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The story
The trend of home consoles dropping physical (disc) versions in favor of download-only releases has sparked concern on overseas forums. The trigger was the new action game “Wolverine.” With its overseas reception looking rocky, commenters noted that a disc version could at least be resold secondhand to offset the loss — but digital versions are essentially non-refundable and non-returnable. The thread compared this to Steam’s refund policy (within two weeks of purchase and under two hours of playtime), while also debating the broader culture of buying new games with the expectation of reselling them later.
What people said
Digital purchases are basically never refundable, right?
That's brutal.
Steam's refund window is technically meant for checking PC hardware compatibility, but in practice it works like a demo, which is huge.
Consoles will probably just say 'it runs fine, so no refunds!' as their excuse.
Maybe it's Sony's conscience showing through.
Wait, how would you even sell it in the first place?
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Scary. So scary.
If you genuinely don't understand, that's actually scary…
How exactly are you supposed to resell a digital copy secondhand…
Wolverine got officially certified as a bad game over there too.
If anything, overseas is where the real verdict comes from.
Feels like the foreign players tried it and let us Japanese know it's trash.
By the time all the info's out, you've stopped caring and you're just waiting for a sale instead,
and eventually you forget about it altogether.
Yeah… that's the PSW cycle for you. (5ch slang for the PlayStation fan crowd's hype-then-forget buying pattern)
This is hilarious.
If digital's the only option and you end up with a bad game, that's just tragic.
And it's not like there's a solid refund option like Steam's, either.
Given Wolverine's character traits, it was obvious from the start this was never going to be more fun than "Daman" (name unclear in the original post) no matter how hard they tried.
Instead of getting carried away stuffing political-correctness elements into the female characters,
if they'd just kept the protagonist consistent with the movie version, they could've sold it as a lavish character-based game.
This is not the time to be worrying about arm hair.
If it's a bad game, reselling it is the only option.
But a return is exactly how consumers defend their rights against a bad game that's really just the developers indulging themselves.
Fair point.
Why is this being sold, then?
Because they're ignoring the terms of service.
Does the ToS actually say it can't be transferred?
Up to two hours total is fine.
Though there's also the condition that it has to be within two weeks of purchase.
And the result of that crying for help was Onimusha selling ten thousand copies lol
Down the line it'll be zero copies besides that ten thousand.
You've preordered Wolverine too, right?
Show me.
retailers see weaker launch sales so they stop stocking as much in the first place,
and third parties can't force product onto retail shelves so they stop releasing games at all.
It's a genuine death spiral.
Buying at launch just means you lose your bragging rights once it gets dumped in a bargain sale later anyway.
All this does is add to the pile of people who skip day-one purchases.
Fair enough. If it's basically a rental, they really should allow returns.
If it were just Japan, maybe, but I can't see overseas consumers just letting this slide.
Background and key points of this discussion
In recent years, home consoles without disc drives — like the PS5 Digital Edition — have become more common. When a physical version exists, players can recoup part of the purchase price by reselling a finished game secondhand, but digital versions are generally not eligible for returns or refunds at all, and this asymmetry became the crux of the thread’s debate. Meanwhile, Steam offers refunds for PC purchases within two weeks and under two hours of playtime, and many commenters pointed out how thin console makers’ policies look by comparison. Some posts also argued that third-party publishers would find it harder to push shipments onto retailers, though it’s worth noting this was just one opinion within the thread, not a substantiated fact. The clash between those who embrace a resale-based consumer culture and those who see it as undervaluing developers’ work is also an extension of a long-running debate over what consoles should be.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Foreigner: “If discs are discontinued, you won’t be able to resell games like Wolverine even if they’re bad” → goes viral“.
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