
And no, I don't miss cross-checking versions and hunting down patches one single bit.
I want my games on cartridge like in the good old VIC20 days: pop cart in, turn on PC, BAM, in-game.
Steam/origin/whatever games on disc(s) are utterly useless. Not everyone on PC owns bluray drives so having 5+ DVDs releases seems ultra archaic. They aren't gonna make 2 skus with 1 bluray or multiple dvds (yes i know some did it during the cd/dvd transition era or straight up included both formats, but it was a different time).
The only physical releases i'd (and did) purchase are DRM free games. Rest is just a code and an installer, waste of time and ecologically irresponsible.
The only physical releases i'd (and did) purchase are DRM free games. Rest is just a code and an installer, waste of time and ecologically irresponsible.
One megabit (Mb) is 1/8th of 1 megabyte (MB) ;)
Were you not around during the Megabits wars for megadrive/snes and neogeo ? xxMegs goodness.
Bluray read speeds for an x6 is 216Mb/s or 27MB/s... so yeah that internet speed is quite far from disks whatever angle you take.
I also download at 1Megabit averaged on a day (equivalent to a dual channel ISDN). It's much faster to use a phone to download in fact, but connection breaks/slows down and if the quality degrade to less than 4G+ the bitrate degrades in a few minutes because of datacap throttling.
I long for BDXL300 discs to happen (300Giga Bytes disks) but given that day one patches are almost mandatory on PC, i don't see it happening either.
On consoles however, i hope discs will still be a thing.
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I've got Witcher 3 and GTA V on disc, think these might be my last.
RDR2 would be a bit much though unless it was bluray discs and that isn't going to happen.
The good fight might be getting good internet in your part of America, stopping these monopolies.
RDR2 would be a bit much though unless it was bluray discs and that isn't going to happen.
The good fight might be getting good internet in your part of America, stopping these monopolies.
I know I had a similar problem before (don't know what fixed it to be honest), but if a game that I knew was downloaded showed up as not installed, try restarting Steam, if you haven't tried that already.
Floppy disk will love on as "Save" icon.
Or is it not a thing anymore ? Lol.
I used to own some big multi-disc pack of Half-Life games when I was a teenager. Half-Life, the expansions, Team Fortress etc. About six discs in a big DVD case.
My dog ate it. Literally. Ripped it all to tiny bits.
Owned all of those games on Steam for, what, 10 years or so at this point and haven't lost them yet.
Physical can get in the bin.
My dog ate it. Literally. Ripped it all to tiny bits.
Owned all of those games on Steam for, what, 10 years or so at this point and haven't lost them yet.
Physical can get in the bin.
The only problems I've had with Steam over the past several years in terms of flow from installing to playing games daily - is related to product in testing that is not released.
Steam has been pretty fucking flawless for installing, playing, updating etc, and I'm in the beta client.
Plenty of things for Steam to improve upon, but we hold it to a much higher standard in consideration of how immensely far ahead they are, and how it is being used as a primary PC games platform.
GOG has been good except for poor updating vs other platforms, poor curation policies from time to time and their beta client Galaxy is too resource heavy at the moment. But game installation and playing is no problem.
Can't say much good about EGS, Bethnet and Xbox Store/Gamepass, which have consistently been problematic
Steam has been pretty fucking flawless for installing, playing, updating etc, and I'm in the beta client.
Plenty of things for Steam to improve upon, but we hold it to a much higher standard in consideration of how immensely far ahead they are, and how it is being used as a primary PC games platform.
GOG has been good except for poor updating vs other platforms, poor curation policies from time to time and their beta client Galaxy is too resource heavy at the moment. But game installation and playing is no problem.
Can't say much good about EGS, Bethnet and Xbox Store/Gamepass, which have consistently been problematic
i think i would be seriously tempted to give up pc gaming if it went back to discs.
i really don't like physical media. the sooner consoles ditch it the better. they should do what PC done years ago and go all digital.
i really don't like physical media. the sooner consoles ditch it the better. they should do what PC done years ago and go all digital.
I'll say this much, it's not Bonus DLC or pre-order bonuses that make me buy games full-price but if PC games would come on microSD cards for physical storage along with a beautiful box, artwork and a full-colored extensive manual like they used to I would be easily willing to pay 70€+ for a game day one.
Make it so the SD-cards are double the size of the game and then via a special program you can unlock writes on the SD temporarily and integrate any future patches on it too.
Make it so the SD-cards are double the size of the game and then via a special program you can unlock writes on the SD temporarily and integrate any future patches on it too.
Oh, well, if it was actually a routine then I get that. I'm just saying that I enjoy installing games from disc as opposed to using Steam.
Oh so you don't think we should have a choice or the option to own our games huh? I've said it before - I'd give up modern games entirely if digital were the ONLY option.
as long as you're talking about floppy disk era. Having to put cds or dvds in the tray for DRM check was shit.
Honest question, with today's sizes and prices would (micro)SD cards be a alternative to optical discs?
Given that EMPTY SD cards of the size necessary cost on their own as much as some games, I strongly doubt that would be an option most customers would like.
I like buying digital nowadays. Don't need to worry about losing or scratching discs, it takes a lot less space obviously, and honestly, I don't miss those days where I had to use 4-5 discs to install one game like WoW, Half-Life 2 or Unreal Tournament 2004. I still have those discs somewhere. I know it's not like that anymore, but still.
Umm I can get 128gb microSDs for 10-15€ nowadays and that's the retail price, I'm sure companies could purchase them for much less, especially in bulk.