As far as publishers are concerned, the single greatest cancer they face is the resale market. When a store sells a new game for £60, the publisher makes about £20, and the store gets between £15-20, depending on how they choose to price it. The rest is the cost of manufacturing and shipping. (These are rounded estimates, it varies)
Then, a week later, when someone trades that game in and the store resells it for $40, they get all of that, and the publisher gets nothing.
From their perspective, that’s basically theft, which is why they’ve been trying for decades to put a stop to it, which they can’t, or at least make more money from secondary sales by bundling single-use codes for “bonus” content that really should be part of the main game, which people who buy preowned will have to shell out extra for.
So that’s what getting rid of physical media is all about. If they get rid of the discs and cartridges, that market vanishes.
Please don’t mistake this explanation as an excuse. All of the platform holders have had the means to kill off the retail market and usher customers onto their digital storefronts for at least a decade. All they had to do was pass on even a fraction of the savings they make selling digitally, which cuts out the manufacturing, shipping, and retailer costs, onto the customer. But they haven’t. Games cost the same on the Playstation Store as they do on the Gamestop Shelf. Sometimes more!
They could have used the carrot, but pure greed means they’re now opting for the stick.
Edit, Supplemental Question: This is my first post on Lemmy, and the responses have me wanting to clarify something- Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?
So many simps for valve who don’t understand how valve fucked us all 20 years ago.
Just remember if valve cared at fucking skill they could offer you a resellable license.
But yeah, fuck Windows, because reasons. Lemmy.txt
You okay?
I don’t want to resell anything, I don’t care.
Valve has been very good to me. I can play my library on any machine I want, anywhere I want. They have kept titles available for me to download that the publisher took down.
They keep my save files, they provide overlays in game, they provide a game recording and chat system.
Everything I buy from them is so deeply narked down that reselling isn’t even worthwhile anyways.
On top of all of that they contribute to a free os, including giving back upstream.
That’s not simping, those are just facts. Basically so far it’s the best gaming service yet.
I do worry it will go away, but all the games are also backed up locally so it really doesn’t matter that much.
By the way: Valve works well in conjunction with game devs. My kids buy box sets that come with physical items (guides, books, stickers, figures, and discs) AND have valve keys. So they get the best of both worlds. Supporting indy devs is far more important than arguing about valves position in all of this.