What are your thoughts on Digital Gaming?

Lately, platforms like Steam have become incredibly popular, almost completely eliminating disks from PC gaming. Additionally, digital downloads have become increasingly common on consoles as well, particularly the Sony and Microsoft consoles. It's becoming more and more obvious that digital gaming is the way of the future, but the question is, do you like that future? Do you miss the days of buying physical copies of your games, or do you think digital downloads are the way to go?

I'm have mixed feelings. In once sense, its nice being able to just download the game, and then play it. On the other hand, disk installation goes much faster, and it takes up less space. So, yeah... Rather mixed feelings.

Like JJ said, disc installations are faster, and take up less space, but having a digital copy can be more convenient too. They both have pros and cons imo.

Personally for me digital gaming is one I stay away from if I can, simply because of the fact of 0.9mbps download speeds. Steam is the only exception or if I get a PS Plus title I want to play.

However with the rise of actual broadband (30mbps is what the EU now recognise as the "super fast broadband" speed and it's the 2020 target too for everyone within the EU to have at least 30mbps down) we will definitely see digital gaming becoming the ideal form of purchasing games.

Playstation Now just launched in the US, for those who don't know it's a digital streaming service that allows you to play selected titles on devices like a PS Vita, PS4 etc. Playstation Now is in theory a great idea, access to a growing collection of games that you can play on a large amount of devices without worrying about specs or compatibility.

The PS4 no longer uses the disc really for anything. The disc is simply an activation key, all the files are put onto the PS4 HDD. It's a similar story for modern PC titles.

The only downside really to digital gaming is consumer protection. Ireland for example has little to no laws actually related to the sales of goods and supply of services online (The original Sales of Goods and Supply of Services Act was actually passed in 1980 and has received very few revisions). European law has also only recently meant you can actually fight for refunds on things like albums on iTunes. Valve, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo etc. still don't allow for any form of refunds for any digital purchase (of course Valve have done it before for crappy titles that they have allowed onto the platform). With this lack of protection is it really worthwhile putting all your eggs in one basket?

A question that sometimes comes up as well is what happens if the likes of steam close? Will you get to still play your games? Do you still "own" them? Valve have said before that it is possible to remove the steam DRM from pretty much all their titles, but what if somehow that didn't happen? You would legally be never able to play your steam games again.

Overall digital gaming is an excellent thing but we must make sure there is a backup plan in case something goes wrong and most important of all, the consumer needs to be properly protected.

Those are some excellent points there Roddy. Though, I have to remark on you complaining about .9 Megabytes per second. Given that I roll with about 300-400 KILObytes per second. XD

But companies going under is definitely a big concern, when it comes to your games. Since, well, to keep installing them, you'd basically need to transfer them to disk form, after the company goes bust. And that would definitely be a pain, and possibly illegal.

The Not-so-Evil Overlord wrote:Those are some excellent points there Roddy. Though, I have to remark on you complaining about .9 Megabytes per second. Given that I roll with about 300-400 KILObytes per second. XD

.9megabits is what I get, 1 megabit is about 1/7 of a megabyte. That's about 100kbps

Ohhhhhhh... Okay, yeah, that's terrible... Complaining suddenly makes far, far more sense.

I have to say that I can see the appeal, but personally I would rather have a hard copy of the game in case a company does fail, because even with that company's failure, I shouldn't lose the game I paid good money for - that being said, I don't often game to that degree (my Toshiba laptop couldn't handle it and I have yet to get my Dell fixed, which could).

Another concern could be auto-updating or being auto-charged for DLCs you didn't want/plan on getting. Kind of like what happened with the iPhone and the...uh...*checks on Google* U2 album.

The Guy wrote:Another concern could be auto-updating or being auto-charged for DLCs you didn't want/plan on getting. Kind of like what happened with the iPhone and the...uh...*checks on Google* U2 album.

This is generally the fault of the user though, you can and should opt out of any automatic downloads. The fact that people complain too about being offered a free gift is kind of silly because how often do big companies or record labels allow such a thing.

So, I just started downloading Dragon Age: Origins, and I think my opinion is basically this... For small, older games digital downloads are nice. Where the game isn't much more than a gigabyte. For enormous other games... It's really nice to have them on disk format. Now, I'm not very far along on the download, but DA is big enough, that, well, the reason why I'm doing it today, is the fact that I can leave my computer at home all day, so it can download. And I won't be using the internet much for anything heavy, so it won't mess me up.