Physical Media is better

This topic has been done to death since the advent of digital downloads and subscription services, so it is very likely I’m wasting both of our time by typing this out but I genuinely worry about the lack of physical media available anymore. While I admit, the ease of access to basically any form of media we could ever possibly want (barring certain financial barriers) is pretty great, I feel the majority of people that have half a brain can see the glaring problem inherent in such a distribution system.

It doesn’t exist. It’s just data on a drive somewhere. If something bad happens or the owner’s of said data up and decides to nuke it for whatever reason, that stuff is just gone forever. With pretty much everything in the cloud now we could potentially end up with a global Library of Alexandria scenario should some sort of disaster happen, man-made or otherwise.

This system is absolutely ripe for abuse as well. It doesn’t matter how much money you spent to “own” said media. If the service provider decides to, they can just take it away from you without reimbursement. They originally buried that fact in long Terms of Service contracts but when various people and groups called these corporations out on it these corpos just came out and said “Yeah? What are you gonna do about it peasant?” and we basically just had to roll with it because the physical media market is pretty much nonexistent outside of a few industry outliers. It’s the equivalent (in my mind) of being frozen out of your bank account due to the arbitrary whims of the bank that is meant to safe guard your money. Yes I know that happens as well but that is a whole other can of worms.

And don’t even get me started on video games. What was once marketed as a way to easily patch console games and decrease prices turned into a pathetic cover for lazy devs and predatory business practices. What few physical copies of modern games that exist don’t even hold the actual game data, and when was the last time you heard of a AAA game that wasn’t an absolute mess of bugs that required a large patch in the first thirty days of it’s launch? And when exactly were they planning on lowering prices now that everything is digital? Yes I am aware of inflation and I know this system has been a boon for the indie game market, but there is zero reason a digital copy of a game should cost the same as a physical copy. There is no manufacturing deficit that must be made up for in this equation, this is merely another facet of greed and these people will continue to operate in this manner until we stop rewarding bad behavior.

My advice to you is try to obtain physical copies of the media you enjoy in whatever form or function you can muster. Barring theft or damage this is actually your property to enjoy and keep for as long as you wish. If a physical copy of what you want doesn’t exist, make one. It’s far easier than most people think and only takes a bit of effort. Please note that I’m not telling you to do anything illegal, I’m just saying it would be wise to backup anything you have in some sort of physical form so that should it suddenly disappear forever from the web you’ll still have it.

This in and of itself can become a fun and fulfilling hobby as well. I personally like to make cassette tapes and taught myself basic book binding so I could make a few paperbacks of public domain texts. A friend of mine likes to make custom boxes for old abandonware games and honestly seems to enjoy doing that more than playing the games themselves. Whether you’re a quick and dirty method guy like me or an obsessive perfectionist like my buddy, just remember that as long as you enjoy it and it can’t be taken away by the fickle whims of some shareholder committee then it’s worth trying. Nobody was ever excited to inherit a Netflix password.