A French court has ruled that Valve should allow people to re-sell their digital games

Quoting: KlausWith digital sales there is a additionally the aspects of continuous service. Updates, support, downloads... I could see Valve splitting game prices into a service fee and a game price.

That sounds really clever actually, and I’m surprised no one has commented on this idea. Valve could sell game keys for a pittance, say 5$. When you buy them on the store, a key activation fee that makes up the bulk of current game prices (say 25$) is added to your order and lets you download and use the game right away.

You might then be able to resell your key, but the buyer would still need to order a key activation from Valve for the same 25$ to download it and use Steam features for that game. Presumably Valve would pay a cut of those fees to publishers based on the game being unlocked.

There’s something inherently dirty about making the key worthless this way, but it does emphasize the fact that Valve provide several services and commodities that have to be made profitable somehow. Currently Steam is free and they make their money on game sales without disclosing it explicitly on your bills, but going forward there could be an explicit cost on using Steam and that would hardly be a product that can be resold. The effect of such an approach on refunds would also be interesting to say the least.

So a quick question why would anyone by new?

Game New - £10 (+any updates & support and you can sell it 2nd hand?)
Game Second hand - £5 (+any updates & support and you can sell it 3rd hand?)
Game Third hand - £2 (+any updates & support and you can sell it 4rd hand?) or
Game Third hand - £5 (+any updates & support and you can sell it 4th hand?) ?????
Game Third hand (buy 100% like new - £10 (+any updates & support and you can sell it 4th hand?) ?????

In each one of these cases you get the same exact game the sellers will always get a cut, the indy devs only get 1 cut. The AAA will be selling passes, subscriptions, loot-boxes... so they are still making money through worse practices (in my opinion)


So personally don't want to see micro-transaction/loot-box models or rent pre-hour as a solution to second hand selling. (renting is okay if that's your thing)

As such someone pointed out the liberty of selling a game they own. That's one way to look at it but I like to buy a game and play it when I want and for as long as I want and I just get the feeling this will drive the industry in a direction that I do not like as a way to enjoy my game. So I suppose I will be at liberty to no longer play?

The way I see games is; I read reviews (thanks Liam + GOL), watch videos/streams (thanks Samsai), and estimate how long I will play them for and how much enjoyment I will get out of it. Then I will buy when the price matches what I think it's worth, that may be full price or on sale. Also I think I treat games more like food. I'm happy to pay for some tasty food, or if there is a sale I might buy something more extravagant. Also I don't think there is a second hand market for food I have enjoyed!

Reasons to by new for physical items:
Car - cam belt is about to break resulting in a right-off in two weeks (yes this happened to me)
Books - Coffee stains and other people writing in it
DVDs - scratches cause skips

+ a level of risk as you don't necessary know the quality of second hand so you may have to put in more work or shop around finding mint condition is rare.

On the freedom side for me DRM free is more important than second hand games (if I want to pay less for a game I will wait for a sale)

Quoting: EhvisI think people are making far more fuss about this than what is really going on. It appears to me that the ruling is about the passages in the licence agreement that forbid users from reselling their games. I suspect that all that is needed for Valve (and other stores) is to remove those passages and inform the users that this is in fact legal. However, nowhere does it really say that Valve needs to implement a system for people to resell individual games to other users. Which means that all that the net effect maybe that you will be allowed to resell your entire account. How many users will that benefit?

Came here to write the very same thing. The people who have actually read the verdict might chime in and tell us if we are wrong but this all sounds just that a digital store is no longer allowed to forbid people from reselling their bought games in their EULA. How such a thing should be made possible in a technical sense is all up to the user to figure out and no one is forcing Valve to open a second hand market in Steam (nor I assume would Valve want to do such a thing since that would open up that market big time by making it easy).

Quoting: orochi_kyo... why suing Valve specifically when every other virtual store including console ones are doing the same ...

They sued Valve since Valve is the biggest player in the market (to make it a high profile case). The ruling will then apply to every one else that sells digital products.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ObsidianBlkAgain, I highly doubt any of this will really happen... But, call me old if you'd like, but I do like physically owning my games.

