Technology is advancing at a very fast rate, and it's sort of heading towards an almost biblical apocalyptic ending (Especially with the whole idea of a one world government, and the idea that we will have a code that will be used for purchases.) I'm skeptical about the whole religious aspect of it, but it seems like this idea of an endgame has always existed. I don't like the idea of being connected to a system. We're already somewhat connected to a system like it is, and monitored (Just say something suicidal on Facebook and watch how fast the police show up.)
I don't know if civilization will progress to the point where such a dystopia is allowed to occur. Perhaps if (and that is a big if) we find a source of sustainable, clean energy, alongside such a way to make theoretically infinite resources to cater a population that is growing at an exponential rate, governments will be able to merge and consolidate power to a degree such that citizens are akin to drones. The climate change/resource depletion apocalypse is very real and very near, however, so unless in the next decade technology wholly consumes us, we have other, more primitive things about which to worry. It is very self-indulgent to say, but if anything, we should be more worried about the abrupt egress technology could have from our lives if civilization collapses in this proposed fashion. Technology has disrupted human evolution to a degree such that we are no longer animals capable of living in a wild environment.
Anyway, I'm not sure how I managed to unearth my apocalypse worries in a thread about the physical state of games. Off to a good start, I suppose.
Much has been written about the Japanese love of physical collectibles. Many prefer CDs to downloads because they want to physically possess what artists make. Perhaps it's that sense of joy and excitement in opening the package and handling the CD booklet.
I only own a few digital games and still have a growing collection of physical copies. I mainly do this just to make sure I always have my purchases with me and I don't have to depend on fallible, virtual platforms. I do find some value, however, in the physical artistic craft of a game. Tim Hecker, a musician of which I am a massive fan, has said that he finds a worrisome trend of the virtualization of artistic forms. Obviously, his concerns were with the medium of music, but this applies to any artistic medium, including video games. Hecker said that with encoding music into a virtual, intangible thing, there is some erasure of its value and artistry. The physical erosion of music, as it were, turns art into a disposable entity that can be created and destroyed on a whim. There are some valuable aspects to such a thing, but it primarily serves as a method by which art is rendered pointless by digital encoding. You can apply this same perspective to that of a physical disc or cartridge.
You better look after those discs well then. A lot of old physical media like cassette tapes and floppy disks have been prone to failure after a number of years and CDs/DVDs sure like to get all scratched and such even when you think you've been careful (plus accidents happen).
CDs are a little more durable than tapes or floppy disks. Cassette tapes fail because the tape gets threaded, worn out, and eventually just starts to break apart from wear and tear. Floppy disks are made of much cheaper material than CDs, and since they are just hunks of plastic, they aren't very difficult to destroy. CDs are also made of cheap plastic, but I've found that it takes a lot longer for them to be scratched beyond compare than, say, a VHS tape that gets spooled and torn up after a year.
maybe its because they are afraid big companies will just randomly remove games from the library, games such as Lawbreakers.
To my knowledge, LawBreakers was pulled because the game commercially flopped and the developers did not have the financial capital with which to run the servers and keep the game afloat. It was not "randomly" pulled from people's Steam libraries, especially since it went free-to-play concurrent with an announcement from the developers that they were shutting it down in September 2018.