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I swore digital games were a waste until I lost 14 hours of Elden Ring progress to a scratched disc
For like 6 years I refused to touch digital games on my PS5 because I wanted to own the disc and sell it later, and honestly I thought cloud saves were overrated. Then two weeks ago my cat knocked my Elden Ring disc off the entertainment center and it slid under the couch, and when I pulled it out there was a deep scratch across the whole thing. The game wouldn't boot past the title screen no matter how many times I wiped it with a microfiber cloth. I had 87 hours in that save, all on the console drive, but no way to reinstall the game to access it because the disc was dead. I sat there in my apartment in Columbus just staring at the loading error for like 20 minutes. My roommate finally said "just buy it digital, dude, it goes on sale every other week" and I did, and my save popped right up. Now I get why people buy digital even when they can't resell, because losing access to a game you already paid full price for is way worse than losing $15 on a trade in. Anyone else had a disc die on them and switch sides because of it?
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nina_hall6d ago
The part people miss is that discs and drives are two separate failure points. Your disc died, but the save on the console drive was fine the whole time. That's the real kicker, the game data and the save data live in different places, so a $70 disc becomes a paperweight while your 87 hours sit there locked behind it. I had a buddy lose a PS4 disc to a house move, same deal, the save was still on the hard drive and he just had to rebuy the license to get back in. Physical only protects you if the disc outlives the console, and most people handle those discs way worse than they think.
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