Rereleased cheaper games were a thing but adjusted for inflation they’d still be very expensive compared to now. I remember buying them for ~£10 which is about £18.50 now. These days they’re generally much cheaper and don’t need manual patching or media. I never got my copy of GTA 2 back!
There are definitely trade offs. No one can take your physical copy. Old MMO games could continue with new branches when the official servers died. Physical games are givable others when you don’t want it anymore. Digital are nice for online play keeping everyone on the same builds and don’t take up any space.
But I’ve had plenty of games I “owned” disappear from my steam library because they were not longer supported or whatever.
Rereleased cheaper games were a thing but adjusted for inflation they’d still be very expensive compared to now. I remember buying them for ~£10 which is about £18.50 now. These days they’re generally much cheaper and don’t need manual patching or media. I never got my copy of GTA 2 back!
There are definitely trade offs. No one can take your physical copy. Old MMO games could continue with new branches when the official servers died. Physical games are givable others when you don’t want it anymore. Digital are nice for online play keeping everyone on the same builds and don’t take up any space.
But I’ve had plenty of games I “owned” disappear from my steam library because they were not longer supported or whatever.