It’s uncommon, absolutely. But I bought Super Mario Odyssey around the third time I got an alert that it was on sale, for $50 or so. This took a couple years, so it’s reasonably rare, but if the future looks like the past, it will happen

The Switch was the generation where I really started to have adult money, and while a lot of the games I got were lower-priced indie titles, I did get pretty much all of the big 1st party titles.

There’s a reasonable chance I get a Switch 2, but I’m not gonna be buying a lot of games over $70, and the ones I do will probably be when they go on sale for like, 10-15% off. I suspect I’ll be buying fewer games this generation, and I’m okay with that.

Dedicated hardware still has benefits, having your phone notifications separate from gaming, if your phone breaks having your console break would suck, and imo a touchscreen will never surpass physical buttons on controllers so you’d still want those.

I personally hope the future looks more like a steam deck than a gaming phone.

So I’ve spent a few minutes trying to see what the internet thinks, and it looks like there’s not a clear consensus that the First-Sale-Doctrine applies to non-physical goods similarly to physical ones, and does seem to be a consensus that digital goods make it a lot messier. Seems like the law hasn’t caught up to technology, still.

And in absence of clear law, it makes sense that companies are making their own opinions, and unfortunate that some are being greedier than they could be.

IANAL, but… I’m guessing GOG is of the opinion that they’re selling you a license that you own, and can thus bequeath to your heirs, where Steam is of the opinion they’re selling you a nontransferable license, so a will bequeathing it to someone would be seeking to enforce something you lack permission to do.

It’s really a win-win either way. My guess is it’ll be a really pretty game worth playing, which might or might not become the definitive AoM to play long-term. If it’s not, I’ll pick up the original those couple times a year I need my fix

When a contract ending almost caused Sony to remove all Discovery content from users last year, including digital copies of things people had paid full price for, the cracks between buying a digital license and actually owning something that can’t be taken away became more visible to a chunk of people. It’s something, but it’s not ownership, and it can be taken away based on agreements you may have no way of gaining insight into.