Comment on The History and Future of Digital Ownership
dandi8@kbin.social 6 months agoAnd yet, somehow, GOG and Itch still exist, allowing you to download games completely DRM-free, as often as you like. If they ever go out of business, you can still use your local copies forever.
How do they do it? A mystery...
Mahlzeit@feddit.de 6 months ago
That takes a lot less bandwidth than streaming. All business have fixed costs. Blockbuster Video had to pay rent for physical stores, for example. Delivering via the net is relatively cheap compared to stores or physical postage. I’d be surprised if GOG’s cost aren’t much lower than anything physical.
dandi8@kbin.social 6 months ago
Well then let me actually download the movie like it was a game, then! And how exactly does it take less bandwidth? It's still tens or hundreds of gigabytes to download every time someone wants to install a game, most people only use the offline installers as backups.
Mahlzeit@feddit.de 6 months ago
But how often do you install the same game? A streaming movie needs to be (partially) downloaded every time someone watches it. But yes, I shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this ends up being a higher bandwidth cost per dollar purchasing price.
When you keep a backup, then the download was basically just a way of delivering a physical copy. I answered why we can’t have online property.
As to why many don’t allow you to keep a private copy. For the obvious reason: To maintain control over their property and monetize it to the highest degree possible.