DRM-free is one thing, and it’s something that GOG offers universally, with an asterisk for some multiplayer games, and I wish that asterisk was handled better. You want DRM-free. Your physical copy quickly becomes out of date when new patches come out, and patch cycles are frequent for modern games, even when they ship relatively bug-free out of the gate. Speaking for myself, I have no desire to have physical games anymore. I have a bunch of old PC game boxes that I just put up on my shelves yet again after moving for the fifth time in 14 years. Many of them have GOG versions, and I’m looking to replace those games with the GOG equivalent during the summer sale so I can finally eBay my physical versions away and be done with them.
A mandatory physical version is a cost for a market that hardly exists anymore, but we could all benefit from DRM-free games.
I think “mandatory physical versions” kinda misses the point of the issue, tbh. It’s bad digital rights laws that are the cause of the problems that you’ve mentioned, not a lack of physical media. DRM has been around a lot longer than digital downloads of games, and shutting down a game’s online services affects purchasers of physical disks just as much as digital downloaders.
Besides, mass-producing physical media is expensive, and I’d rather not give publishers another excuse to make games even more expensive than they already are.
Is there another meaning to “PSA” that isn’t “public service announcement”? It confuses me being in the title as this entire post is written as a suggestion / CTA, not a PSA.
M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a write-once optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc.[1] and available as DVD and Blu-ray discs.[2]
M-DISC’s design is intended to provide archival media longevity.[3][4] M-Disc claims that properly stored M-DISC DVD recordings will last up to 1000 years.[5] The M-DISC DVD looks like a standard disc, except it is almost transparent with later DVD and BD-R M-Disks having standard and inkjet printable labels.
Those will outlive you.
You can get an M-DISC-capable burner on Amazon for $35, and M-DISC media for about $3/pop, each of which will store 100GB.
GOG is probably more-suited than Steam for this, since it’s aimed around letting you download the installers, and they make a game being DRM-free a selling point and clearly indicate it in their store.
But you can just install a DRM-free Steam game — there are some games that don’t have any form of DRM on Steam, and don’t tie themselves to Steam running or anything, if you’re worried about Steam dying — and then archive and save the directory off somewhere. Might need a bit more effort if you’re on Linux and trying to save copies of Proton-using games, since there’s also a WINEPREFIX directory that needs to be saved. And then you can stuff that on whatever archival media you want.
Now, that’s not going to work if a game makes use of some kind of DRM, but you specified that you were looking for DRM-free titles, so should be okay on that front.
Is this a law that specifically only applies to AAAs, or are we just shutting down literally all of indie gaming? If the former, how do you legally draw the line between who is and isn't allowed to release digital-only titles? Even just basing it on the size of the company would effectively mean that large publishers may only release large projects and never smaller budget titles.
Right? I grew up in oblivion so when Skyrim came out with its dull brownish greys I was super disappointed, still can’t really get into the game that much. Then a miracle happened and the Witcher 3: blood and wine came out. Toussaint was such a breath of fresh air, it reminded me that why I loved fantasy games was to feel like I was in a fantasy
Fingers crossed this is just due to particular weather in the screenshots. The meshes and textures look great, but the post processing immediately threw me off. At least that’s something easy to fix via Reshade and mods.
Don’t go back. Geralt’s relationship is… complicated. Personally I’m a Yennifer fan, mostly because of Geralt’s history with Triss. Triss knew that Geralt’s memory was gone a while back and took advantage of that, even though she knew that Geralt really was with Yennifer. So… I was always salty.
That being said, this is a game I recommend playing again someday. So just choose Triss next time. Enjoy Yenn, IMO they compliment each other well vs Triss who is just obsessed. Triss’ relationship isn’t as healthy
For me Yennefer seemingly popped into existence at the end of the last game but even then it wasn’t clear what she was to Geralt. I guess that’s a way to interpret the “took advantage of” line but to me it sounded more like it was about how seemingly half the women in this world is trying to seduce Geralt and Triss succeeded… She didn’t strike as particularly obsessive neither. If that’s why Geralt is upset at her I don’t see why he’s not also upset at his other friends who turned a blind eye and didn’t mention Yennefer.
Anyways I’m more upset about the game seemingly overriding my choice with Triss than ultimately ending up with Yen. I’m not sure how to to roleplay a Geralt who up until this point didn’t care for Yen but suddenly divined that he fucked it up with Triss so she’s the only option left…
And I don’t know if I’ll ever fully replay this game, it’s simply too long
It’s too short for most games I play, because they backload their interest and gameplay excessively. The first two hours are generally the worst example of the actual game. Frustrates me that devs don’t have the sense to make a demo that showcases the game instead of either nothing or just the beginning, but if a dev does the beginning and lets you carry your save into the full game, you can use the demo as intro and then buy with two more hours to put it through its paces (or already know you won’t need to refund). Still not a smart way to sell your game when the early game is worse and a more focused demo would more effectively and efficiently engage potential players who don’t want to sink time into every demo, but it’s a compromise solution for people who will spend time with the demo and not wander away without buying into the game if they had a good time.
Also, anything with a character creator or other such lengthy setup to get playing just doesn’t work with only two hours of running time as the window.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne