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Do you still play any PC games on a physical disc? Or, when did you last do that? (feddit.online)
submitted 3 days ago by tuckerm@feddit.online to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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Like many people, I've been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items -- movies, albums, books -- used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, "Hey I like this thing on your shelf."

PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I've scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents' houses to see if they still work.

Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn't the Steam version?

For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn't get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.

I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.

What were (are?) some of your favorites?

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[-] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 3 days ago

I've been wanting to do this, too, for games that I bought on Steam. Like, make a bootable Linux DVD that has Steam and the game preinstalled on it, with Steam already logged in as my account.

[-] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 days ago

I was thinking it would be easier with gog games.

You can just burn the install directory to a disk and then insert the disk and launch the game without launchers

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

Some Steam games can be played without Steam. Some require more and others less or none work to achieve that. GOG is the better choice for this task, but if you already have Steam game that could work for this, maybe no need to rebuy it on GOG. I was thinking of doing something similar to archive what can be archived, but never got around doing it. Here some resources:

[-] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

I don’t think cds and dvds hold data for too long. I guess it’s better than a hard drive.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

There were special long lived BlueRay format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC . I was thinking of getting into, but they were expensive when I looked at it years ago. With 100 GB per disc, this might be a good solution for longtime archive (but you need the reader too...).

As for the CDs and DVDs, the longevity also highly depends on the burner, the blank disc and maybe the software and settings you used at that time. A pressed CD that you buy and its not burned can hold data for very long time, and is much more durable than your burned ones. At least compared to a mechanical hard drive you don't need to reuse (rewrite) to not loose data. But a hard drive can hold so much data.

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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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