Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
Not sure what the last one was, but the last couple PC games I bought physical copies of could be installed from the disc, but also had Steam keys in the box and then didn’t require the disc to play.
The most recent ones I’ve bought were only a Steam key in the box, and the DVD simply had a Steam installer on it. Nice that some have both, I haven’t actually seen one of those.
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Not sure what the last one was, but the last couple PC games I bought physical copies of could be installed from the disc, but also had Steam keys in the box and then didn’t require the disc to play.
The most recent ones I’ve bought were only a Steam key in the box, and the DVD simply had a Steam installer on it. Nice that some have both, I haven’t actually seen one of those.