What does it even mean to “own” a video game?

[SvennoJ]

Kyuu said:

I share Svennoj's opinion. But I just don't care that much about video game ownership. And recently I "buy" most my games when they're in deep sale. I still value physical games, just not as much as before.

As for Yoshi's pricing thing:

Nintendo is clearly facing a serious challenge. Full Switch 2 cartridges were already said to cost around $17 before NAND prices shot up and continue to. At the rate this is going, they will be making a lot more profit from selling you a digital game at $40 than physical at $70. GKC and the price difference between digital and physical (which may increase over time) are Nintendo's attempt to accelerate digital adoption.

Yeah my stance of physical vs digital has changed as well. I don't care as much about (modern) physical games anymore because many require patches to work, require an online connection and/or are just a shell of the game at release. I do have the steelbook edition of GT7 for example, but also bought the digital version for convenience. Nice to have a physical copy, yet without the servers it's as useless as the digital copy. 

Also VR games hardly ever get a physical release and if they do way later. Plus changing discs with a headset on sucks. 

For 'retro' games, physical still makes sense, yet modern games I mostly get digital nowadays. I own enough video games already, fine 'renting' the rest. I don't have time to enjoy it all anyway. 

I still draw the line at streaming services though. Not for gaming as updates also mean that it sucks when games leave streaming services. Lately I've only been playing games that all got content updates. New kind of backlog getting out of hand lol.

Anyway if the internet collapses, I still have plenty physical games I've not played yet dating back to PS2.