this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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Keeping Physical Gaming Alive (Why physical game releases still matter in an increasingly digital world) (gardinerbryant.com)
submitted 1 week ago by PerfectDark@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
3 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So my latest article is something that's been on my mind for a while: the people still making physical games feel genuinely special, the lack of physical games going forward (looking at you, Sony), and what everyone lost with the old-old 'big-box' PC gaming era.

I just try to take a look look back at the era of PC gaming, manuals, maps and all the little extras that made opening a new game part of the experience. How "physical" has changed in recent years, and a handful of developers, publishers and community creators who are still putting real care into physical releases today (including RowanFN, whose work creating custom manuals and inserts I had the chance to cover last year)

If you're interested in game preservation, collecting, or simply miss the days when a physical game was more than just a case and a download code (shitty shitty GTA VI discovery), I hope you'll enjoy the read. It might be a bit of a...watch-me-go-off-on-tangents article, but it is still important in a way. I think.

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[โ€“] RmDebArc_5@piefed.zip 1 points 1 week ago

Honestly, I don't really like physical games as they are currently. Physical PC games died a while ago so the only ones are console games. And console games are tied to a specific console that you don't control. You can't just decide what software to have on it, you need to keep the device around or be locked into a ecosystem and hope that the next generation will be backwards compatible and if the game discs break (which they will do) the game is gone. If you buy games DRM like on GOG or sometimes on Steam the game is in your control. You can play it on any PC, devices like the Steam deck or via something like gamenative. You don't have to worry about incompatibility to much as in the worst case you can just spin up a old Windows version in a VM, not even counting that Wine basically supports games no matter how old. If you want to make sure you don't lose the game: just make a copy. Want to give it to a friend? Copy it to a USB stick and give it to them. Heck, you could even setup something like Kazeta and get the full physical game experience. Console games haven't been your since you weren't in control of devices that can play them. And while the extras are neat, they are mostly nothing more than neat and don't justify the recourse use for a one time 'neat'.