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

[VanceIX]

jnemesh 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. 

Actually, while it is true that you are just sold a "license", the Supreme Court has ruled that "First Sale Doctrine" applies to all physical copies of software.  I can resell my discs to someone else, in other words.  When you buy digitally, your First Sale rights are gone.

Personally, I prefer to buy digital downloadable anyway.  No, I can't resell them or trade them in...but I never have to worry about losing discs, nor do I have to worry that someone will "borrow" the games and "forget" to return them (sorry buddies!), nor do I worry about discs becoming damaged or unusable.  But, for me, the #1 advantage is that I dont have to get up, find a game, and physically put it in my console...I just select it from the menu and play.  To ME, the advantages of buying my games digitally outweigh the negatives.  As I bonus, I never have to walk in another Gamestop ever again...so there is that too!

Of course you can, I never denied that you couldn't. I'm just poiniting out that what you have is a license, not complete ownership over the game.