You’re not wrong that physical media was essentially doomed, and arguably it should have been as digital distribution is faster, easier, and objectively better for the planet (look into the environmental cost of manufacturing vinyl records, for example)
But who popularized the current dominant model of “you’re only buying access, not the game itself”? And before you go on about how it would be impossible to make a digital equivalent to distribution equivalent to purchasing physical media, remember gog exists and has been around and successful for almost 2 decades now
The secret sauce there is linux support. It may sound like a marginal thing, but Valve has been working on making Linux gaming viable for over a decade now and it’s paying off in spades. GOG exists, sure, but they’re a fraction of Valves influence for a reason. Besides, there was a DRM free distribution chain before GoG that everyone used, it was called piracy.
You’re not wrong that physical media was essentially doomed, and arguably it should have been as digital distribution is faster, easier, and objectively better for the planet (look into the environmental cost of manufacturing vinyl records, for example)
But who popularized the current dominant model of “you’re only buying access, not the game itself”? And before you go on about how it would be impossible to make a digital equivalent to distribution equivalent to purchasing physical media, remember gog exists and has been around and successful for almost 2 decades now
The secret sauce there is linux support. It may sound like a marginal thing, but Valve has been working on making Linux gaming viable for over a decade now and it’s paying off in spades. GOG exists, sure, but they’re a fraction of Valves influence for a reason. Besides, there was a DRM free distribution chain before GoG that everyone used, it was called piracy.