Comment on PSBLACKOUT (boycott of PlayStation)
tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 day agoRight, but because the full content isn’t on the disc, that happens anyway even with physical media, and all you’re left with is a fancy coaster for your drinks. That’s why I don’t really get the fervor over discs.
Like, IIRC the God of War reboot was an example. The disc only held a key and about 950 MB of data. The rest (like 40 or 60 GB) had to be downloaded from their servers.
Even having a physical disc you don’t” own “ the game in the way you describe. As I said, that’s pretty much been the case for many/most games since the 7th gen consoles (XB360 and PS3).
I should disclaim that I abandoned consoles in Gen 7, partly because of this stuff (and bandwidth throttling, walled ecosystem, etc.), and that was nearly 15 years ago. I just don’t get why the discs being removed is cause for anger when the disc has been materially useless for two console gens now.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 day ago
Assuming you are speaking about 2018 God of War, you are mistaken.
The vast majority of games on disc play without any internet connection.
tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t own the console, just remembered reading about it and was mistaken about the specific game. Looked it up, Doom: The Dark Ages only has 85 MB on the disc, and God of War: Ragnarok was digital code only in the case with no disc. Jedi Survivor is another one with a required day one patch.
My understanding is around 30% of PS5 games are not playable without patch updates. This is something that started way back in PS3 with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 IIRC, as that game was literally unplayable due to crashing without a day one patch.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 day ago
Yes, there are some games that cannot be paid without internet. You’ll note that I never claimed otherwise.
Those game publishers should rightfully be called out and shamed.
What remains true is that the vast majority of games released on disc are playable without any internet at all. Discs are by no means “materially useless” in 2026.
tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Fair enough. I feel more than a week boycott will be needed if you actually want to enact change, but hope you folks can convince Sony.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, I’ve been a PC gamer since fully abandoning consoles (outside of some now retro handhelds) in 2012. Just wanted to understand why this was such a big deal, as my gaming has been pretty much fully digital now for close to 15 years. I don’t even have anything in my home that could play DVDs or Blu-rays. But I’ll admit, my platform of choice isn’t proprietary (heck, these days I game fully on Linux).
Best of luck, and hope you can enact the change you want here.