"The Digital Ritual" | TP&C | Episode 100

 Episode 100 — The Digital Ritual
Think Pieces and Conversations Podcast

In Episode 100 of Think Pieces and Conversations, titled The Digital Ritual, I break down the strange new reality of buying video games in a world where ownership is slowly disappearing.

This episode starts with the conversation around Grand Theft Auto 6, pre-orders, and the idea of paying ahead of time for a game that may only exist as a digital license instead of something you physically own. At what point did pre-ordering stop feeling like buying a product and start feeling like participating in a digital ritual?

I get into the bigger question behind all of this: do pre-orders still matter? If they do, what games actually deserve that level of trust? And if the industry is moving further away from physical ownership, what are gamers really paying for — a product, access, permission, or temporary convenience?

I also talk about Sony removing hundreds of purchased movies from people’s digital libraries and how that situation exposes the real issue behind digital ownership. If something can be deleted, revoked, restricted, or made inaccessible when the internet is down, did you ever truly own it?

From there, I compare the direction of GTA 6 with Gears of War: E-Day, which still offers a physical copy and collector’s edition. That difference matters. It raises a bigger conversation about the future of gaming, physical media, collector culture, ownership rights, and the growing push toward a world where people own less while being told to accept it.

This episode is about more than video games. It’s about the agenda of owning nothing and being happy, the erosion of consumer control, and why physical copies still matter in a digital-first world.

Pre-order culture. Digital licenses. No physical copies. Deleted libraries. Internet dependency. Collector’s editions. Gamer ownership.

This is The Digital Ritual.

