this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Steam on pc shows that gamers can be okay with not having physical media - as long as they trust the vendor that the thing they pay for actually means a persistent access to the game.
Unfortunately this move also gives much more power to the vendor. Once he decides to withdraw access to the player, the ownership of the paid-for thing becomes useless (until a lawsuit were to be filed and won).
Physical media without mandatory internet servers (like in pre-internet consoles) means true ownership - after buying a game, the vendor has no longer any control.
The key point to me is not directly the difference between physical disk or cloud download, but between truly offline versus online-required games (or goods in general).
Leave PCs out of this console nonsense. On PC you can write whatever you want to whatever media you want by yourself, without kissing some Nintendo-Sony ass.
For now, yes. Microsoft is already well on it's way to a closed ecosystem where you'll only be able to run signed software on "your" PC.
Haven't used anything Microsoft in a decade but I do remember that there were some certificates for executables... Are they mandatory nowadays?