Hard drive is physical, and can hold a ton of your backed up games, without requiring any individual physical media. Buy the game on GOG, back it up, use it and you are set. No need to sell it on physical disks or cards. They don't offer anything useful if you can download it.

I get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for? Also, depending on the size of your collection (and the size of the games within your collection), that huge hard drive may still only store about a hundred or so (thinking ~50gb sized games these days). My Linux specific game library on Steam is 157 games. Ok... so let's say you store all of that on a SINGLE hard drive. Great. You didn't really, though. If you're worried about integrity of your data, you'll probably want to put them in RAID... so, at minimum you need two hard drives. Might at well offload those files to a third part data storage service... but that brings us back to controlling the purchases you make because you can't guarantee those services will remain, or that, if they do go under, that give you enough warning they're doing so for you to rescue your files. At least if I backed up my physical game to a hard drive and the same event happens, my physical copy is still in my hands.

Honestly... I get why digital distribution is king. I really do. Its instant gratification, automatic patching, and you can reduce the amount of physical space needed to store your games. Yes... but you give up your actual ownership, and there is no way you can be sure your game won't be simply taken from you because of some IP dispute between two companies that could honestly care less that you put your hard earned money into their product. Does this happen often? Right now, not really, but it ~~*does*~~ happen.

Quoting: ObsidianBlkI get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for?

Consider yourself lucky, but don't think it's a reliable method of storage. Optical discs deteriorate with time, and are a lot more error prone than hard drives which in contrast are built to last for many years.

Quoting: ObsidianBlkAlso, depending on the size of your collection (and the size of the games within your collection), that huge hard drive may still only store about a hundred or so (thinking ~50gb sized games these days).

Not all games are 50 GB. But let's say they are and let's say you have 8 TB hard drive (around $200 these days). That will fit 160 of such games? If you need more, you can get even bigger hard drives (14 TB for example), or get several. Still a lot easier than managing a whole pile of optical disks to hold the same amount of data. If you need backups, get a NAS.

So no, you don't need to give up on actual ownership. You should just use the right tools for it.


Last edited by Shmerl on 20 September 2019 at 8:18 pm UTC

yea you need to chill out with me dude.if i feel i want to sell anything i will do so.how is this even about me this is about us the users.if we want to sell any of our games it should be our right to do so.people have been selling games for decades,what difference if its a actual copy or digital.

Quoting: orochi_kyoThis is simple, Valve should close doors on France. This is beyond ridiculous, why suing Valve specifically when every other virtual store including console ones are doing the same.
Now imagine the impact for developers, Funny thing Epic shills will celebrate this when they support Epic because "Epic is cool with devs", lol. They are so dumb.

Quoting: linuxcityi would not mind selling games i no longer play or transfer them to another user

Of course you dont!! All of this is about you and only you, the other people who could get involved negatively doesnt matter.

This behavior of not thinking how anything could affect anyone else but me is a cancer.
We have a healthy gaming sector(not in the employee yet) when we have plenty of competition that allows users to get games in nice sales, but with things like this, I see developers raising prices in order to get the revenue lost by the fact people can resell their games for whatever price they like. This is something really stupid, ruled by a court that has no idea of how the gaming industry is working right now!!

This will affect indies really hard.

Quoting: chancho_zombieI think the article needs more clarification some news site are saying that the ruling is forcing to allow to sell games inside steam.Like this one:

https://malditosnerds.com/noticias/La-justicia-francesa-obliga-a-Valve-a-habilitar-la-reventa-de-juegos-en-Steam-20190919-0006.html

Is not the same to force the creation of a marketplace inside steam or outside steam.

My Spanish isn't perfect, but where does that article say that? I don't see it there nor in the French articles that I've read about this ruling. Is it just the headline?

By the way, having read a bit more now, it's interesting to mention that according to the court, contrary to what Valve claim in their terms, they don't sell game subscriptions but actual game copies, on the basis that the "licence" is perpetual, which is contrary to the nature of a subscription service (recurring payment for time-limited service). This, in turn, makes those games subject to normal French laws regarding resale, i.e. Valve cannot prevent it. I wonder if Valve might counter that argument by changing its terms of sale to provide time-limited access instead (perhaps only in France).

Quoting: vinniebottledSo a quick question why would anyone by new?

Lack of supply. There won't be that many used copies for sale. I'm sure not selling my games--they're mine. Lots of people feel the same, while the majority just can't be bothered.
Also, the same reason lots of people buy at release instead of waiting for the sales: They don't want to wait. Even people who sell their games won't do it instantly. They'll want to play the game through, if it doesn't suck they'll want to play it through again, or at least they'll think they might and plan to for a while before finally deciding that nah, they probably won't get back to it. Very few people are going to do really fast turnaround resale.
I don't see this as having nearly as big an impact as a lot of people here do.

Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: pbThat's it, I'm telling my son right now to stop dreaming of developing games. This basically legalises keyshops and now even allowing you to sell the games you're already played and finished, if it wasn't bad enough before... Piracy killed Amiga gaming, socialism will kill PC gaming?

Can we maybe not be so dramatic? Some of us are old enough to remember that that’s how it was for the majority of video gaming’s existence. And books, DVDs, cars, etc. Sure it would be a disruptive change, but as long as it doesn’t open the door to duplication (piracy), the market can adapt. It might not be pretty for a while, but it won’t just die like that.

Doesn't have anything to do with socialism either. With socialism, developers would get a fair price for their labour, and consumers would be entitled to a copy, but no right to profit from it. If anything, socialism would be better for indie game developers, as it would allow them a stable and dependable income, but obviously much less lucrative for AAA publishers.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: sub

Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: pbThat's it, I'm telling my son right now to stop dreaming of developing games. This basically legalises keyshops and now even allowing you to sell the games you're already played and finished, if it wasn't bad enough before... Piracy killed Amiga gaming, socialism will kill PC gaming?

Can we maybe not be so dramatic? Some of us are old enough to remember that that’s how it was for the majority of video gaming’s existence. And books, DVDs, cars, etc. Sure it would be a disruptive change, but as long as it doesn’t open the door to duplication (piracy), the market can adapt. It might not be pretty for a while, but it won’t just die like that.

I'm not yet having a position on all this yet, tbh.

Being honest, this pure digital distribution is different to what
we had back then for games or even more for the book example.

If you sell a used book, it's used - no matter how hard you try.
Those old game boxed were usually plastic sealed and you had to open them.
From my experience the cardbox boxes suffered as did the jewel case plus the CD.

All I want to say is this: Usually a used product is not mint anymore.
It shows signs of use that is represented in the price when you resell it.

This is completely gone for digital products.
You sell something that's perfectly the same as you bought it first hand.
There is no price on the consumption of the game anymore, which is what the
developer actually wants to get paid for - and that's fair, isn't it?

It's a dilemma.

Not entirely true.

When one buys a 2nd hand book, film, album or game, does the content differ? Is the content less enjoyable because the medium it comes in isn't in mint condition? In my case, I know the answer to both questions (NO).

One might decide to pay less for the state of that format but ultimately the importance here is what you do with that content. Therefore, Valve's case isn't different to existing consumer rights and market laws. Besides, let's not forget that more often that not 2nd hand books are equally, if not more, expensive that new ones in many situations AND that 2nd hand market is completely out of companies revenues. In a platform like Steam, if 2nd hand were to be enabled, they could, and they will, still control how it works getting a chunk of every sale for them as platform and for the dev. Which I believe, it should create another topic in itself.

On Steam (and perhaps the devs) getting a chunk of resale, that's still probably less than the overhead for resales of physical goods. Consider used bookstores--people who actually have gone to used bookstores to sell them your old books* will realize that they pay diddly for them, and only partly because the thing itself is used. They pay diddly because they have to pay rent on a store and utilities and some money for themselves so they don't starve, out of the markup. Similar things are true for used clothes and other things; lots of used goods stores don't pay for the stuff at all, people just donate whatever to get it out of their way. So if Steam or whoever takes a cut of resale, that's hardly unprecedented; they're providing the infrastructure just like a used bookstore.

