Digital media is nerfed

Sony announced, earlier this month, that they will cease production of physical discs for new games on their PlayStation consoles, starting January 2028. This reignited a long-lasting discussion about physical media versus digital purchases, mostly but not just within gaming discussion circles. Other media traditionally distributed through physical storage mediums, like movies and music records, have been going through this direction of dematerialization over the last few decades, and it has been a topic of debate for about as long.

I feel that the discussion is now more muddied than ever: this latest iteration of “digital vs physical” mixes up concerns of access, ownership, preservation… More specifically, people often seem to be comparing what they can do with PlayStation discs, to what they can do with digital purchases in the PlayStation platform, to what they can do in other digital platforms, such as Steam - but, sometimes, with a side of what users are allowed to do with “consoles” vs “PC,” in more general terms. Because the discussion has spread outside of gaming circles, the arguments started to also include more general observations about how physical and digital media tends to work… but in the case of console games, those arguments don’t always apply.

It’s natural, and healthy, to compare the actual, practical, popular implementations of what is being discussed, rather than hypothetical “what ifs.” However, doing this tends to progressively remove those hypothetical or secondary options from the public discourse, and that’s what “they” want. For example, people often ignore that even the physical mediums being discussed - modern game console discs - already do not enable all possibilities that other physical formats do, namely when it comes to concerns like preservation.¹

To technically-inclined people, this can be a slightly depressing and infuriating topic to discuss. On paper, ones and zeros ought to be the ultimate form for storage and distribution of media. In its “natural form,” digital data almost begs to be copied. Partial copies of digital data happen naturally as a result of manipulating it, within each computer and between computers, and extra engineering effort is usually required to get fewer copies to happen. This was obvious to most computer users a decade or two ago, when the app-oriented model was yet to take over software platforms: back when we used files and folders, rather than “going into apps” to use our data, copying those files and folders around came naturally to most users… at least the ones who made backups.

Digital data can be passed easily across different storage mediums, and be easily migrated to more durable or expansive ones, as required - with current digital mediums being able to store data in a much more compact volume and with much less material than analog ones. This is the ultimate form of the ability to learn and retell information, the ability that made humans what they are, what allows us to all live in increasingly more advanced societies (hopefully). Data can be sent from one physical place to another, even through electromagnetic fields, at immense speed - it is probably the closest we’ll ever get to teleportation. This ought to make the “digital vs physical” debate rather silly and unnecessary, with digital being the clear winner: why limit this ability to recollect to physical trinkets that are difficult to transport, replicate, and get lost and damaged over time?

Sometimes, technically-inclined people won’t move past this notion that digital ought to be better, refuse to recognize the realities of what’s actually being sold in most widely used digital marketplaces these days, and won’t understand why someone would claim that physical is better, thinking it’s just about vanity benefits like being able to physically display one’s media collection. Meanwhile, staunch proponents of physical media don’t really understand what current physical formats contain, nor just how much of the abilities of those formats are already at the mercy of the platform operators. People end up talking past each other.

As it turns out, information can be quite valuable, and there are advantages to keeping some of it to yourself, and to limit its spread. For one, there’s the human right to privacy. But most relevant to the topic at hand, there’s also the ability to trade valuable data for something else. And so, economic interests come into the picture. Even if the data is just a replica or representation of an art work or an entertainment product, it’s easy to understand why one would want to gatekeep it behind payment, as a means to profit from such art.

With books, gatekeeping access to already-made copies was easy - even if preventing unauthorized copies was never possible. The same goes for paintings, music compositions, and so on. Any data that can be observed can be copied, given enough effort. But as art, media and mediums evolved, the data necessary to accurately represent them also became more complex. Dedicated mediums like music records emerged in order to hold that data, with varying quality loss. Copies started to require more and more effort and technology; copying a music record required some other device capable of holding at least an approximation of that record, and another device or dedicated method, just to produce it. Those mediums, being individual physical pieces, were also easy to gatekeep.

Once we figured out ways for that data to enter the realm of ones and zeros, and ways to store that digital data, the storage medium became agnostic from the data and from the media it represented, and so did the act of copying it. This was great for storage and preservation - we are no longer constrained by the limitations of individual physical mediums, and copies can be made without quality degradation or access to expensive equipment.

Progressively, gatekeeping access to individual exemplars became much more difficult, especially as computers became faster and faster at copying data, within and among themselves. This was a challenge for those in the business of selling access to (copies of) data: if digital data copying happens “naturally,” as a result of its use, and if media is now encodable as digital data, how could they ensure that each media consumer would still pay for access to that media?