#GTA6 #GrandTheftAuto6 #GTA6PreOrder #DigitalOnlyGames #PhysicalGames #PhysicalMedia #GameOwnership #DigitalOwnership #GearsOfWarEDay #Xbox #PlayStation #GamingNews #VideoGamePodcast #GamePreservation #OwnNothingAndBeHappy #DigitalLibrary #CollectorEdition #ThinkPiecesAndConversations #Podcast #Episode100 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yo, I I went and I thought about it. Right. As you can see on my screen, there's something peculiar here. Peculiar. Uh, you see Grand Theft Auto 6. Right? Pre-order Grand Theft Auto 6. Most of y'all right now about probably like, yo, uh, he has the Xbox Series X up here. We don't care about that. Why why does he have this up there? And I'm here to tell you that I just clicked the link and whatever it picked, it picked. So tough titty. I thought about it. I was like, yo, pre-order Grand Theft Auto 6. You spend $80 right now, $100 right now. You know, I think it has a physical disc, right? And I'm thinking about this today, and I'm like, yo, the same time that I'm thinking about if Grand Theft Auto 6 had a physical disc, I realized that I read a story around the same time that I was thinking this, scamming through it, and it said Grand Theft Auto 6 is purely digital, even when you pre-order it. Even when you pre-order it, this game has no physical copy. Being outside waiting online. I remember me getting Gears of War 2. Gears of War 2. And I remember standing outside. I'm hearing my boys on the Discord or whatever app we was using to communicate. And I'm like, yo, man, we out here at the Grand The Photo Midnight. And we all connected. We like, yo, man, I'm on the line right now. Blah blah blah blah. Just left work. Blah blah blah blah blah. We coming in on whatever day it was, whatever day that they presume that it is, yo, this is the date for this game of Gears of War 2. I think it was in October or November. I don't know. And we was in those places for a physical copy. So if we are pre-ordering something that is only gonna be a digital, it's only gonna be a QR code when you open up the package. If it's only gonna be some kind of code you gotta type into some website to get a key, it makes zero sense to pre-order this game. Now to all the Grand Theft Auto fanboys that didn't understand what I said, I'm not gonna repeat myself. So I hope you got it. We are pre-ordering something that doesn't exist. We are pre-ordering something that doesn't physically exist, and I want you to let that marinate with you, just let it marinate in your soul, in your spirit. We are pre-ordering nothing, and when I say we, I mean y'all, because I wasn't gonna pre-order this because there is literally no sense in pre-ordering something that's digital because it has an unlimited supply. So what are you pre-ordering? Just really sit there and really sit with yourself. Just this scam is some of the greatest scamming I've ever seen. But they took a bet, they was like, yo, people pre-order, they might have done this scam by mistake. People gonna pre-order the game. Yeah, we just gonna put the pre-orders up. Uh nah, we're not gonna spend no money on physical copies. It could have went just like that, it could have easily went just like that. But no, I can't put it past them to think really deep about this. Just earlier today, I seen on the news somewhere on the website Sony is removing 500 movie titles out of people's accounts because this licensing company we not working with them no more. We not working them with them no more. Hold on, Sony removes 500 movies from PlayStation PlayStation store. Let me see if I can find it. PlayStation removes access to 500 plus movie users already purchased. You bought you went and bought this stuff, spent your money, and said, Yo, I'm gonna buy this movie. I ain't seen it in a while. It's a classic. Let me just get it. Yeah, you know, it's digital now, it's a new century. You know, we could keep our stuff just like we did when it was physical, right? We could keep our stuff just like when it was physical, right? With the digital, right? No, no, a painful reminder of the digital world in which we live just dropped for thousands of PlayStation users today. When they received the rather ridiculous news that hundreds of films and television series would no longer be available from September. Sony is removing access to more than 500 studio canal movies and TV titles that customers previously purchased through the PlayStation store, meaning they will no longer be able to watch them through their account. After the licensing deal ends, the keyword there is purchased, which apparently means nothing now. Grand Theft Auto is setting y'all up for failure, and this situation right here could have been a marketing ploy. Like, yo, we're gonna say that we're only doing digital. There's gonna be big bargaining for it, negative marketing, all marketing is good marketing, it doesn't matter if it's positive or negative, people are gonna talk about it. Um, we're gonna say, oh my god, we didn't mean to. We're gonna have the physical copies, we're gonna go make them right now. Physical copies are gonna be made. Physical copies are already made. If they was playing 5D chess, I don't think these people are playing 5D chess. The agenda is for you to own nothing and be happy. That's the agenda. The agenda is for you to own nothing and be happy. That's it. So of course we're gonna hand you the digital. We think you're already stupid, so we're gonna pre- we're gonna set up the pre-orders for January 25th. Not January 25th, November, uh, for June 25th. This month, we're gonna start pre-orders. Pre-orders start June 25th for our game, Grand Theft Auto 6. We're not gonna give you a physical copy. Our last YouTube video we posted. You guys, oh my god, look at how many views you guys gave us. YouTube. I I think I think we got four. I think we just got a billion views, dude. Let me look this up right now, dude. GTA 6 trailer. GTA 6 trailer. Dog. The cover art. The cover art reveal got 12 million views. The cover art reveal got 12 million. Hold on, bro. Hold on, bro. I need niggas to see this because I got my look at this Rand Theft Auto official art cover reveal. It says 12 million views nine days ago. What? So y'all did that for a cover reveal. A trailer that came out a year ago. I just saw that shit said 170 million. Hold on, bro. Hold on. I need people to see this. Grandf Auto Trailer 1 had 284 million. That's two years ago. Grand Death Auto Trailer 2 got 170 million a year ago. Yeah, they're gonna buy this game. Those dummies are gonna buy this game. They're gonna pre-order it. And the pre-order literally gives them nothing. There's no beta. You guys ain't playing a beta. Okay. We're not gonna give you no gameplay footage until October 31st. We're not giving you no gameplay footage. You just gonna, y'all all too hype for this thing. We just gonna sell and we're gonna pump and dump this shit. I don't think the game's gonna be a pump and dump. But if they set it up like that, this will be the biggest scheme in gaming history. Not saying that they're doing that. I'm just looking at it like, yo, the marketing for this was almost autonomous. This is autonomous marketing. When I say autonomous