* I very rarely do this but I have occasionally ended up with duplicates of the same book. Of course where I live, there hardly are any used bookstores any more. Rent got too high, Amazon took over, they all died except a couple legendary ones.

Totally agree with you. What I wanted to express with creating another topic, and mentioning the Steam-infrastructure case, is that we are still to see whether Steam copies could be resold elsewhere -something we can do with physical goods- and whether the devs see a portion of the sale -something they currently don't-.

Continuing with the bookstore analogy; where I live there are still several 2nd hand books though mostly people, and me, buy from online platforms. Quite sad in a way.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: g000hFor those thinking this will be a good thing for DRM-Free Gaming: I think the opposite - This will push all new commercial games to become purely rental titles, i.e. You can download the game for free, but you won't be able to play it without a subscription. DRM-Free games will just be for free gaming (i.e. where no money is paid for the game title). Commercial game developers won't be releasing DRM-Free any more.

Until the next lawsuit. I'm not sure getting around law is quite so simple as all that.

I'm not sure you're quite getting my point on this.

My point isn't that a subscription model would be leveraged onto current games (although it isn't impossible). My point is that it will push game publishers/developers to adopt a subscription model (e.g. rent per hour) for all their new and future titles. This is something which is perfectly fine from a legal perspective, and it would allow them to get around the resale problem entirely (and not lose any profits to resale).

A subscription model like that would change the gaming industry in a big way, i.e. no DRM-Free titles from commercial developers, people who play more hours could end up paying more for the privilege. A loss of consumer ownership of the software - The software would not work if the rental wasn't paid. A subscription model is similar to a streaming model, but rather than streaming the game's video and remotely-controlling it, you still download the files and run it locally.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ObsidianBlkI get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for?

Consider yourself lucky, but don't think it's a reliable method of storage. Optical discs deteriorate with time, and are a lot more error prone than hard drives which in contrast are built to last for many years.

I'm not sure how you treat your optical media, but all I do is keep them in their cases, on a shelf, and they all still work for me. In fact, I don't think there's a single CD/DVD I've attempted to use in recent years that failed to read. No media is 100% fool proof... especially if treated roughly... but, yeah, I do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives. I've rarely heard of a drive lasting much longer than a decade (and, that's actually a pretty solid amount of time).

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ObsidianBlkAlso, depending on the size of your collection (and the size of the games within your collection), that huge hard drive may still only store about a hundred or so (thinking ~50gb sized games these days).

Not all games are 50 GB. But let's say they are and let's say you have 8 TB hard drive (around $200 these days). That will fit 160 of such games? If you need more, you can get even bigger hard drives (14 TB for example), or get several. Still a lot easier than managing a whole pile of optical disks to hold the same amount of data. If you need backups, get a NAS.

So no, you don't need to give up on actual ownership. You should just use the right tools for it.

To each their own.

Your side has the downside of having to purchase the hard drives (let's go with $200 a piece) and the NAS (not always a cheap option in and of itself). Those have moving parts (unless you do SSD, but then you're driving up the cost of the drive) which I can virtually guarantee will fail at some point and then you'll need to buy replacements to get things up and running again. Furthermore, even with low power components, you are still paying money just to keep that NAS going. Not everyone has the money to run and maintain that sort of equipment. If you can, wonderful! But a solid NAS is not an inexpensive item even without hard drives, if you want it to be fast, reliable, and not need maintenance every couple of years.

My side does have the downfall of having to maintain physical objects... and if each and every one of my games were physical, that would be 150+ optical discs to have to manage. Yes, cumbersome. But my greatest expense for maintaining them is perhaps a $200 book/display case (if I want to get really fancy). Again, I have not encountered an optical disk to date that (barring it having been manhandled by children or used as a coaster) failed to read for me, including, but not limited to, a 1995 copy of Doom II for Windows 95 (23 years and still going. Not bad).

