The recent Halo Wars data wipe of the Xbox Live Leaderboards has raised a concern with me regarding digital distribution. I love the ability to browse, buy, and play with the furthest distance I move is to the fridge to get a cold one and the bathroom to drop the kids off at the pool. One of the things (just one, don’t dive any deeper than one today, ok?) that scares the crap out of me about this is not having the physical media in my possession. Why is this a big deal? Because one person pushed one button or tripped over a plug and thousands of Halo Wars players all screamed out at once as their Leaderboards were silenced. All data regarding Leaderboard status was lost forever. There is no chance of recovery, hours of gameplay are gone, no one will believe that guy that he was king of the hill.
Imagine that same horror but with your XBL account. Every game you have paid for, Microsoft suddenly has no record of that transaction. With Microsoft Points it’s not like you have a receipt. Take your pick of any online digital distributor, Apple, Steam, or GoG account. Their database crashes, gets wiped, or they board up shop and stop supporting. Somehow, it happens, they no longer have any record of a sale to you and you can no longer access the games to download. Your virtual goods are gone and you aren’t getting a refund. If you previously downloaded and deleted it, or just never downloaded it, you won’t get it again until you pay… again.
Take a look at the Amazon/Kindle pulling of books affair. Something you purchased and was in your possession but suddenly was taken away the next time the device connected to the internet. With physical media many people say possession is nine-tenths of the law. While not completely true from a legal standpoint, it does highlight that you won’t be pulling that book out of my hands without bleeding for it first. You give Big Brother the chance and he will rob you blind.
Sure these businesses and systems have controls to minimize the risk of data loss, and they may be somewhat more complex or robust than the controls for Leaderboards (I hope) but the fact of the matter is controls fail, shit happens, and old Murphy likes dicking around with you. What is to stop some Russian who is scorned and angry from Stalin vs Martians from launching an attack against GamersGate, taking out all account data? Yes, I am a little paranoid about this (I prefer cautious) but a little paranoia is a good thing, it keeps the blood flowing and keeps you on your toes.
Physical media I am in control of, whereas digital, one can feel like they are at the mercy of someone else. If I scratch or lose a DVD or delete all my save files then it’s my own fault. If someone pisses on a server and loses all of my account information I’m just screwed, I have trouble digesting that. We all know how great digital distribution has been so far, bringing out indie titles, DLC, quick updates, and more. I just can’t shake the fear of having an account hacked, locked, or screwed over in some way. Have you had a bad experience with digital distribution?
No scary moments for me yet. I missed out on the recent Steam account hack saga, since I don’t use it. And I also don’t play Halo Wars, so…
I do have a huge fear of this though. That’s why I keep all my email reciepts from xbox live to prove that I purchased all the DLC that I have now.
There’s definitely some downside to digital distribution, just like you mentioned. It would be horrible to have your entire game library wiped out at the snap of a finger. For me, though, the iPhone and PSP Go show that it’s so easy to carry around one small device with everyone stored internally. No need to carry extra goods around.
Hopefully everyone who runs any kind of server starts running backups on a regular basis.
I have over a hundred games on Steam, and probably a fraction of that on my PSN account, and I have yet to have a horror story like this. Like Ryan, I keep all the receipts.
I’d hate to think what would happen if I lost all of it though
Steam hack saga? I suppose I should saunter over that way and check my account. I need to brush the dust off of Counter Strike anyway, since I’m not running Linux at the moment and haven’t been playing Urban Terror. Back to the topic at hand, There is something snazzy about having those ultra-rad PC game boxes (remember when they were BIG?) lined up on a shelf.
I remember “Aces over the Pacific”, and “Aces over Europe” being 8 or 9 3.25″ floppy disks for installation alone.
Those big glossy boxes were AWESOME.
Thanks for giving me nightmares.
Theres just something satisfying about that stack of discs. not gonna lie.
plus, me and my buddies swap games on a constant basis to see if we wanna buy. you cant swap a drm’ed and account-tied file. you cant sell it back to gamestop either.
I agree with what you say – I also hate desktop software that checks via the Internet to see that its legit – you can only have one install, so if you get a bad virus and have to re-install Windows, then you have to contact the software company to get re-authorized
soon this will be a non issue as most everything will be streamed for monthly fees. music is rapidly headed that way, expect itunes to become a streaming service in the next 2 years depending on how the spotify deal goes down here in the states. Netflix is adding more and more movie content to its streaming library and hulu is getting more television content by the minute. We all read here and elsewhere about the steaming game companies trying to get that working and available soon as well. the hard drive space you will need will be for a cache of your stream to watch when you are out of wifi zones or on a plane, whatever. not only will tangible media be outdated, as it all ready is, but stored data media is on its way out too. Why deal with 10s of thousands of music/video files, hard drives, back ups, different devices, etc. It seems absurd to even think about compared to streaming sources of content. We scoff at the dude who still listens to cassette tapes, but we will be laughing at ourselves for hoarding mp3s/blu-rays/games in a few years.
I think you are probably have it pegged dead-to-rights but it scares me a little bit. I’m not sitting around in my tin foil hat or anything but we may find out just how true the adage “Possession is 9/10’s of the law” really is when we start to move away from physical possession of EVERYTHING.
Please excuse my poor, internet-ified grammer. I’m suitably embarrassed.
You REALLY need to get an xbox bro.
I don’t know about ‘across the pond’ but while Internet access speeds are increasing, they are too far behind to supply that much streaming ( on demand ) content. Let’s not even speak of how much 50Mbps Internet access costs ( ~$130 – 190 per month ) and in only select areas. Fast Ethernet ( 100Mbps ) can be overwhelmed easily with GBs of data. My cable TV service ( I think, only satellite services have 1080p ) offers only up to 1080i due to processing and bandwidth limitations. Flash based media is the future and even that is slow coming.
Either someone made a big mistake ( as Microsoft said this was not a system failure ) or Microsoft has a very poor redundancy system. I’d be more scared at the latter. Proper backup setup should have allowed for most of the database to have been recovered, even if an employee deleted it on accident.
Shit does happen ( email loss during Apple’s MobileMe transition ) but that was still only ~10% of emails ( a handful of days ) to ~1% of subscribers. Sounded like the cause of that was Apple not anticipating service load and the servers /Internet connection not being able to keep up, …