[javman]

Buying discs doesn't protect you anymore. Almost everything requires a server connection and they can require you to upgrade to play.

I have a physical copy of Overwatch 1. When Overwatch 2 came out, it was an "upgrade" to Overwatch 1, and they simultaneously killed all Overwatch 1 servers. Nobody can play Overwatch 1 anymore.

Maybe Nintendo Switch is the way. It seems physical copies only protect you on platforms where offline use is standard.

[xavdid]

> Almost everything requires a server connection and they can require you to upgrade to play.

This is overstating the (very real) problem. While there are certainly classes of games for which this is true, the majority of games work totally fine offline forever.

Your example, Overwatch, is an online-only multiplayer game. Yes, it's bad you bought a disk that's now just a coaster. But, I don't think it's representative of the vast number of single-player games for which servers don't even exist. There are certainly single-player exceptions (GTA V, the recent Hitman trilogy, etc), but.

There's also a set of PC games from the early aughts that depended on the now-defunct Gamespy servers to run. There's a fairly complete list here (https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/22fz75/list_of_games...). While that's certainly not 0, it still doesn't strike me as "almost everything".

Also worth noting that I'm not defending these systems - just nothing that it's not as bad as you make it out to be.

[johnnyanmac]

>While there are certainly classes of games for which this is true, the majority of games work totally fine offline forever.

not necessarily. The prevalence of day one patches means certain single player games may legitimately not work properly because they expect users to at least home in once to get the content they couldn't ship on disc. But they rely on those last minute content to not have major bugs.

[nottorp]

I'm talking about single player games. Multiplayer used to be fun but now they're all IAP fests so I ignore them and have no opinion on them.

Edit: and duh. When you buy a game that's only played online you're dependent on the servers staying up. It's logical.

There are other kinds of games though.

[pixl97]

>I'm talking about single player games.

This means nothing, there have been piles of single player games that have required a connection check before working. Sim City 4 was an example of this.

And, even buying it and not having that check doesn't mean that it won't be updated to require a server (you have an actual disk to reinstall right, because the original installer may disappear too).

[piperswe]

SimCity (2013), not SimCity 4. SimCity 4 was the last beloved SimCity game, released in 2003.

[nottorp]

You're talking about EA, Ubisoft and Rockstar titles there. Case closed.

Incidentally, if you must get something from those 3, they're forbidden to require an account on at least the PlayStation. Not sure about XBox.

[johnnyanmac]

do they need to list every single player game that has a day one patch not included on a physical disc? I guess we haven't gotten so far in game patching that some retro gamers buy a new copy of a game and can't update to 1.0.0 now.

[nottorp]

The companies I listed require an account with them, not day one patches.

[johnnyanmac]

Both affect the ability to play a game out of the box, should servers be down.

[PeterisP]

Many modern games that have only a single-player mode are still intentionally dependent on the servers staying up, and games that have both single-player and online modes will prevent you from playing the offline mode if they can't connect to the servers.

[tadfisher]

You can still play Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament (1999) online, because third-party game servers used to be the normal way online games worked. Hell, Team Fortress 2 is only playable on third-party servers, as the official servers are full of cheaters.