If you want physical media to go away, then you complete the publisher's control over the game you purchased. Oh, wait? Did I say "game you purchased"? I meant "license you purchased".

See, the software already comes with licenses which say you purchased the medium the software is on and a license to play said software. Then there are a lot of restrictions that most people don't care about, since they can't generally be enforced when the user owns the medium.

But once software is purely ephemeral, with a network tether back to the publisher mothership, good luck exercising any sort of fair use rights, doctrine of first sale, etc. etc. All that's gone.

Moreover, and more alarmingly for me, is the idea that some parts of our videogame culture may cease to exist when publisher die. Sure, at this point it all seems like a nightmare scenario that can't possibly ever happen, but when a publisher whose works are all online-only through a service like steam dies, you don't know where or when or how those online-only works will ever be available again. Sure, you can argue that great games will always be bought by someone and republished somewhere, but what if those assets are tied up in court for years while creditors fight over the corpse? Didn't have a physical copy that ran independent of the publisher's network? So sorry. Try again in a few years, ok? And that's if the new owners feel obligated to honor the previous license sales. Why not just buy another one, ok?

Yeah, go ahead. Sell yourself to that system. I'm not in any rush, thanks.

Edit: Oh, and we're excited that Midway is doing this? If it were someone more stable like EA, ok, but Midway? Jeepers.

I've expressed this in past blog posts that I've done, but I really can't wait until we're rid of physical media. It's good to see publishers taking it upon themselves to sell their own games on their own terms.

And as a user, I love just selecting games from a menu, have them load up, and start gaming. (Disagree with me? Use Steam, then get back with me.)