No that’s true I can see why people would buy DRMed digital versions of games. But I would like there to always be an alternative. The day physical is no longer an option is the day I stop buying consoles.

And I agree that we should always have options as well as the choice to choose between them. I just disagree with your original statement that physical mediums is the "dream option".

And the masses of people are likely to throw away their hard media when it becomes inconvenient for the to keep around. The e-waste argument is enough for me to buy as little hard copy as possible.

I mean, game pass and Xbox gold membership is enough to warrant non-physical media for me. The amazing deals and constant free games I get because they can flip a switch on certain games that give me amazing deals. Imagine doing that to physical CDs at some store somewhere? I would probably have to explain my membership details to a teenager in a mall. Again, not worth it.

How valuable is my Mac-version Oni disk that I still have around here somewhere?

Valuable enough that I knew exactly where mine was :-p

Yet I have some CD's that are absolutely worthless because they can't be played on anything without quite a bit of effort on my part and more importantly others. Would they be worth something if they were digital and no longer available? Of course not, but they also wouldn't be cluttering a box in my apartment somewhere.

And I guess I will just loop back and tell you my original point. Just because I COULD play that ancient disk on a VM software somewhere on a machine that I might still own, doesn't mean that medium should be the default for everyone. The default should be what makes sense for the masses of people who game on modern hardware.

How valuable is my Mac-version Oni disk that I still have around here somewhere?

Valuable enough that I knew exactly where mine was :-p

So SCUMMVM works on Xbox? Playstation? iPhone?

Yes to all those actually. There are versions for iOS, PS2, PS3, and Xbox. Even PSVita and Switch.

So you are saying I can play PS games on a PS3? Or that you can play PS3 and PS2 games on PS4?
Because if it isn't the latter I don't know what the point is. I don't have the space to maintain multiple outdated consoles. If you can, that's great, but that is not something for the masses, it's a hobby. If the purpose of using physical media is so that you can play it forever as long as you keep the the hardware that SCUMMVM supports, assuming they also support it forever, I don't think the average joe is going to do that. Just because it's possible, doesn't mean it should be done.

I noticed on their wiki Xbox isn't supported. As for iPhone, the last supported is iOS 7?

Yeah, and that's because it does not really run on iOS, it runs on a modified (JAILBROKEN) iOS. Also "Supported" is going to be an odd word here. It's an open source project worked on by many people all with varying amounts of time, resources, definitions of what it means to support it, and comfort with violating copyright or hacking up an OS who have essentially forked and compiled it to work on a bunch of different platforms. An enormous amount of donated labor has been done by people because the like these games and want to have them work on modern platforms.

SCUMM is a common interpreter platform that Lucas Arts used for a bunch of games in the adventure/point and click era (modifying the platform with pretty much every game that used it) Calling SCUMM VM an emulator might be overstating it, but not by much. At the end of the day, to answer what you're getting at, you need to do a lot of the things you would need to do with an emulator to do the things Cody is saying you can do. More relevant to my point*, is the you will need to copy the game files OFF OF PHYSICAL MEDIA into a digital** format given that iOS, PS Vita, Nintendo Switch, etc. don't have drives that can read the original form of physical media.

Now that I spent a lot of time clarifying, the problem is none of this is relevant to the discussion. The argument here (which I agree with, BTW) is that DRM is bad for the future. I'm not sure why Cody persists saying "Digital" when he means DRM'd and "physical" when he meant DRM-free despite this obvious confusion and unnecessary disagreement it is causing, but it will smooth things along if you just do the translation in your head.

Meanwhile, you can't just see that it is on a disk and consider things safe forever. Archiving is a complicated and labor-intensive endeavor. Just saying "Physical solves" both hides potential risks and minimized the work people do to make old things still accessible. How valuable would those disks be if people had not made SCUMM VM? How valuable is my Mac-version Oni disk that I still have around here somewhere?

* Data is Data
** Because CD, DVD, and Floppy disks are not digital somehow?

P.S. I have most of these games still on old formats, and I have many devices with some version of SCUMMVM, and yet still I tend to go to my Xbox Live/Playstation Store versions when I want to play them because it's easier and they made MCC-ish "enhanced" versions of most of them which improve graphics or fix things that were probably a mistake like tank style controls. Also, I have a copy of Monkey Island 2 on my iPad that won't run because they didn't ever update the binary to be compatible. This is not a point against or for anything, but I think it's interesting and I'm glad I helped pay for someone to make great games easily available to people.

So SCUMMVM works on Xbox? Playstation? iPhone?

Yes to all those actually. There are versions for iOS, PS2, PS3, and Xbox. Even PSVita and Switch.

So you are saying I can play PS games on a PS3? Or that you can play PS3 and PS2 games on PS4?
Because if it isn't the latter I don't know what the point is. I don't have the space to maintain multiple outdated consoles. If you can, that's great, but that is not something for the masses, it's a hobby. If the purpose of using physical media is so that you can play it forever as long as you keep the the hardware that SCUMMVM supports, assuming they also support it forever, I don't think the average joe is going to do that. Just because it's possible, doesn't mean it should be done.

I noticed on their wiki Xbox isn't supported. As for iPhone, the last supported is iOS 7?

So SCUMMVM works on Xbox? Playstation? iPhone?

Yes to all those actually. There are versions for iOS, PS2, PS3, and Xbox. Even PSVita and Switch.