To bring this back to the original topic of this whole thread being the ability to resell your games... digital media nearly strips you of that right. You will either have to relinquish ANY chance of even being able to use that NAS for storing your games and only sell them (the license to use them, anyway) on the storefront in which you purchased them, or you will be allowed to "back them up" as encrypted data blobs which can only be unencrypted by the store front you backed them up from. Going to the argument that these storefronts can take your games away from you as they see fit (See PT), there's no guarantee that even if you backed up your game in an encrypted file, the service would allow you to unencrypt it to play again or sell if *they* no longer "have" the game. With optical media there's no such worry. Buy a game. Play it. Give it to your friend and/or sell it. It is now *YOURS* to do with as you please. The storefront, developers, publishers, etc have no control over what you do with your physical media! (BTW... yes, piracy, but that's ever present, so I'm only arguing purely legal situations).

One last thing... This is all about being able to control what you put your money into. Digital distribution is extremely convenient (and, again, I use it just as heavily as the next gamer), but you own nothing! You're not buying anything! You have no control! You can't trade it. You can't resell it. Your money goes into a hole.

And let me be clear... games are *NOT* a service! You're not renting your copy of Monopoly. You're not being told what to do with your copy of Settlers of Catan, or Magic the Gathering... why should we allow publishers to dictate that video games are really any different?

Physical games (that're not just glorified download codes) can be traded. They can be resold. There is a chance with physical media that the value (when reselling) could remain or even go up as they age (don't bank on it, but it's far more possible with physical media than digital only)!

Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ObsidianBlkI get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for?

Consider yourself lucky, but don't think it's a reliable method of storage. Optical discs deteriorate with time, and are a lot more error prone than hard drives which in contrast are built to last for many years.

I'm not sure how you treat your optical media, but all I do is keep them in their cases, on a shelf, and they all still work for me. In fact, I don't think there's a single CD/DVD I've attempted to use in recent years that failed to read. No media is 100% fool proof... especially if treated roughly... but, yeah, I do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives. I've rarely heard of a drive lasting much longer than a decade (and, that's actually a pretty solid amount of time).

Doesn't matter if your discs all still work.
Shmerl is right.
CDs and DVDs printed detoriate and should never be used as backup media.

In case of printed CDs/DVDs it's the reflection layer that detoriates.
For writable discs it's even more problematic due to the dye layer.

This is called "Disc rot".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

Quoting: g000h

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: g000hFor those thinking this will be a good thing for DRM-Free Gaming: I think the opposite - This will push all new commercial games to become purely rental titles, i.e. You can download the game for free, but you won't be able to play it without a subscription. DRM-Free games will just be for free gaming (i.e. where no money is paid for the game title). Commercial game developers won't be releasing DRM-Free any more.

Until the next lawsuit. I'm not sure getting around law is quite so simple as all that.

I'm not sure you're quite getting my point on this.

My point isn't that a subscription model would be leveraged onto current games (although it isn't impossible). My point is that it will push game publishers/developers to adopt a subscription model (e.g. rent per hour) for all their new and future titles. This is something which is perfectly fine from a legal perspective, and it would allow them to get around the resale problem entirely (and not lose any profits to resale).

A subscription model like that would change the gaming industry in a big way, i.e. no DRM-Free titles from commercial developers, people who play more hours could end up paying more for the privilege. A loss of consumer ownership of the software - The software would not work if the rental wasn't paid. A subscription model is similar to a streaming model, but rather than streaming the game's video and remotely-controlling it, you still download the files and run it locally.

Yeah. Either someone will sue for the right to buy the goddamn game on the grounds that this is just the game sellers' way to avoid letting people have their normal consumer rights, or piracy will make a really big comeback, or both.
I don't think it will happen. At least, not as a response to this particular event, which I am pretty sure will have less impact than many here think.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 21 September 2019 at 6:45 pm UTC

If this goes big, we will see more subscription models happen. Ubisoft would love that, they think the future of gaming is to stream content.

Quoting: g000hMy point isn't that a subscription model would be leveraged onto current games (although it isn't impossible). My point is that it will push game publishers/developers to adopt a subscription model (e.g. rent per hour) for all their new and future titles. This is something which is perfectly fine from a legal perspective, and it would allow them to get around the resale problem entirely (and not lose any profits to resale).

