Comment on PSA: I want a law for PC games to be offered in physical versions again
tal@lemmy.today 1 week ago
I’d love to have and collect DRM free titles that last even after a platform is gone,
M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a write-once optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc.[1] and available as DVD and Blu-ray discs.[2]
M-DISC’s design is intended to provide archival media longevity.[3][4] M-Disc claims that properly stored M-DISC DVD recordings will last up to 1000 years.[5] The M-DISC DVD looks like a standard disc, except it is almost transparent with later DVD and BD-R M-Disks having standard and inkjet printable labels.
Those will outlive you.
You can get an M-DISC-capable burner on Amazon for $35, and M-DISC media for about $3/pop, each of which will store 100GB.
GOG is probably more-suited than Steam for this, since it’s aimed around letting you download the installers.
But you can just install a DRM-free Steam game — there are some games that don’t have any form of DRM on Steam, and don’t tie themselves to Steam running or anything, if you’re worried about Steam dying — and then archive and save the directory off somewhere. Might need a bit more effort if you’re on Linux and trying to save copies of Proton-using games, since there’s also a WINEPREFIX directory that needs to be saved. And then you can stuff that on whatever archival media you want.
I’ve copied Caves of Qud to my laptop, which doesn’t have Steam installed, for example. Just requires copying the directory.