Physical ‘copies’ of the new Call of Duty are just empty discs | Hacker News Reader

Physical ‘copies’ of the new Call of Duty are just empty discs

techcrunch.com

27 pointscoloneltcb17 comments

There's due a lot of technical discussion on this (and it's very warranted) but what does this say about the future of software ownership? There used to be a time where you could buy a big-box copy of Elite and just own it. Maybe there was a layer of goofy DRM, but the software was on a physical medium and licensed to you in perpetuity.

Flash-forward to 2022. Now when you buy the latest physical copy of a triple-A video game, you're purchasing a disc with an authorization key baked onto it. None of the game files are yours, your agency over the software is entirely at Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo's discretion. They take down their software store? It's gone. Game gets slammed online for releasing unfinished? It's gone. Ratings board decide to change their mind later? You already know what happens.

The philosophy of software ownership today sucks, and I feel like it's going to hurt even more in the coming decades. Hoard data while you still can, winter is coming...

I guess we can just call the retail purchase a "one-time fee, one-time delivery subscription" and all is well again...

Not sure why you're lumping Nintendo with the other two in this instance, that is very much not true.

Nintendo ships (and encourages developers to ship) Cloud-only versions of their titles. On top of that, Nintendo recently spearheaded an initiative to add Denuvo DRM to Switch games. This makes it a lot harder for preservationists to ensure Switch games outlast the console's support lifespan.

Nintendo does a good job of preserving physical novelty, but they're equally as bad as Apple, Google, Sony and Microsoft when it comes to running a sustainable digital storefront.

Nintendo charges more for physical copies of the game and highly encourages their users to buy digital copies with digital coins on top of the cheaper price.

Nintendo has also shown they have no problem shutting down the servers for the Wii and now the DS. If you want your digital stuff you bought, you better buy it again if you can. They also have a trend of constantly making their older games easier when they rerelease them so you will probably get less enjoyment out of it.

Their Switch is the only gaming platform lately I find with multiple games I'm interested, but you're a complete sucker if you trust them not to screw you over by downloading the game instead of buying a physical copy.

All your digital games are belong to us (The publisher). Not you. Don't think about buying the discs because even if you do, the disc will be almost empty but will act as an anti-piracy key to play the downloaded digital version of the game on your console or PC.

You still have no ownership, have no privacy and life has never been better. Misbehave or ask too many good questions, then say goodbye to your digital games on Xbox Game Pass, PS+, etc subscription.

The best part is, DRM is also going just great! /s

When I built a tool for users of eBay about 20 years ago, the CD option came in a DVD case and cost a flat $5 extra including U.S. shipping. The installer would just download the latest version. The DVD case had a printed code, the same one that would be emailed otherwise. It was nice to show a photo of a physical product, and many people were happy with a download instead.

I guess the worst part is that you have to do a 150gig download. That could take most of a day especially if servers are overloaded.

>Now, to be fair, games that size don’t fit neatly on even high capacity Blu-ray discs, which for distribution purposes max out at around 50 gigs.

Yeah, as if compression libraries didn't exist...

I remember when games like Diablo II came on multiple CDs, including both an install and a play disc. Hell, I remember when I installed games off of multiple floppies. They could just deliver multiple discs.

Blade Runner, 4CD's.

I think it was even 4 DVD's.

I think it was the 1997 Blade Runner video game being referred to. That was definitely on CDs, not DVDs.

Phantasmagoria with 7.

>Meanwhile the audio and video assets also have to fit on there, and they can only be compressed so far before they degrade.

This was addressed later in the article

Are these cutscenes? If they wanted to make an effort to make the game work for offline play, they could just provide lower quality (say 720p) videos on the BluRay, and let the player know that if they have an Internet connection with no bandwith caps, the game would stream these videos in glorious 4K from their servers. And if the player has the disk space, the game could also offer to store (or pre-download) those videos on their disk.

Then again, game cutscenes nowadays use their rendering engine, don't they...

That is how I got my hatred of steam. I bought a physical disc and couldn't play it because steam was having issues that day, which should be anticipated on launch day.

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