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If your entire digital library went away, what would you do?

diffusionx

Gold Member
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Probably finally achieve something in life.

I’d be pissed, honestly, that’s why there’s certain games that I really love which I first purchased digitally, I get a hold of a physical copy.
 

kunonabi

Member
I'd be pissed at first but honestly I spend most of my time wanting to play the old games I've beaten a million times on my pre digital consoles anyway.
 

reinking

Gold Member
I have a closet full of retro games and consoles that do not require internet to play. I will be fine.
 
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Švejk

Banned
Be pissed for a day or two, then be content with starting fresh. The backlog shackles will be broken.
 
Play my physical games. I have 100s of titles on ps2/wii/gc/ps3/ps4/ps5/switch/steam already downloaded/gog/steam deck and a few 360 titles on disc , that i just got for the series x
I would assume that if the library went away the newer games on disc like gt7 won't work either.

I also have a modded fire emblem new 3ds xl with 150+ games on it.
A modded psp.
A vita.
A switch with 35 physical carts.
A ps classic modded with a carousel of ps1 games, psp, n64, nes and snes titles.
A tg16 mini.

And a whole room with two huge racks of board games.
Fooseball, air hockey, pool, cornhole, darts
Books 2 large racks of movies
4 book shelves full of books.
6 electric guitars
1 acoustic guitar
1 ukelele, 2 singing bowls, a keyboard, 1 bass guitar, bongos.
Oh and then there is outside... I live on a river, across form a city, and next to a mountian , but in the suburbs. so there is , kyaking, boating, biking, hiking all with-in reach.

I will live but will be pissed .... Give me back my digital games....lol
Solar flare or some nuke of the servers could do it, I would assume. If that is the case, we have bigger problems.
 
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BlackTron

Member
Has that ever happened? You are starting an argument without basis.

All the early digital stores that went out of business had a way to download and play all your games. Sony got rid of their video service but you can still watch anything you bought off of it.

So the more realistic question is " what will you do if your digital purchases never go away?" 🤣

The very first digital game I ever bought on Xbox completely vanished from the service. As in no record it ever existing on their servers or that I ever bought it. I'm willing to pay for what I'm really getting which is a digital license to a game not a "real copy" I have control over. To me that's only worth the $10-15 I end up paying during a sale but not the full 60/70. Note, this is probably about how much you would have spent to play the game if you purchased it new and then sold it.

I thought digital is great when I sniped Batman trilogy for eight dollars but Nintendo still gets my $60 for one completed game on a cart
 

Minsc

Gold Member
Play my physical games. I have 100s of titles on ps2/wii/gc/ps3/ps4/ps5/switch/steam already downloaded/gog/steam deck and a few 360 titles on disc , that i just got for the series x
I would assume that if the library went away the newer games on disc like gt7 won't work either.

I also have a modded fire emblem new 3ds xl with 150+ games on it.
A modded psp.
A vita.
A switch with 35 physical carts.
A ps classic modded with a carousel of ps1 games, psp, n64, nes and snes titles.
A tg16 mini.

And a whole room with two huge racks of board games.
Fooseball, air hockey, pool, cornhole, darts
Books 2 large racks of movies
4 book shelves full of books.
6 electric guitars
1 acoustic guitar
1 ukelele, 2 singing bowls, a keyboard, 1 bass guitar, bongos.
Oh and then there is outside... I live on a river, across form a city, and next to a mountian , but in the suburbs. so there is , kyaking, boating, biking, hiking all with-in reach.

I will live but will be pissed .... Give me back my digital games....lol
Solar flare or some nuke of the servers could do it, I would assume. If that is the case, we have bigger problems.

That's only a partial answer I guess, the question could easily be flipped around and say you're on a vacation and your house burns down destroying all your physical possessions (or floods, etc).

Basically, what would you do if everything you own (in every sense of the word) is taken from you? Your digital items, your physical possessions, your identity, your bank accounts, your passwords.

There's some who believe in the nomad life for that very reason. Have no possessions and you have nothing to tie / weigh you down. Everything you own is a weight holding you back.

I've personally experienced destructive flooding to where $10,000s of possessions were destroyed, so in my experience, losing physical items is more likely than losing digital ones, or at least carries a bigger penalty to it. Digital ones are easy enough to replace for the most part. Outside unique/super rare digital things (or things like personal photos/videos).
 
That's only a partial answer I guess, the question could easily be flipped around and say you're on a vacation and your house burns down destroying all your physical possessions (or floods, etc).

Basically, what would you do if everything you own (in every sense of the word) is taken from you? Your digital items, your physical possessions, your identity, your bank accounts, your passwords.

There's some who believe in the nomad life for that very reason. Have no possessions and you have nothing to tie / weigh you down. Everything you own is a weight holding you back.

I've personally experienced destructive flooding to where $10,000s of possessions were destroyed, so in my experience, losing physical items is more likely than losing digital ones, or at least carries a bigger penalty to it. Digital ones are easy enough to replace for the most part. Outside unique/super rare digital things (or things like personal photos/videos).
That sucks, its a scary thing, glad you survived, but it sucks loosing what you have . I live on a river so that thought of flooding always looms in my mind. Of course my driveway and car is 35-40ft above the river level, next to a cliff face going into the water and my house is another 10-15ft above that, but still.

