Why You Don’t Own Your Own Video Games Any More

There's no denying that the Internet has done so many great things for both the world and gaming, in the latter case allowing developers to patch their games into better shape, introduce new features, and even release lower-budget titles on digital storefronts free of the costs of physical production.

But the fact that almost all video games now interface with the Internet in one way or another creates a rift between the physical item people pay money for and the actual end product that they play on their system.

In 20 years' time, you won't be able to simply put a PS5 game disc into the console, sans-Internet - a terrifying prospect, we know - and play the precise, concrete vision the developers intended for you to experience.

Just try playing No Man's Sky without the heaps of patches released over the last few years: the pre-patch, 1.0 version of the game is a wretched piece of work, to be kind.

And so the issue is a double-edged sword, because No Man's Sky absolutely needed to be molded into shape post-launch, but the state of the game now is such a wide leap from the code on the actual game disc that ownership of the current, undeniably superior version feels tenuous at best.

In the PC sphere the notion of ownership becomes much spottier given that physical PC games haven't amounted to much more than a download code in a box for many years, the box largely serving as a ceremonial token emblem of ownership to be placed on a shelf.

But given the increasingly digital-centric present we're living in, the issue of ownership becomes much more challenging - and dangerous...