Maybe I got this wrong somewhere down the line, but isn't it still true with physical media that if the publisher/developer stops selling or pulling a game from distribution that, according to the EOL that everyone agrees to when buying software, that you aren't allowed to use it? Because it's technically still their intellectual property and you are actually essentially just renting the game. I could be way off, but this was true sometime in the past. If this is still true, then what you are talking about, saving away a disk to play whenever you want after the developer takes it from play that you are actually committing a crime :D

I could be wrong, but that is what I remember.

You do indeed have it wrong. It is true that most software, and even a fair amount of media is self-identified as a license to use something, not ownership, but the conclusions you list are not real. Removing something from sale does not end personal consumption in any physical media license I have ever seen.

Mostly these clauses are about preventing re-sale and sidestepping the first-sale doctrine. but creating the copyright law they want through individual "contracts". Now, the reality is that most of this gets ignored, Courts are split AT BEST on how enforceable a contract is when the party who did not write the contract is very likely to have never read it and "consented" by opening an envelope or clicking through. The Owners have been very reluctant to test the enforcability — likely because a loss would destroy the whole scheme, because widespread public knowledge of the scheme might destroy the whole scheme, because individually enforcing contracts with each purchaser is expensive as all hell, and because the copyright law keeps getting re-written in ways that Ley them get everything they need without resorting to EULA stuff anyway.

But — maybe most importantly — even if all of it was true, breaking a contract is not committing a crime. Civil and Criminal law is separate and that's for very good reasons.

You say physical media requires zero support and then list off a bunch support products. Yes, I understand that is to play it with modern software and hardware, which to me is the same thing as rebuying after the game as been modernized.

It's not the same at all. In my example with Indy, I could play it on a modern systems for ZERO DOLLARS. You can avoid having to buy it again, because you already have the game on a disc that SCUMMVM can read.

Are we arguing support? maintaining something? Just because it's free doesn't mean it's isn't supported by someone. SCUMMVM is supported by someone, just because they are giving it to you for free doesn't mean it's not taking work by someone for you to keep playing older games.

I agree that you could feasibly keep the hardware and the game media in a frozen state from basically any era. But you again have to make sure that hardware and media in that state. That to me is support. And honestly if this is what you are arguing then I guess I'm just done with this conversation because there is a reason this isn't a thing, because a very small percentage of people are willing to do this for the cost of reliving an old game.

Then they are free to buy digital and have to buy their games again and again.

Yep.

A vast majority of people would much rather rebuy it for the 5 bucks than to keep an OS in state from 10 years ago. That is your choice to do, but you can't say that that should be status quo because the majority of people (it would actually have to be more) would prefer to do that.

I don't think you are quite understanding the point. You don't have to maintain an old OS state. My Fate of Atlantis CD runs under OS 9. SCUMMVM runs on anything. So, you put the CD in your modern OS of choice, and it can read and run the game. The last time I booted into OS 9 was to show Claude DBO and HBO didn't work on Netscape Navigator, but before that it was a decade and a half at least.

So SCUMMVM works on Xbox? Playstation? iPhone? Because those are also devices that use my method. Hardware that is constantly being upgraded to be better machines to play better games. That if people want to play older games for longer either have to be updated or are just backwards compatible.

Maybe I got this wrong somewhere down the line, but isn't it still true with physical media that if the publisher/developer stops selling or pulling a game from distribution that, according to the EOL that everyone agrees to when buying software, that you aren't allowed to use it?

I've never seen or agreed to an End of Life on a physical release from a game console, or a computer game. Ever. So no. And even if that WAS true, they cannot enforce it without coming to my house.

oops, I meant EULA :D

Also, there are a lot of things that are illegal that can't be enforced if everyone does it. For example, pirating music.

Maybe I got this wrong somewhere down the line, but isn't it still true with physical media that if the publisher/developer stops selling or pulling a game from distribution that, according to the EOL that everyone agrees to when buying software, that you aren't allowed to use it?

I've never seen or agreed to an End of Life on a physical release from a game console, or a computer game. Ever. So no. And even if that WAS true, they cannot enforce it without coming to my house.

You say physical media requires zero support and then list off a bunch support products. Yes, I understand that is to play it with modern software and hardware, which to me is the same thing as rebuying after the game as been modernized.

It's not the same at all. In my example with Indy, I could play it on a modern systems for ZERO DOLLARS. You can avoid having to buy it again, because you already have the game on a disc that SCUMMVM can read.

I agree that you could feasibly keep the hardware and the game media in a frozen state from basically any era. But you again have to make sure that hardware and media in that state. That to me is support. And honestly if this is what you are arguing then I guess I'm just done with this conversation because there is a reason this isn't a thing, because a very small percentage of people are willing to do this for the cost of reliving an old game.

Then they are free to buy digital and have to buy their games again and again.

A vast majority of people would much rather rebuy it for the 5 bucks than to keep an OS in state from 10 years ago. That is your choice to do, but you can't say that that should be status quo because the majority of people (it would actually have to be more) would prefer to do that.

I don't think you are quite understanding the point. You don't have to maintain an old OS state. My Fate of Atlantis CD runs under OS 9. SCUMMVM runs on anything. So, you put the CD in your modern OS of choice, and it can read and run the game. The last time I booted into OS 9 was to show Claude DBO and HBO didn't work on Netscape Navigator, but before that it was a decade and a half at least.