Comment on GOG caught using AI tools, head of product tweeting AI Instagram scams
afaix@lemmy.world 1 day agoI agree with a lot of this except for destroying physical media. Even consoles went digital, music and movies are digital, I don’t think steam is responsible here
cybernihongo@reddthat.com 1 day ago
They are responsible. They planted the seeds with HL2 as early as 2004. Then they essentially made it not only feasible but also popular to make the physical games of even third parties be just glorified one use digital codes, and all of this waaaaay before 2013’s Xbox One attempted to do similar things and got booed very hard.
afaix@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
PC games were always weird with physical media though, shareware and piracy were prevalent since the 80s. And the physical games were even worse than digital in some regards, with Starforce and Securom rootkit-like drm that crashes modern PCs or Games for Windows Live locking save files (and not even cloud saves, normal local save files) behind online service that is now dead. I resisted making a steam account for as long as I could, but today no one even owns a disc drive, steam just won on convenience
cybernihongo@reddthat.com 17 hours ago
Few people own disc drives because of the constant attacks on physical media and ability to own things, especially games. It’s not that they “won on convenience,” but rather they “won” by making it so physical games slowly become just a more expensive one time redeem key for digital copies… which you can spend money on right now with Humble and the likes without moving an inch or waiting for the order to arrive. If it wasn’t for them, we would own more of our games.