I may have spoken on this topic in the past, but with recent events, I feel a need to bring it back again. Over the past decade, there has been a concerted effort to cut off actual ownership of software. I am an artist, a programmer, and a creator in every sense of the word, so I've always been split on this discussion until now. I understand that piracy has been a problem, but the response by the publishing companies has gone completely to the left for no good reason at all.
I have had experiences in the past with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and with Sony, where due to being offline, I had issues playing games that I had purchased, or accessing save data. This has gotten much worse over the last few years. Physical games and digital games alike, are completely attached to network profiles, and monitored for updates. If you should miss an update, not only must you get online, but until you successfully update your system, you can be completely blocked from not just saving or going online, but from playing your game at all. I've had incidents where I am online, but with a locked or unstable connection, where I cannot get an update, and I have been unable to play a large portion of my library on the Switch. I have also had issues where I'm offline and playing my games fine, and because I'm off the grid for a number of weeks and miss an update I don't know about, games would deactivate in real time without even going online for an update reference. That's where I began to realize that every update that you accept has an expiration period, or time bomb installed in it that will brick you library, physical and digital after a period of time, if you do not stay with their updates.
Microsoft is also very weird these days, and seems to be really pushing purchases of storage space on their One Drive platform, to extreme degrees. One Drive used to be a storage and data sharing option, and now it has become interwoven into the core drive on the Windows OS. You have to dive into settings and restructure core programs to allow usage of your applications with system storage. I have computers with over 1TB of storage that never get properly used because Download folders, Document folders, and Program operations through Windows System Drive are all tied directly into the 5GB tiny storage that One Drive gives you, and if you deactivate your computer from One Drive, core programs have to then be dissociated.
I just purchased Street Fighter 6 after contemplating it for a long time, being a fan of 5 and the series. It was a physical copy, but I ran into one of the other issues of today's games. DVD's are limited to a few gigs of storage. Games today are usually over 10 gigs of overinflated storage space. So when you buy a physical game today in the store, you are given a license within the disc to go on the network and download the remaining data for the game onto your system in order to play the game. So after you pop a disc in, you will be asked for an additional 6 or 7 GB of storage. If you don't have it, you have to free up space. All I have on my PS4 is Street Fighter 5, Street Fighter 4, Tekken 7, Nioh, and other save data for games. I had to delete my Horizon Zero Dawn and Final Fantasy XV data, which includes the save data and the game data. I now realize I have to purchase a large external storage to play more games on the system. That makes buying phyiscal games feel extremely stupid now.
I have friends that have Steam Decks, and I've wanted to get one of the new age handheld PC-gaming machines, but I have never liked or trusted streaming services. I'm not against online networks, and even gaming from time to time. But I do not like relying on online accounts, memberships, network connectivity, and profile and system updates. I usually work in secured networks, where some devices cannot go online for security reasons. I should not have to worry about my system be up to date to play old school games that I have downloaded on my console.
This is why the jailbreak community has gained my support. You can never comfortably own you own media unless you have an unlocked device with non-proprietary software. I've always supported the homebrew community, but at this point I think it is a necessity. I don't mind using Steam and other gaming outlets, but if you can have or even write your own software to host your content, that is going to be the future of counteracting this new wave of censorship. I have had countless videos and essays taken off of hosting platforms for absolutely idiotic reasons. I had an educational music video I shot for Black History month, titled, "February," that Youtube tore down because I'm not initiated in their sick little cult. I've been saying for quite a while that personal hosting is going to be a wave of the future, and I'm going to be its pioneer. I'm just in the process of rolling out methods. When you own your content, be it literary, visual, educational, or otherwise, that is when you exist.