this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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Yes. That's how it was done before, no reason to not do this now. Wing Commander 4 came on 6 CDs. As you progressed through the game, you kept advancing through them.
As Blu Rays are read only, you obviously can't apply the patch there. The patches were always downloaded and applied to the game parts you had on your hard drive. What was wrong with that?
You need a device to read physical media to actually read physical media, yes.
It's not how things work because games that came on physical media had literally no advantage anymore at some point. With physical media just being used to speed up the first install in your always-online environment and bandwidth being no longer an issue, they just became obsolete. If I could have played half life 2 without steam using my disc, it would have been worth keeping. With the box being essentially just a bulky envelope for a product key, it turned out to be just a hassle.
At some point, steam will enshittify or shut down. That's when we will realize that online only distribution might not have been such a great idea.
You need a "launcher" just to download update, and it's not the most ideal for me. I prefer to have nothing between the button play (or click on the executable), and the game launch.
I agree with you, only online is totally stupid because the moment the service shutdown you lose everything. This is why GOG is good, because after buying a game, I can create backup on external disk. The only biggest problem for me is they don't have a good Linux integration for GOG Galaxy 2.
This is not perfect, but it's a better start than nothing. And it's difficult to do this because of DRM on other store.
But you actually can backup your steam games on a external drive.
Yes, but you can't launch the game without Steam (I think some game can be start without Steam but I'm not sure). And i prefer to own my game, and the possibility to change how i launch the game (with or without the launcher).
It's far from ideal solution, but you can create offline backup on steam and after steam fall, launch your games from it.
And yes, some games are launchable without steam. For instance Darkest Dungeon 1.
What's wrong with just downloading a patch and pointing it to the directory the game was installed in?
Nothing, but you can be sure that's not how it's going to work. A simple example with Steam and certain games: you have one launcher with Steam, but you have another launcher between the game and Steam, and I don't see why that's necessary.
But the way you want to do it requires a bit more work, but nothing too complicated, and more and more people want something simple and easy to use, which is not the case with your proposal because they have to do more steps to be able to play.