Now that everyone thinks in terms of apps, and now that most widely used operating systems actively prevent users from directly accessing the files used by such apps, the problem almost seems solved. These terrible modern OS even respect the apps’ wishes to prevent us from taking screenshots (sigh, the amount of times I’ve taken photos of my bank’s app with another phone…). With the advent of fast internet connections, media no longer even needs to be present in the device where we consume it, at least not for an extended period. However, back when we were using files and folders, stored in our own personal storage devices, preventing so-called “piracy” wasn’t a small challenge.

Much to the chagrin of those in the business of selling access to data, all that was available to prevent the copying of data were tricks at best. Those tricks nevertheless grew to be quite complex, and became what is now known as Digital Rights Management technology, or DRM. The point of DRM is to limit what those holding data in their systems can do with it, namely, by preventing copies - effectively, attempting to bring back the limitations of the physical trinkets that held media exemplars, that had allowed a series of different business models to flourish.

Trying to prevent unauthorized copies implies that one ought to distinguish between authorized and unauthorized copying. Regardless of what the aforementioned businesses and their lobbying pushed for (and successfully signed into law in some jurisdictions), something like copying a music tape to make a personal backup, or as a step to produce derivative works for personal consumption, is not morally reprehensible and should always be legal (and it is, where I live). However, DRM technology - like basically all technology - can’t really decide based on intent. Therefore, even the earlier and ineffective implementations tended to get in the way of lawful media use. To businesses, this was actually a nice side effect: if you want a second copy for whatever reason, you better pay for a second license!

Fast-forward a few decades, and a majority of gamers and cinephiles is happily using platforms with DRM at their core, which heavily restrict how the digital copies of data can be used. Rights are signed away left and right in end-user licensing agreements. These heavily restricted systems, where even a personal backup of a physical copy can’t be lawfully made - thanks to anti-DRM-circumvention provisions present in international legal frameworks like the DMCA - have become what “digital media” means to a majority of people.

It is unsurprising that digital distribution of media won - the teleportation abilities alone would make it a winner in terms of convenience and economics. What is perhaps more surprising is just how many other qualities of digital media people were willing to lose in exchange for that convenience, even going so far as to waive many of the possibilities that physical media already presented.

In the particular case of the PlayStation and other current consoles, when there’s a physical medium, at least users can still trivially transfer games between different people without issue - even if copies can’t be made. But when it comes to digital purchases, even this right is lost: you can’t make copies, you can’t transfer your purchases to a different account. Lending and second-hand selling are effectively impossible, short of sharing an entire account with someone else. It is the loss of these rights that is causing the most uproar these days, and understandably so: this directly paves the way to an even more centralized and unfair market for games. However, this is just another nail in the coffin. For one prior such nail, the ability to produce personal backups had already been lost ages ago, with all the DRM technology that had been added to the physical mediums of console games.

Artificial restrictions are not exclusive to digital media. As a consumer, I can copy or rip a CD and get an useful result that’s compatible with different players or computers; the same can’t be said for physical console games, and it’s been like this for a long time. Even more aggressive restrictions have been explored: as a real example, in the 2000s, Flexplay introduced a time-limited DVD-compatible format where the discs would literally degrade within a few days, once used - a way to enforce temporary rental viewing licenses.² Understandably, this format was never really successful.

For a hypothetical example of restrictions associated with physical media, one can imagine a DRM system where each physical game disc gets irrevocably paired with the account of the console where it is first played, imposing artificial limitations on borrowing and second-hand selling of physical copies.³ And then there’s always the paperwork strategy: once we enter the realm of what users are contractually or legally allowed to do vs. what they can actually do, there’s a plethora of rights that can be signed away with the right contract, even when the media is physical.

My main point is that, just like physical media doesn’t need to and indeed shouldn’t have these restrictions, digital media also doesn’t. I only buy music on platforms that give me DRM-free files, like Bandcamp or Subvert. Actual files, that I can copy to all of my music playing devices and archive onto whatever mediums I want. Files that I can still stream from said online platforms, but optionally also from my own storage servers. Files that will continue to work on future devices, even if they might eventually have to be transformed into a more modern digital format. The only way this won’t be the case, is if the future of computing is a hellscape where you can’t bring your own files…

DRM-free purchases give me all of the benefits of physical media, with the only downside being the loss of the tactile experience of swapping physical cassettes or discs around. Most interestingly, those files that are unencumbered by any protection mechanisms are the ones that require the least technical effort from all sides. The seller needs to maintain no “activation servers” of sorts. I don’t need to maintain no connection to such servers. I don’t even need to keep my clock set right in order to listen to those songs. I can edit their metadata as I wish, so if the seller gets it wrong, it’s not such a big deal. I can convert them to other formats if I dislike the original one. I literally get a better experience because the publisher put in less effort.