I had to experience loss of items back in 1999/2000. I was in my 20s and my ex friend/roommate was getting into heroin and I kicked him out after he almost got me kicked out of my apartment at the time due to him breaking into the building next door and getting caught when i was at work. He got out of jail and broke into my apartment when I was at work. My entire cd, vhs collection. A nes, snes, genesis, and ps1 with hundreds of games (some of which are worth 100s now, like black label jrpgs), all taken... AD&D books, gone, my tv, and stereo, gone. It was insane. i never did replace all of the cds, and movies I just recently replaced after 2 decades, but the games and systems were gone. Dude was on the run skipping bail, I wasn't finding him. He probably pawned it all off. I had to swallow my pride and face facts. Buy new shit that was needed and let go of the rest.
Luckily today most of that is emulatable, still bothers me to this day. Whats crazy is the dude left the US and moved to Brazil to be a pastor (his dad was one), and still hasn't appologized for any of it or admit it (found him on facebook a few years back)

Some digital stuff is impossible to replace as it gets delisted. Some you can buy phsyical, but those games that do get expensive. i just recently bought silent hill downpour for $50 used. A game that was on xbox marketplace but got delisted. Mortal kombat 9 should be a few bucks, no it was $30, another delisted game.

I see the benefit of not having stuff weigh you down, but only if you are able to travel. If staying in the same location, may as well collect. I won't rebuild my ps1, nes , snes collections, but started new ones. Dvds, guitars, physical games starting in ps2/gc/xb era -> ps3/360/wii gen.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
It wouldn’t be a life changing thing.

I’d probably buy the handful of games I regularly play physically: Splatoon 3, Smash Ultimate, Mario Kart 8, EA FC and Rocket League.

Make a new account if I had been banned if I wanted to re-buy them digitally as swapping carts is shit.

I’m all digital mainly (do still buy some physical) but I’m a one and done type guy (apart from a few N64 classics that I can complete in a day).
 

Generic

Member
I lost my first Steam account 15 years ago (hacked) but I didn't have too much games back then. Valve support used to be terrible.

If it happened again, I probably would be depressed for a few days. Then I would start everything from the scratch. It sucks but it's life.
 
Play my thousands of digitally backed up games instead :p
but yeah i would probably not buy any new games or at least be vary of the risk that they will not be forever playable.
 

Gp1

Member
I'll buy a gazillion terabyte HDD qnd backup my entire steam library before that happens.

Walled garden my ass
 
Wouldn't make a huge difference, I mostly own physical games. Steam account would be the biggest loss by far. I'd have plenty of games to play on other platforms nonetheless, and can always rebuy a few of my favorites on sale.
 

Warablo

Member
We need better protections for our purchases, but like others have said. Probably end up just buying and play what I was at the time and move forward.
 

Denton

Member
Download the few games I care about/want to play again from torrents and not give a fuck otherwise.
 

Knightime_X

Member
About as upset as a natural disaster destroying my house taking all my physicals with it.
Thankfully, No physical game will ever be as cheap as digital. Not by a looooooooong shot.
 

Jigsaah

Member
Dystopian gamer here. I was discussing this with a friend the other day and wanted to hear GAF opinions on the subject.

Pretend for whatever reason your Steam/GOG/Epic/PSN/Switch/Xbox library vanished due to being banned or say the company goes under, what would your thoughts be about digital games?

I'm pro-physical but I also have a massive digital library because I find digital to be more convenient for the most part (switching discs?! Worst. Feature. Ever.) But if my Steam library went kapoof and I lost my 3000 games I've not played over the course of 15 years, I'd be extremely ticked off. My friend said it wouldn't change his view of digital stores because he makes back ups of his games in case that happens.

So GAF, again, what would your thoughts be if you got robbed of your digital games?
Class action lawsuit.
 

Lupin3

Targeting terrorists with a D-Pad
Probably wouldn't miss anything all that much. Actually playing games nowadays is something that just takes up a fraction of my week. Except for Blasphemous 2. Those games (1 & 2) are pure crack.
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
Dystopian gamer here. I was discussing this with a friend the other day and wanted to hear GAF opinions on the subject.

Pretend for whatever reason your Steam/GOG/Epic/PSN/Switch/Xbox library vanished due to being banned or say the company goes under, what would your thoughts be about digital games?

I'm pro-physical but I also have a massive digital library because I find digital to be more convenient for the most part (switching discs?! Worst. Feature. Ever.) But if my Steam library went kapoof and I lost my 3000 games I've not played over the course of 15 years, I'd be extremely ticked off. My friend said it wouldn't change his view of digital stores because he makes back ups of his games in case that happens.

So GAF, again, what would your thoughts be if you got robbed of your digital games?
Join a class action lawsuit. Other then that, play my physical library and retro emulation.
 

kyussman

Member
As far as I'm concerned you are only ever one fuck up from getting your account banned and loosing all your digital games,why I never went digital.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
I would be upset but my collection of games is mainly physical so I would bounce off it. But I've pivoted more towards digital in the last few years, especially since I started to game on PC, so it would suck losing all those games.
 

//DEVIL//

Member
Easy. hack them all.
If I owned the games and they were gone for whatever x reason ? Ill get a DRM free hacked version. problem solved.

Also
- it's in Steam OS. if whatever reason they go under. all the games would be DRM free for you and wont be locked. ( or something along this line )
- physical media can also get damaged, scratched, stop working due to age or even stolen or lost. ( chances of this is happening more than you losing your steam account over them going down . just make sure you have 2FA.

The other day my 2 years old daughter saw god of war 3 remaster game case and she put it in the garbage. my wife didn't pay attention and its gone. when I asked her couple of days later she said gabbage. she took my other game( was trying to show her the game case ) and she was heading to throw my shadow of the colossus PS4 copy . that is how i knew my gow is gone lol

she is either PC fan or Sony hater. I can't tell yet.
 

Crayon

Member
I'd sell my gaming PC is someone who can use it and replace it with a mini PC for the tv.

Then I would go play my physical games, of which I have many.
 
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