I mean, that part I understand, which is why I either download and keep installers if I can (GOG) or I pirate and store installers (usually also GOG copies). Despite being poor, I have that luxury of hard drive space for these installers.

I guess my point is, I do own those files, I am in control of them, they are mine, there is either no DRM to begin with or the DRM has been stripped.

I still consider that to be ownership on physical media that cannot be taken from me. Discs and hard drives both degrade over time, so either way, they must eventually be moved to a new medium of storage, which is always another type of physical media.

I think the conversation around physical media needs to change and people need to be doing a lot more buying from GOG and keeping torrents of those installers alive so we have a "public cloud" of game installers.

But I mean, I don't know how to help people on consoles. That's buying into a closed ecosystem to begin with, it comes with the territory.