For those to whom the loss of that physical experience matters, there’s nothing stopping them from personally producing physical trinkets to represent and store their collection, and multiple such creative projects have made the rounds on the web. Though I’d wager that for a majority of people lamenting the death of physical media, the loss of that physical experience is a lesser concern than being unable to buy media second-hand, or the possibility of losing access to their purchases, such as when Sony recently pulled purchased movies from their users’ accounts.

For PC games, platforms like GOG exist, where all games are sold without DRM. The question of whether these games will be playable on future systems is more complex than for music or movies, but one thing is for certain: it’ll always be easy to get a DRM-free copy to play, than to have to break the DRM and then still have to figure out how to get the software to work in that day and age. Our current experience already shows that DRM has been one of the main hurdles in getting software to work on platforms other than those it was originally designed for.

Even when it comes to purchases encumbered by DRM, it is important to note that not all DRM systems are created equal. Steam does make a lightweight DRM system available to developers, but it ultimately respects user freedoms more than a system like Denuvo, which limits on how many devices a game can be installed, introduces performance degradation through its heavy DRM protection mechanisms, and creates compatibility issues with the systems of the future, or just the less popular systems of the present.

It’s undeniable that DRM-free digital copies are more prone to copyright abuse than physical media ever was, even prior to the introduction of copy protection mechanisms in physical media. The copy of unprotected digital media is essentially free, after all - there is no consumable material involved. But even if one believes that some form of DRM is necessary, it is difficult to find good reasons for many of the current limitations in digital media platforms, other than “we want our business model to be greedier than it ever was with physical media.”

For consumer rights to be respected, going DRM-free should not be the only answer: it’s unrealistic to think that all publishers will start making DRM-free versions of all their products available for purchase, and it’s equally unlikely that DRM systems will ever become illegal in any markets with global weight. We can even argue that “DRM-free” is a concept that will lose meaning as more and more people think about “apps” as the portals to content, and less about “files.” Settling for a compromise is necessary: we must push for improvements to current licensing systems, in order to restore lost rights.

A concrete example of a limitation that’s difficult to defend from a consumer’s perspective, is that of the elimination of the second-hand market in these digital distribution platforms. Letting licenses be moved from one account to another, within each platform, would be easy for these platforms to implement from a technical perspective (on par with the difficulty of adding a shopping cart to Epic’s store, and they did eventually do it). That would be enough to maintain the second-hand market, simultaneously addressing challenges like the inheritance of digital purchases. As for moving across platforms, we have the technology too: just a few years ago, every cryptocurrency enthusiast would eagerly mention how NFTs would allow digital purchases to be honored in a decentralized fashion. That would just be one of the possible systems, perhaps the most complicated one, but still: the point is that technology itself is definitely not the driving force behind these limitations.

I think that this is an issue where consumers won’t be able to just “vote with their wallets” for better consumer rights with digital media; the time for that has long passed. Flexplay’s rotting DVDs never made it big, but that’s largely because, to the eyes of most laypeople, they were a visibly worse option compared to others that were on the market. However, when it came to digital distribution, things were more subtle and gradual, and people have terrible memory. This has left everyone in a position where it seems there is no choice; nowadays, to strictly buy DRM-free means to miss out on experiencing zeitgeist-defining cultural works; soon enough, for PlayStation users, buying strictly physical will mean buying no newly released games. This has been a long time coming, and the frogs have been suitably boiled.

Like with the push for repairable consumer electronics, I believe this is a subject where only new regulations can change the course of things quickly enough for us to still witness effects in our lifetimes. Will regulators manage to do their jobs, even with all the lobbying from the behemoth platforms? Will they be able to do it in a proper future-looking manner? I would certainly not want physical media to be mandatory… but I can totally see them purposefully misunderstanding the problem in such a way that that’s the end result.

In gaming lingo, to nerf something is to make something weaker or less effective, typically a weapon or a certain strategy. For media consumers, digital is being nerfed. The commonly accepted meaning of “digital purchase” yields something that has just a fraction of the power it could have. Actual effort went into “balancing” the power of digital media; this “balancing” is done by the game developers - the media conglomerates, in this allegory - and as usual in these days, it isn’t so much to make the game more fun, but to sell more microtransactions.

Helped by generalized digital illiteracy, the blurring of definitions and muddying of discussions, together with intentional “dark patterns” in user experience design, platforms and publishers are getting away with imposing restrictions that wouldn’t make for viable business, if they were to be applied to physical media. Media juggernauts, with massive marketing budgets, are complicit by publishing exclusively to these consumer-unfriendly ecosystems, meaning it will always appear like consumers are consciously voting with their wallets, to go into their own cage - regardless of what customers, independent artists and smaller publishers would actually do, if they were given better choices.

As everyone increasingly accepts to pay more for less, believing there would be no other choice, just remember that in its natural habitat, digital media does not behave like this.