How about no? The amount of storage I'd need to save all my digital games would require a ton of SD cards or external drives, and those are damn expensive. I already paid for the games, why should I pay again for the medium? This is a very bad solution.

Then don't. Your loss if anything happens.

When your discs break or can't be read anymore you can't make a backup at all (at least one that works with the original unaltered hardware).

Also external hard drives are pretty cheap. You don't need SSDs to back up data after all. You will spend far less than 1€ per game you back up on an HDD. If that's not worth it for you then Idk....

Okay look. First of all, discs don't break very easily. You can scratch them, alright, but then it's your own fault if you don't know how to take care of your things. Game cartridges from the 80s and 90s still work fine to this day, that's almost 40 years of duration and they will still work for years to come. Compare this to a server where your game files are stored which can be shut down when times are bad. This is dumb. So you suggest I should save the data myself. Right. Physical media does that by default. Second, I didn't look up the prices of these storages devices. Even if they are cheap, I don't care because I don't want to need them at all.

We have allowed companies to separate the data from the medium and we are happy about it because it is oh so convenient. But there are still many problems that come with this, with the potential loss of your data just being one of them. Come up with a solution for the lack of a second hand market.

Ok. I woke up and suddenly I am old and don't understand things any more...

Do kids these days still have birthdays and Xmas? How do people gift them a game these days? The brats I know are all gonna get board games this year...

Servers containing game files shutting down without further notice is just as hypothetical as scratching discs. If something like that was about to happen you'll get enough time to download everything you own before a shut down.

Since you have to download digital games anyway in order to play them, I already expect you to have a storage solution (most likely a storage device already built in your console/PC). If you don't have everything installed, you're already enjoying the benefits of digital gaming. Not having to store and/or carry around game boxes. Don't act like physical games don't require you to make additional purchases. You can't tell me you have those boxes stacked up on the ground. You likely bought shelves for them. There's not a big difference between shelves that store physical games and HDDs that store digital games.

A digital second hand market already exists. You can buy accounts that have one game connected to them. Once bought it you're free to sell (or gift) it to someone else. It's a little inconvenient, sure but people have been doing that for years.

Yes indeed but they won’t close Micromania, won’t they ?

Actually if the game need any kind of online check-in to be played you can kiss it goodbye even having it downloaded on your own console/pc. When the server go down it's just useless data on your drive.

There were some scares recently with Ubisoft games on Steam, if I recall it right.

AFAIK this is not exclusive to digital games. There are also physical games that become unplayable when servers shut down as these games require a connection to online servers.

1) Yes I have a microSD card in my Switch which cost a fortune. This is dumb. I would have bought all games physical but sadly a whole lot of them don't have a physical edition so I'm forced to download them. Some have DLC which also take up digital space.

However, I didn't need to buy furniture for my games. Of course I have shelves, cupboards and stuff but there are all kinds of things inside them. I bought these furniture to store anything inside them, not just games. So no, I never bought shelves just for games.

2) This is ridiculous and we should not discuss this any further. Not only is this "a little inconvenient", it's plain dumb. Here, have some convenience instead:

1) Initially you said you own a lot of games so I assumed that you, as a physical collector, have some shelves filled with them. Doesn't really matter though if they're just partially filled and you never intended to buy furniture for gaming. Fact is that you're using them for that purpose, so if you bought a cupboard that is 30% filled with games, 30% of the cost of that cupboard is used up by storing games. I mean according to your logic it would be fine for me to say that storing digital games doesn't cost anything since you can just use an old HDD or microSD that was bought and intended to store something else and just repurpose it for storing digital games.

Also blame Nintendo if they don't let you store games on the cheapest available storage devices. You make it out to be a universal problem with digital gaming but in fact it's a Nintendo exclusive problem.

2) You asked me to name a solution to a lack of a second hand market and I did. Not the most elegant way of doing it but it works and it's being done. I could ask you to find a solution to playing the same game on two devices simultaneously without buying it twice. It's possible with any game using digital game sharing.