The video game industry hates you, which is why the near future will require you to constantly pay extra to enjoy video games that you will never be allowed to own.
Sony, the maker of PlayStation, announced that it will be ceasing the production of physical game discs by 2028. All PlayStation games going forward will be digital-only. When you go to the store to buy a PlayStation game, you won’t be given a physical copy of the game, but a digital code. Or, of course, you can just buy the digital copy of the game online at the PlayStation Store.
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PLAYSTATION ANNOUNCES IT WILL END PHYSICAL DISC PRODUCTION FOR NEW GAMES STARTING IN 2028
This is not exclusive to the video game industry. The tech industry, including Apple, has embraced this idea that you will own nothing and merely rent everything until such time as the company that owns them revokes your access. The entertainment industry has gone the same way, shifting away from allowing you to buy VHS tapes or DVDs in favor of making you “buy” streaming access to a show or movie that you can lose access to at any time.
Another video game scandal shows just how much worse the video game industry will be than the others. EA Sports’s College Football 27 made its offline career and dynasty modes more difficult in order to push players into spending money to skip the grind through microtransactions. Microtransactions have infected gaming, particularly for sports titles, but the incursion into offline modes, meant purely for player enjoyment with no competitive online element whatsoever, is a new low.
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Back in the old days of the 2000s and 2010s, you could buy a video game for the listed price (fully finished, with no need for bug fixes or patches), never have to pay more to enjoy said game, and play it whenever you like for as long as the game still functioned. Now, you must pay the listed price for a game that is increasingly unplayable unless you buy extra attribute boosts to actually enjoy it. Then the game becomes unplayable if your internet ever goes out, if the company lets its servers shut down, or just revokes your access for any or no reason at all.
In those days, you actually bought a video game. It was yours. Now, it is becoming standard practice for video game companies to allow you only to rent games. You don’t own them, even though you are paying far more for them than ever before. Companies like Sony own them, taking your money in exchange for a rental that can be revoked at a moment’s notice, even if you poured money into predatory microtransactions. After all, the video game industry hates you, but not your money.
