this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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We'll keep wondering cause the shift to digital clearly isn't stopping piracy.
Like almost everything, it isn't about stopping piracy entirely.
Physical copies get sold early by stores/cashiers that don't care. Or they get outright pocketed/copied at the factories and warehouses. Which lead to the constant "This nintendo game leaked a week or a month or whatever early". Which... less so after the lawsuits but it means emulators can be updated to support the games before they even hit shelves.
Digital only doesn't entirely stop that. But it tends to lead more toward "an unknown fake influencer posted all the cutscenes of this game online a week early".
These fuckers should just release digital first, and physical comes when it's done being printed and distributed. This anxiety over "oh no a finished game got leaked early" is manufactured drama. If the game is done, then it doesn't matter when it gets released, except for artificial marketing angst. Make a good game that players want, and it'll be purchased. Eventually. It doesn't have to all happen at exactly the predicted moment.
Yeah i agree. Ffxvi just came out on pc and square is whining about not hitting sales goals. Like visions of mana just came out and im still playing that. Give me a couple months to buy the game, dorks
Releasing physical months after the digital release basically guarantees you are only selling to enthusiasts and it no longer is economically viable. That is why companies like LRG exist.
Is saving the game from an early leak worth getting rid of physical games? I hope not.
I might be unique in this but I'll never "buy" a digital game. They're impossible to resell and I can't lend it to friends or my kids, they'd need my account or console. Plus I'll have the physical game forever, digital games are only good as long as the servers are up.
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this, so if companies stop offering physical games then I'm not going to buy them. (I'll just pirate). I've preordered Zelda from GameStop. I support the content I want more of, like Zelda games, and I'll continue to buy each one. If I don't, then they might not make more.
I have no interest in physical games. I'm not willing to carry around 300 cartridges or only have access to a small portion of my library. But Nintendo has to know that physical game collectors are a big portion of their audience (with probably more than any other platform in either raw number or proportion). They can't abandon physical.
As a PC gamer who has been basically digital only since the late 00s/early 10s? Probably?
But the thing to remember is that, like with DRM, the studios have this data. There are orgs dedicated to analyzing (and selling...) sales data that can detect the impact that Mass Effect PC being "unplayable" for pirates because of securom for the first week or so had on sales (anecdotal but... probably real positive). Because this kind of stuff costs money (well, less so for removing a disc drive...) and they aren't going to do that if they think it will hurt revenue.