marketing, I mean, bro, they just put out trailers, and that's the marketing. They just talk about it, give you a photo of who the main chick is. There's gonna get 3 million on Twitter, it's gonna get 17 million on TikTok. Oh my god, look at the character for Grand Theft Auto. The pre-order means nothing, but they sold y'all the dream. They're like, yo, you're gonna pre-order nothing. It's gonna, yo, for the $100, yo, listen, if you don't get the $100 version, you're not gonna get 70 things. Yo, if you don't dig in your pocket and get that $100 version, you're not gonna get tattoo shop, you're not gonna get the hair salon, you're not gonna get this, you're not gonna get that, you're not gonna get this. They straight up strong armed y'all and said, yo, you're going to buy this. You guys were addicted to this game. Our last one. You guys made our last game last uh 10 years, 10 plus years. Y'all made our game last 10 plus years, and don't think we ain't see a bunch of y'all make a server and get money too. We see you, uh we we see you that Detroit rapper. What's that Detroit rapper's name? Um, the first day out guy, T Grizzly, T Grizzly, T Grizzly, we see you making a lot of money. We seen you making a lot of money, and we let you put we let you get that off on our block. This was our block. We said, yo, oh, he over there getting money. Okay, nah, you yo, nah, you go get that. Go get that. And you was getting a lot of money, T Grizzly. T Grizzy's getting a lot of money off Grand Theft. He barely raps. He raps because yo, I'm bored and I love music. This that's what he do. Grand Theft Auto is just coasting, bro. It's coasting. They told y'all two, three different times. Yo, we delaying this shit. We delaying this shit, bro. What y'all gonna do? Not get it? What y'all gonna do? Not get it? Do pre-orders the whole point in this video after I don't know how many minutes is do pre-orders even matter anymore? For this game, they didn't even give you a collector's edition. For Grand Theft Auto, they didn't even give you a collector's edition. They said, yo, nah, we're not making no statues, we're not doing none of that shit. No action figures, we not doing none of that shit. No, no, no, no, we not doing none of that shit. Um, we don't we own their minds already. We're not giving them nothing physical. We we're not giving none of them physical. We're not giving nothing to them physical. We own their minds already. We own it already. At least for Gears of War, E Day, I get a statue or something. Pay a little 300, you get the statue. You know, you keep that, that's yours. It's a part of history. Nobody can take this statue away from you. I don't know if it's a physical CD. Um, I'm on PC, so they never give out physical CDs. We're pretty much always digital. The consoles kept up that physical CD thing for quite a while. When I showed y'all that Sony article earlier, I showed y'all that article, and it literally told you that Sony went to their to everybody's library in the entire PlayStation Plus server, whatever, community, subscriber base, and they said, yo, these 500 movies, yeah, they they purchased them. We don't care. Um, studio, whatever, whatever. Um, we're not these 500 movies, we're not playing no more. Um, it is what it is. They didn't pay nobody back, they're not gonna pay y'all back. They're not gonna pay y'all back. And it's gonna be a clash action lawsuit, and during that clash action lawsuit, each of y'all are gonna get $17.77 apiece. Each of y'all are gonna get robbed for this shit, and y'all are gonna get $17.77 apiece. A piece for this, bro. You know what's one thing that a pre-order makes sense for to even do a pre-order? When there's an open beta beta coming out, a closed beta. I'm sorry, not an open beta, a closed beta. And it comes out two months before the game drops. So you got two whole months to play the game early. You get to see what we got going on because you pre-ordered it. Okay, you could go directly to the developer on X or wherever they send you to talk about what they need to work on, what they need to fix. You get that nostalgic dopamine, like, yo, I just played Gears E Day and I can't play it for another month and a half until the open beta. Damn, I'm addicted. Y'all, I can't play nothing else no more. But these are the things I need to work on. Damn, I'm glad I pre-ordered the game. I'm glad that I pre-ordered the game. Gears E Day is doing that. Hold on. Gears E Day pre-orders. Cause I need to I need to make sure some things, bro. I need to make sure some things, right? Um, I'm PC. So you see this digital and physical. Right? So standard edition, you get the standard, you get the physical copy, right? They understand that physical is a thing. When people don't play online, they can't play online, they have access to the physical copy. If you're not online, the thing that you have in that cloud up there, you can't get to it. Gears e Day gives you open beta early access for pre-ordering the game. E Day gives you open beta early access starts August 6th for pre-ordering the game. You play the pre-order, I guess you get X Field Dom and the weapon set. He looks hard. Right? Collector's edition. Grand Theft has no collector's edition. Grand Theft has no collector's edition. There is something physical here. Look. Get a little bullshit action figure. Isn't you know they yeah, they spent a lot of detail on it. My bad. They spent a lot of detail on it. You get the action figure, you get some change, okay. You get a steal bookcase, you get a photo book, okay. A thank you note, and you get a collectible box. You can keep the box too. I got the marathon box right here. That's that's nice, it stays right there. I already took the statue out, whatever. You're gonna give them something. They're like, yo, these cats is so thirsty for our game. These nerds are so thirsty for our game, huh? These nerds, these nerds, they're so thirsty for our game that we're gonna give them physical copies. I mean, no physical copies, digital copies, and they only could choose two editions. The normal version, which is eighty dollars, ten doll above the standard price, which was seventy dollars, sixty nine ninety nine was a standard for a lot of games. Yo, we're gonna give them the regular joint for 80 and a $100 version, they can't access mad shit unless they pay an extra $20. So the $80 version is kind of like, what the fuck? You just dead the $80 version, but they can afford to dead the $80 version because there is no physical fucking disc. Make sure you like, comment, subscribe to the channel. Do pre-orders even matter anymore? For the most part, they probably do because we got an example of Gears E Day, but I want y'all to go answer the question yourselves. And keep in mind that this game is going to break numbers. There's a lot of records it's gonna break. People love following trains, people love jumping on bandwagons. They might not even like the game, but it's gonna be so popular that everything gets eclipsed. So people are gonna be forced to like the game even if they don't. There are minds like that that exist. Like I said, make sure you like, comment, subscribe to the channel. I'm out of here. Happy hunting.