Let's start a discussion here: digital downloads and DRM (or any other form of restricting your game access rights). As we observed in the last few years, digital is on the rise. All consoles now have it and PC pretty much is entirely digital, with several games releasing only on Steam without physical copies. It's not like it doesn't have advantages: you can't lose our scratch a digital copy, you don't have to go out and buy or wait for Amazon to deliver it. It has its fair share of disavantages: you can't resell, lend to a friend or just take it for a gaming party at a friend's house.

But what I want to discuss here is the biggest issue with digital copies: DRM and other restrictive methods. From my perspective, if I buy a game, it's mine. Nobody has the right to take it from me. If I break the disc, my fault and I should buy a replacement. That's pretty much what happens if you buy a car or a TV. But not a digital game. You aren't buying a product, you are buying a license. Let's looks at some examples:

- Steam: all games are linked to your account. Previously, if you were banned, you would lose them, but they changed this policy. However, your games depend on an online DRM check. You have offline mode, but it is just a big timeout for checking with the servers. If Valve closes Steam for some reason, you would lose the games. Yes, I know, they said they would release a patch before going down to avoid this, but do you believe on that? It would be probably a publisher's call instead of theirs. We know the games are cheap on Steam, but why? Because they are digital? Well, it doesn't make the games cheaper on PSN or Live. I believe they are cheap because you aren't buying the real game, but something that can have the pull plugged anytime.

- PSN: except PS+, normal digital downloads doesn't look to have an online check. However, while the PS3 allowed you to backup your game's installation, the PS4 still won't allow that. If a game gets removed from PSN or if I get banned and my PS4 breaks, I will lose my digital collection.

- Google Play: if your Google account is banned, you better backup your APKs. You won't be able to download nothing you've payed or login in your device.

- Always online games that simply shouldn't be: ok, I get why MAG and Titafall won't work when the server goes down. They are based only on teams fighting online and things like that. No problem. But what about Destiny? Ok, it's reasonable to think we can't play online co-op raids and team deathmatchs when they shutdown the servers, but why the campaign? I've played it, the online component is just random matchmaked guys shooting at aliens with you. It would work without it. The same with The Crew. It's basically the same as NFS: Rivals, but the second one works offline. Why force me to have random matchmaked guys just for the sake of adding 5% more cars to a city.

All these games could work offline. But publishers love the idea of pulling the plug of a game. How about shutting down Destiny when Destiny 2 comes?

So in the end, in both cases, I don't own what I buy. I didn't commented about Live because I don't have the necessary experience to say what happens in that case with 360 and X1.

It looks cheaper, it looks easier and publishers love it. The last part worries me, since normally our interests and theirs are pretty much opposite. With piracy, the situation is even more pathetic: sometimes people who buy a game will have issues with DRM but cracked copies will work like a charm.

Now, great VGChartz community, where are your 2 cents? Digital or physical? Online-only or games with offline modes?

I like to go for physical discs whenever I can. In my opinion, there's no reason to buy digital unless:

1: It's cheaper than the physical version
2: It's only obtainable digitally

Also, I do wish all online-only games had an offline-mode. Some sort of "Training Grounds" or something would work well for most games.

In Steam sales you get new games for 5$ or entire franchises for 10$ that's why digital is on the rise. 

Seems these topics pop up on weekly basis.
My choice remains the same: fully digital.

I will not go into details again, in short: Games are disposable to me. Buy, complete, sell, delete.

As far as online-only games: I will refuse to buy them. Bought Destiny, and agree with you...I just want to do some bounties or missions, I don't want to depend on server health and maintenance.

I have bought digital mostly this gen, and on ps4 it seems that every digital game I have bought is dependent on if I have internet connection, if I don't if won't let me play the games. I think this is a horrible idea, and x1's version of drm is much better.

Just realized why this happens for me on psn.  I game share with my brother so I made my account the primary on his console and his account on as a primary on my console.  So that means that all the games I bought are tied to his console and I can only play my games when connected to the internet so that they can verify.  Pretty annoying, but if that's what it takes to game share then I'll keep doing it.  Last gens game sharing for playstation was way better.

But do you own them? That's the point. They are cheap for a reason, you aren't buying, just renting for unlimited time.

That's interesting. We could say that we have gamers that won't sell their games, but other will see them as disposable (reselling, etc).

Getting more on the topic of disposable games, would you use a cloud gaming service, like PS Now or OnLive? Supposing we are in a future were we have great broadband, only minor latency issues and great pricing (of course, with an ocasional downtime like today).

I have almost completely switched to digital because it means i can get games at around half the price on US psn. Price also made me switch to digital on pc with steam being really enticing

Digital to me is the Netflix for people who don't care. They just want to watch/play an go onto the next. Which is great. I don't really care about that, honestly. The thing that does get me pissed off is the people who keep saying: digital is better, digital is the way to go. Agree with me or fuck off. Can you please stop telling me off. I like buying and keeping with a form a security. It's like having both options is a killer to one or the other side.

They can both work together. Now if you want to bitch about physical is keeping digital prices high half the time. That's the companies fault. There's no reason to do this. Unless companies are scared they'll lose support from retail. But isn't that the point?