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Forums - Gaming - Is physical ownership actually any better for game preservation?

 

Which is better for game preservation/ownership?

Physical 16 69.57%
 
Digital (PC) 1 4.35%
 
Digital (Console) 0 0%
 
Digital (PC or Console makes no difference) 4 17.39%
 
I can see an argument for both 2 8.70%
 
Unsure 0 0%
 
No opinion 0 0%
 
Total:23
Vodacixi on 13 November 2025
BraLoD said:
Vodacixi said:

And what allows you to make physical COPIES of games? The digital format. Without it, you have nothing.

You mean having a software to extract the copy of my games so I can copy them on another physical object? This is a non issue.

I'm not saying it's an issue. I'm saying that the very act of making a physical copy involves using or creating a digital copy first. So, you NEED digital format no matter what.



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Vodacixi on 13 November 2025
SvennoJ said:

In the end it's all physical, whether it's stored on a HDD, SSD or cloud server. The cloud can fail just as any physical copy. So you either make your own copies of physical or digital games or rely on the cloud infrastructure to keep the data indefinitely.

It's actually two questions "Which is better for game preservation/ownership?"

For ownership it's physical preferred. You don't own shit with a digital license. However newer physical games are often incomplete or merely an installer, thus your physical 'copy' is worthless without the server anyway. (Worthless for preservation, you can still sell it of course)

For preservation you either store your physical games carefully or keep making digital copies of your GoG collection every 10 years.

The internet as a whole "failing" to a point were every single digital copy vanishes or becomes unaccessible it's a very, VERY unlikely scenario. Degradation of old consoles and physical media in general is inevitable. How many N64 systems or N64 cartridges will be in working condition in 50 years? How about a 100 years from now? While the physical media dies of old age, there will probably be a working download link to pretty much the entire N64 library and plenty of emulators.

So sure, we can play the "everything is physical" game. But there are pretty significant differences between discs, carts and consoles and digital games stored in millions of computers and/or servers, which every time they are downloaded on a new system, generate a new and clean copy free of the potential corruption data that appears over the years on the physical media they are stored on.