this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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DRM-Free files that the user can archive on their own media, in their own format, as they wish.
The ability to distribute media without shipping physical goods allows for much smaller productions to have wide releases and in some cases to make their games cheaper than otherwise required (cough, switch tax). The issue is the DRM preventing the user from making their own backups, rather than the physical product (although steam does allow you to make backups and copies of your library folder which is cool).
The discs served as a proxy for licensing, right? It's easy to conflate owning the disc with owning the rights to play the game; but it's also easy to have DRM render discs useless if a game has "phone home" to unlock itself.
People don't necessarily want discs, they want to own a copy of the game. It's not a physical medium that really separates the two, it's licensing and DRM software.
A distinction here is what is being sold to us. A disc is 'goods' where are sold the product under the assumption of ownership.
What is actually being given is a service!
We want ownership of a good, not rent of a service and digital via sony/Xbox is the latter.
Every studio would get closed literally within a generation if everyone went DRM free. Every. Single. One.
Btw you can already archive your PS5 and Xbox digital games. You can download them and transfer them to external drives, as many times as you want. Then you can plug those drives in to any Internet connected console and play them with your profile.