it's probably everyone

- digital is just easier with Steam, no need to drive to a game store
- digital makes companies more money, so they hop on board

game prices are not justified without hard copies and all the merchandise. cant believe studious still cry bout how expensive it is to be a dev

PC no contest.
Ever since digital started being seen as a benefit with not having to use discs in a pc, it's started to become the push. Even installing games didn't always require a disc to play them afterwards so PC has tried to make discs largely irrelevant for a looong time.

So this is all YOUR fault pc users. You did this to yourselves.

steam. They made Half-Life 2 only available by downloading steam, so everyone who wanted to play it (basically every PC gamer at that time) had to also get steam. For a long time, valve were the only ones who released anything on there, eg Portal. Other studios carried on making hard copies. Valve slowly continued to corner the market and then dota brought everyone who didn't already have steam onto it, the rest is history.

PC, no doubt abt it

Steam, Battle-net, and the original Xbox were the ones initially pushing it. I avoided using anything that wasn't on disc until everything started to become a digital download.

Remember when they said vote with your wallet? We all thought a few digital purchases here and there wouldn't be counted votes.

Oh well that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes

for what I do remember, I always read comments from console players stating they did not want to bring their stuff around, so they could just hop into a friend's home, log into their account and play their own games.

On PC from a Lan Party goer point of view, moving desktop, but mostly the monitor was a big nuisance, but since I was moving both plus more and the more being the games and extras, moving them around was a small malus to the whole show

Now

Originally posted by Cee:

it's probably everyone

- digital is just easier with Steam, no need to drive to a game store
- digital makes companies more money, so they hop on board

Point 1) Talking about Italy and living in Viareggio , that was not a problem, 10 kilometers wide area, had something like ten stores in Viareggio alone, 4 more in Lido di Camaiore, cakewalk specially if I was moving with a bicycle or with a bike. Lucca which was 30km-ish from home, again train and nearly the same amount of store that were in Viareggio plus whatever GameStop name was back in the day

Point 1 extra) If the game was forcefully translated in italian Play dot com was the way, in 10 days new games was at home, not to mention that without Steam in the middle I could just download language files, tamper with hashes if it was necessary, otherwise was just replace and play and it was done, 10 days of waiting was nothing, FOMO wasn't a thing.

Point 2) Goblins gonna gobulin, sadly.

Originally posted by GlaceonChireiden:

PC no contest.
Ever since digital started being seen as a benefit with not having to use discs in a pc, it's started to become the push. Even installing games didn't always require a disc to play them afterwards so PC has tried to make discs largely irrelevant for a looong time.

So this is all YOUR fault pc users. You did this to yourselves.

We had no cd patches, some of them were legal as for example OFP 1985 CWC already had a no cd solution added probably with Resistance release or during 1.46 days, not sure about CoD UO but my cd seems pretty pristine so probably it had already a no cd patch added before 1.51 patch.

So if by mid 2002 and probably earlier the disc solution was already there, it wasn't a biggie, not for me and not for the people I knew.

Originally posted by Vinz Clortho:

steam. They made Half-Life 2 only available by downloading steam, so everyone who wanted to play it (basically every PC gamer at that time) had to also get steam. For a long time, valve were the only ones who released anything on there, eg Portal. Other studios carried on making hard copies. Valve slowly continued to corner the market and then dota brought everyone who didn't already have steam onto it, the rest is history.

Valve didn't aim their guns to nobody, I evaded Steam requirements till 2008, I caved in only for Red Orchestra. Still I don't own a digital copy of RO, I have the solid copy of it, same for L4D and a couple of many other games I own there.

Other publishers probably choose digital copies for other reasons, logistics, releasing region specific copies with or without censor etc

Nowdays, after seeing a certain clip that was posted yestarday on that ch4n, I do wonder if their digital is really worth it, if their incessant mission of controlling our thoughts or forcing us into twitch for drops and other bs I saw like 4 or 5 different requests or server side scripts required for matchmaking and other random crap that really makes no sense and makes their stupid reasoning very questionable in terms of money gain and losses.

I don't really get it, in the past even when a game company was no more and the official side of things was also goner, all you needed were public resources to keep the game playable.

PC gamers when we stopped putting physical drives in our builds. Most PC cases don't even come with a slot or space for a physical drive anymore.

It was PC gamers, but it wasn't exactly Steam that did it. Before Steam there were tons of video game portals online. Nexon probably being the most notable one. Almost all of the foreign games were download only. Things like Ragnarok online, maplestory, combat arms, soldier front, graal online, perfect world, rappelz, guinz the duel, gunbound, survival project, etc, etc. Korean game portals really were the first Steams filled to the brim with MMOs before MMOs were even popular in the states. People think World of Warcraft was the first successful MMO, but there were so many before it.

A lot of the Korean and Japanese game portals came online in the states in 2000 and 2001. Meanwhile Steam didn't appear until 2003. Steam basically saw what they did and starting doing it with American games. Steam is essentially just a program based and more sophisticated game portal. They saw something successful in Asian countries with the potential to be huge here and rolled the dice with successful results. Steam is now the #1 gaming portal because the other ones failed to innovate or even expand their libraries.

Originally posted by Silverkite:

Ok hyberbolic OT gamers, a question WHO PUSHED FOR DIGITAL ONLY BS?
The console market
OR
PC gamers?

Just don't make this discussion a war against us and them.

This seems to be an important topic to you and I assume you have done some research.

What are your findings?

Originally posted by TheStoryteller01:

Originally posted by Silverkite:

Ok hyberbolic OT gamers, a question WHO PUSHED FOR DIGITAL ONLY BS?
The console market
OR
PC gamers?

Just don't make this discussion a war against us and them.

This seems to be an important topic to you and I assume you have done some research.

What are your findings?

I doubt anyone has done any research. The most you are likely to find are some journalistic opinion pieces which are worth their weight in dog crap.

Originally posted by λnomaly ⚛:

Originally posted by Raz:

It was PC gamers, but it wasn't exactly Steam that did it. Before Steam there were tons of video game portals online. Nexon probably being the most notable one. Almost all of the foreign games were download only. Things like Ragnarok online, maplestory, combat arms, soldier front, graal online, perfect world, rappelz, guinz the duel, gunbound, survival project, etc, etc. Korean game portals really were the first Steams filled to the brim with MMOs before MMOs were even popular in the states. People think World of Warcraft was the first successful MMO, but there were so many before it.

A lot of the Korean and Japanese game portals came online in the states in 2000 and 2001. Meanwhile Steam didn't appear until 2003. Steam basically saw what they did and starting doing it with American games. Steam is essentially just a program based and more sophisticated game portal. They saw something successful in Asian countries with the potential to be huge here and rolled the dice with successful results. Steam is now the #1 gaming portal because the other ones failed to innovate or even expand their libraries.

Also some of the first cash shops.

That game list brought back a lot of memories.

Also true. They were the first to also have loot boxes and gambling mechanics as such things have always been huge in Asia. You can also thank and or blame them for DLC and seasons as well. So pretty much all of the good and bad things you see in gaming today came from old Korean and Japanese MMOs.

Originally posted by St✩rlight:

Originally posted by TheStoryteller01:

This seems to be an important topic to you and I assume you have done some research.

What are your findings?

I doubt anyone has done any research. The most you are likely to find are some journalistic opinion pieces which are worth their weight in dog crap.

OPs who just bait without actually contributing to their very own topic dont deserve our attention.

If you want to play along and fall for it every time, suit yourself.