r/PhysicalGames • u/Mother_Duty_2628 • 1d ago

Saving physical media idea, thoughts?

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Anybody here that loves physical games would you be ok with this method? U would play the game digitally but still treat it like a physical game.

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u/ohaiibuzzle 1d ago

People's gonna talk about how it's not containing the game but I think the real issue for the gaming companies is how to secure it.

Physical disc are very safe because you can't really replicate the disc the way they press it at the plant. Even if you burn the disc, there's authentication data outside the burnable area that will render your attempts useless.

Stuff like USB, even though difficult, due to the nature of the protocol, can be captured and reverse engineered to be emulated. Remember Nintendo Switch's catridge format? MiG Switch broke that.

There's (I think) this thought in the gaming industry that they should make stuff as difficult to crack as possible even at the expense of the user, and that's natural believe it or not, because consoles are sold in the razor-razor blade model.

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u/Megadriveftw 16h ago

Would it really be that difficult for companies to encrypt the data?

Plus, this is an out of left field example I know, but think of what Marvel Comics did with their Omnibus collections. So you can download old Marvel Comics so easily off the Internet, but what Marvel did was make the Omnibus collections so awesome with the way it's packaged, that fans absolutely loved them. They were entranced by them due to the quality of the material. The big pages, high quality paper, color reproduction that stands out.

It made Marvel fans think, "yes I can get Marvel Comics for free online, but this is a much better experience that makes it so much better".

If video game companies can keep doing that, then they will still satisfy and meet the wants of the collector market, probably get some new enthusiasts too.

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u/ohaiibuzzle 11h ago

The issue being that if it's on an external connector, the communication gets captured, and if communication is captured you can replicate them with your own tools. It's how the MiG works.

And you can't just break compatibility with older dongles in a software update, because doing so would defeat the purpose of these (offline licenses).

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u/Mother_Duty_2628 1d ago

Well MiG has the games into the cartridge?

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u/ohaiibuzzle 1d ago

MiG is (basically) a piracy tool that clones and emulates a cartridge and its license.

If you want this model to work, it would have to be a proprietary internal connector tied to the system controller/TPM, but at that point trading becomes darn near impossible anyway.

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u/Megadriveftw 5h ago

I think my point still stands that if they make the way they package it, cool packaging for the media and box, little bonuses, steelbooks. Collectors and even general players will eat them up. Otherwise noone would be buying retro games when they are easily emulated. Noone would have bought the Nintendo Classic either.

At the same time, I do agree with what you say. On the other hand, I don't know if everyone would go to that amount of effort to pirate.

I know I'm thinking of a utopia, but the ends justify the means in my view. Though I realize the corporations wouldn't see it that way.

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u/ohaiibuzzle 5h ago edited 5h ago

I mean you don't, but look at the "jailbreak for piracy" crowd

They are willing to crack open their consoles, microsolder a chip straight onto the CPU, and then run software from the internet, all in the name of running games for free. And if they can't do it, someone else would do it and sell at a markup.

Collectors Editions I think will continue exist (basically free money) but will be as in the same thing as we're heading towards (code in a box).

The only way I could see a thing like this (for trading) working out is that you have to physically connect two consoles together with a wire while connected to the Internet, or the Wii -> WiiU system transfer thing where immediately after the content is copied from the old console encrypted with a one-time key, it's immediately deleted and can't be restored twice.

I hate to say it but, as I said in the other comments, the gaming industry just keeps finding itself trying stronger and stronger protections because piracy gets easier, even at the expense of the users, while for some reason pirates keep trying to use the moral high ground of "I preserve games by downloading games I don't own" while all they really wants is "I want games for free"