Samus Aran said:
Because they're dirt cheap on Steam. I'm sure there are more reasons, that I don't deny. Feel free to inform me of them. I'm guessing DRM? |
They're the same price on Steam in a number of cases they are more expensive as retail stores have little confidence in them and sell them for cheap, DRM is one main reason as it wipes out right of first purchase which is why MS received so much heat for attempting it on XB1, we also had what I mentioned earlier on the platform maintaining the games for you. Other main reason is as clear as day, PC is an open platform, digital bypasses things like the format the game is on when bought at retail should in future a new standard takes over that isn't compatible with the previous (E.g Floppy to CDs) as PC games have much longer shelf life then console games, a large number of PC games are still purchased years after launch because the majority of PC gamers eventually obtain the hardware to run a game plus your library will always carry over.
It's more viable on PC to buy digital then retail as the latter has little to no benefit over the other on open platforms where as on console it's more a case of just convenience or having a hard copy, digital doesn't offer similar benefits on closed platforms because as seen with the PS4/X1 games you purchased on a previous platform digitally don't necessarily carry over so the situation is reversed in a sense.
