[underlipton]

I think you misunderstand. The disc was the practical tie-down and compromise that allowed gamers to stomach what was happening. Whether or not gamers actually took advantage of the opportunity, the fact that there was a disc out there that they could physically pick up and buy meant that console game publishers (and, by extension, non-indie PC game publishers) couldn't descend into the depths of perma-Early Access-dom, or sell you a "game" that was really a pre-order.

If physical releases actually go away, that dystopia comes to bear. Console publishers think that this is a step in the direction of further control over their library, which is laughable. They're killing the compromise, the other side of which was, "Gamers will mostly respect console DRM and not flood the zone with "Explicitly Fuck You" piracy." These companies are about to learn a hard lesson.

[pessimizer]

I don't buy this a bit. Pirates weren't holding back until they got really upset about something. There will be absolutely no punishment for this change, because it is a minor change for the people who stuck them through the PS2->PS3 transition (and far beyond), and the people who were raised in a world where you didn't own things.

If some secret torrent of piracy is somehow unleashed, they'll just unleash a secret torrent of lobbying to increase penalties and investigation, and a secret torrent of partnerships with and cross-ownership of ISPs to unleash a secret torrent of surveillance.

I'm pretty sure I was the only one who dropped consoles entirely when they told me that the PS3 was going to have to be online. All my PS2 stuff still works, and I bought a couple more to make sure I'd always have parts. Pretty much everybody else liked gaming more than they liked their professed belief systems.

This won't even be an adjustment. Maybe they could give you a cardboard disk with a QR code on it that you can slide into fake little slot, in a very pretty box that says "Collectors Edition" on it. Or a DVD with a single encrypted text file on it that has your license number.

[underlipton]

>Pirates weren't holding back until they got really upset about something.

They weren't pirates until now. This is radicalizing hubris.

>If some secret torrent of piracy is somehow unleashed, they'll just unleash a secret torrent of lobbying to increase penalties and investigation, and a secret torrent of partnerships with and cross-ownership of ISPs to unleash a secret torrent of surveillance.

This has never worked. On the contrary, for most of the history of rewriteable media in most of the world, bootlegging has been the norm, and IP owners are powerless to stop it save providing a more convenient alternative.

>Or a DVD with a single encrypted text file on it that has your license number.

This could have been an option before they made their power grab. It's too late now. They've killed the goodwill and "face" that made the prior paradigm digestible, and exposed the strategy to too many people who wouldn't have faced it earlier.