I read “discless” as “dickless” and piracy does solve both of them

https://archive.is/lRC6X

This utter disregard from preservation goes hand in hand with the all too common notion that these are “just” games, and not art.

Xbox is considering going discless on Xbox Helix (the code name for the next Xbox) and it’s said that Sony’s decision is going to push them hard one way or the other. If they went discless, it will be because Sony did it and it makes sense. If they don’t, it will be because Sony did it and they can take the piss out of them like they did them in the XB1/PS4 generation by saying “this is how you share games on Xbox” and having one person hand the other the disc.

Of course you probably all remember the times Google and Samsung took the piss out of Apple, like when the Pixel announced it would keep the headphone jack after the iPhone 7 dropped the feature, and then dropped it the next year, or Samsung did the same saying their phones included chargers, then took them out the next year. The fact is, Apple is the leader in smartphones, and the others are just playing follow the leader. Likewise, Sony leads the console race (really, it’s Nintendo, but I mean the performance race Nintendo refuses to enter) so Xbox will follow suit.

Anyway, Xbox apparently has or had a plan, where inserting a game gives you a digital entitlement to the game. The catch is, the discs (XB1/PS4 generation forward) are coded with a unique serial that differs from disc to disc, even within the same SKU. So the catch is, if someone else inserts the same disc, the entitlements go to them. So if you have a discless Xbox and cannot re-authenticate, you need to destroy the disc so your digital entitlements cannot be taken by someone else who puts your disc in their Xbox. This system exists now (it was introduced in the XB1); however, it was never activated. The rumour is that they will activate it prior to the launch of Helix, so the idea is you put your discs in the Series X one at a time and then destroy them, and then when you get a Helix, you can re-download your disc games and play them without the disc (also in the Series S, ostensibly).

On one hand, it’s a good idea. On the other, it means that if the licensing for the game changes, they can change your game and you can’t do anything about it. It also means they can take your game away. Grand Theft Auto is a great example. The PS2 trilogy had songs they lost the licenses to, so they removed those songs. They’re still present in the original versions, but if you only had a digital entitlement, they could remove those songs from your game. Another is Deus Ex. Note that this title has never been released on consoles, so this is purely hypothetical. The game released in 2000, and the New York City skyline was missing the World Trade Center. The first level is the Statue of Liberty, and the head is blown off from a terrorist attack. When asked about the World Trade Center, the developers said they didn’t have enough space to add it, and added “it was probably destroyed in a terrorist attack just like the Statue.” The next year, the World Trade Center was actually destroyed in a terror attack. Now imagine if that happened today with an XSX or PS5 game. They would be able to change your game to reflect the current political system. We don’t want that.

So… they are offering a meaningful alternative. At least, Xbox is considering offering it. Or rather, the system exists, but it hasn’t been implemented yet.

The problem with pirating games, and software in general, is that nobody wants to work for free. It’s why games cost money. It’s not just that they cost money to develop. It’s the people who got paid to do the work. They don’t want to work for free, just like you don’t want to work for free. We all got bills to pay. This is not an argument against piracy. What I’m saying is, the person cracking your game also wants to get paid, and you’re not paying them to crack the game, so you really have to trust that they’re not installing spyware, ransomware, or some crypto mining bullshit on your system.

Furthermore, the problem with “PC” being the “future of preservation” is, you don’t mean computers, you mean Microsoft Windows. So, how does that look in a post-Windows society where everyone concerned with privacy and game preservation is no longer using Windows. They installed Linux, or they bought a Mac instead to just say “fuck you” to the whole Windows ecosystem (as opposed to keeping it as a safety net)? You (I mean people in general here, not OP specifically) talk about a post-console world, but I’m living in a post-Windows/post-PC world. So then what? Your future is my past. What does game preservation look like in my future? In other words, how fucked are we? The good answer is, let’s get people on porting Proton to macOS utilising GPTK (Game Porting Toolkit) which is kind of the same thing. Macs are still the best deal in computers, with PC manufacturers rushing to compete with the MacBook Neo, even with the price increases. They’re offering too many compromises. They’re saying we’ll sell you a shitty laptop for the price of a Neo, but it’s not gonna be a Mac, which is still a more elegant and stable machine. It’s gonna be a piece of shit running dog shit code. You can still get a Mac for under $1000, but to get a comparable PC, you have to spend more. It’s where the smart money goes, if you need a new machine. Unfortunately, no Mac has room for a GPU. So there is that factor. Still, the M1 generation from 2021 can run Cyberpunk 2077 and that’s one of the most performance-intensive games out there. So to every other game out there, I say, “what’s your excuse?”. If it’s just propping up Microsoft’s stocks, I’d say that’s not good enough.

Preservation isn’t just “I can play this game offline.” It means “I can play this game on my next computer.” Look at preservation of DOS and Win32 games that traditionally do not work on modern Windows, and the efforts to “modernise” them by making them work on modern Windows. We need to get these games running on Linux and macOS just the same. Or whatever comes after those. What we really need, I think, is probably something like Docker. You take the work of that one Windows clone Linux and others like it and you make an environment most Windows games will run in, then you put the whole game in that container. In theory, that container should be able to run on anything that can support the containers, which I believe is all the operating systems (possibly including Android and definitely excluding iOS, but definitely including macOS). That’s how we do it. Offline and supporting whatever platform you find yourself on. Not propping up MSFT.