A major part of the digital/physical debate that people forget

[VanceIX]

binary solo said:

VanceIX said:

A lot of people say that the best reason to go physical is that you actually own the game. That's not true. You own the disc itself, but the game is licensed to you, just like digital games. Under the law, there is almost no difference in ownership.

That being said, no one is coming to take away your rights to play your discs. At the same time, however, that generally doesn't happen with digital games either unless you seriously fuck up.

I'm not saying that everyone should up and quit physical and buy digital only, just saying that the concept of "ownership" is really not that different between the two, as far as the law is concerned. 

It is not a major part of the debate, because the debate is principally around resale / lending / swapping and portability. The fact of owning a plastic disc a case and, if you're lucky an insert or game manual, and a licence rather than all of thosebthings plus owning an actual copy of the game is merely a technical legal distinction that has no bearing on what people do or can do with their licence.

We also don't own the movies we buy on DVD/vhs /blue ray, or the music we buy on CD, or the books we buy. In all cases we have know rights over that material except that which has been granted by the rights holder. But you don't ever hear people talking about owning a licence to read a book or watch a video. So in the end you're just talking semantics not practical realities.

But semantics is exactly what I'm discussing. Practical reality is a different matter altogether. In practical reality, people buy and trade physical games, and always have access to their digital games. In terms of pure semantics though, there is no legal ownership for physical games. In pure semantics, a company can take away your right to play the physical game just as easily as a digital. My point is, legal ownership is not a favorable point for phyysical games. You can make the case for convinence, which is a subjective point for both, but legal ownership is clear cut in this case.