Valve already says that what they currently sell is only a subscription. They explicitly did this to try to circumvent the customer rights an actual license would give us. The court in france now checked this and basically ruled that what they are doing is equivalent to a license and therefor the normal customer rights apply, which means you can sell the license.


Last edited by ZeroPointEnergy on 21 September 2019 at 8:48 pm UTC

Quoting: chancho_zombie

Quoting: Salvatosbut where does that article say that? I don't see it there nor in the French articles that I've read about this ruling. Is it just the headline?

in the headlines, but it also can be a spelling mistake.:|

Journalists does not write their own headlines, that is always done by some editor that have no real insight into what the article is about and is always just there to gather interest (aka click bait). I know many journalists (especially one who cover science) that is really mad about this but there is nothing that they can do since this is the nature of how media works.

Quoting: ObsidianBlkI do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

Quoting: sub

Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ObsidianBlkI get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for?

Consider yourself lucky, but don't think it's a reliable method of storage. Optical discs deteriorate with time, and are a lot more error prone than hard drives which in contrast are built to last for many years.

I'm not sure how you treat your optical media, but all I do is keep them in their cases, on a shelf, and they all still work for me. In fact, I don't think there's a single CD/DVD I've attempted to use in recent years that failed to read. No media is 100% fool proof... especially if treated roughly... but, yeah, I do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives. I've rarely heard of a drive lasting much longer than a decade (and, that's actually a pretty solid amount of time).

Doesn't matter if your discs all still work.
Shmerl is right.
CDs and DVDs printed detoriate and should never be used as backup media.

In case of printed CDs/DVDs it's the reflection layer that detoriates.
For writable discs it's even more problematic due to the dye layer.

This is called "Disc rot".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

Why shouldn't my 20 year old disks count? I have several dozen optical disks, and, as said, I have yet to see a single one as unreadable and decades. I see the wiki article supplied by Shmerl, and I acknowledge it, but in it's own description... "The causes include oxidation of the reflective layer, physical scuffing and abrasion of disc, reactions with contaminants, ultra-violet light damage, and de-bonding of the adhesive used to adhere the layers of the disc together" ... so, basically normal wear and tear. That reflective layer isn't exposed to oxygen until it's outer layer is damaged, and that shouldn't happen if the disk is kept safe. Sure... shiz happens... and (to quote a quote from an article I'll supply shortly), "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops to zero.", Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club... but, again, my collection has still readable disks over 20 years old. Not a single one of them has ever rotted on me (again, I just jewel case them, so no special protections). That's a LOT of evidence for me that while Disc Rot exists, it's not like suddenly, tomorrow, BAM! scores upon scores of my discs will suddenly all have Disc Rot, so long as I don't start leaving them out of there cases, or using them like coasters.

That said, look up the average life span of a hard drive...
https://www.prosofteng.com/blog/how-long-do-hard-drives-last/
https://www.recordnations.com/articles/hard-drive-lifespan/
These were quick google searches for "average life span of hard drives".

The TL;DR of it is, hard drive have an average life span of 3 to 5 years. If the alternative to optical disks is a NAS, which utilizes hard drives, I'm honestly not seeing what makes HDDs that much better. For a solid backup you would want a RAID setup (minimum of two drives). If one of those fails, you still have to buy a new HDD to reconstruct the RAID before the other HDD fails.

Now, let's take a quick look at optical media...
https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246856696_Optical_Disc_Life_Expectancy_A_Field_Report
Again, these were quick google searches for "average life span optical discs"

The TL;DR here says +R, +RW, etc, etc discs have an average life expectancy of 20+ years, while regular, factory pressed CD/DVD disks have an estimated average life span between 25 to 100 years (some estimates suggest upwards of 200 years). This even with Disc Rot as a possibility.

Finally... let's even agree with each other. DVD/CDs AND HDDs are less than ideal for long term storage... create a new physical distribution media. One of my original posts on this thread suggested an SD card-esk physical media (at least in form factor). Much smaller than an optical disk, and no moving parts like a hard drive... hell... that's pretty much the distribution model of DS games.

((NOTE: I say "google search", but I use Duck Duck Go as my search engine... if that matters to anyone))