Integrate physical discs & shortcuts in Big Picture mode to simulate a console experience.

[omersimpson1525]

Everything is digital nowadays, especially with games, and with subscription services like Xbox game pass getting more popular than ever, it will only be a matter of time until physical media will die out.

This is why I am proposing an integration for Steam Big Picture mode that will simulate games only running when discs are inserted in your PC. The idea is to have a disc for every game that you want to be only running while inserted in your PC. (Customizing each disc and box is another story.) This is more for the people that have a casual/TV setup rather than a traditional PC setup, although it can work with both. While there are several ways to do this, like labelling physical discs with a unique identifier for each game then using a custom script that checks for the presence of the correct disc before launching the game, (i.e. turns the disc a "key" for launching games,) this is tedious and the proposal is to integrate some form of this into Steam Big Picture Mode.

I don't know if this is just me, but I feel like there is an audience for this somewhere, and people love showing off their game collections physically. You can also customize it however you please. This would be a step up from choosing custom artwork for Steam and non-Steam games. So, who knows? Some form of this would be great for feeling like you actually "own" the game.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Most computers for the last few years and going forward wont and dont even have optical drives.

[omersimpson1525]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Most computers for the last few years and going forward wont and dont even have optical drives.

Yes, that's obvious, I should have mentioned, even with this feature, most people probably wouldn't use it; it's for a minority. For those who do, however, it won't deter them from installing optical drives in their PCs. I know I would. :)

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by omersimpson1525:

Everything is digital nowadays, especially with games, and with subscription services like Xbox game pass getting more popular than ever, it will only be a matter of time until physical media will die out.

This is why I am proposing an integration for Steam Big Picture mode that will simulate games only running when discs are inserted in your PC. The idea is to have a disc for every game that you want to be only running while inserted in your PC. (Customizing each disc and box is another story.)

So simulate DRM... Thats what requiring the disc was... DRM. Do you know what people dislike... DRM...

Ya no thanks to this. Why would Valve build in DRM that the only reason for that DRM is to slow things down.

You want to slow things down, make your own bat file that puts a timeout in there.

Or start your game up and walk away from your computer for a few minutes. That simulates what I used to do when I started a game up from disc cause it took so long.

Valve will never put in something like this. Its just useless bloat that does nothing.

Originally posted by omersimpson1525:

This is more for the people that have a casual/TV setup rather than a traditional PC setup, although it can work with both. While there are several ways to do this, like labelling physical discs with a unique identifier for each game then using a custom script that checks for the presence of the correct disc before launching the game, (i.e. turns the disc a "key" for launching games,) this is tedious and the proposal is to integrate some form of this into Steam Big Picture Mode.

I don't know if this is just me, but I feel like there is an audience for this somewhere, and people love showing off their game collections physically. You can also customize it however you please. This would be a step up from choosing custom artwork for Steam and non-Steam games. So, who knows? Some form of this would be great for feeling like you actually "own" the game.

Yes its just you.... even people with large retro collections on more modern setups like the games starting up fast.

Showing off your physical collection is FAR different then showing off your digital collection as if it was physical. "Hey do you want to see my game discs for all my games? Ya they are all just stored on the computer... there is no actual physical cases or discs... I just want to make everything slow like it used to be..."

Seriously if you want to "fake" a physical collection, buy a bunch of cases, print out a bunch of liners for the cases and put them on a shelf... then you have an actual fake physical collection that no one but you will actually care about.


Oh and I am someone who does still have a Blu-ray player in his system and is saving for a 4k player to modify to actually play back his small but still growing physical CD/DVD/Blu-ray/4K collection.

[Ben Lubar]

You could make CDs that automatically start games through Steam, but it's unlikely that that will ever be an option directly through Steam because it's just clicking a button with extra hardware and extra steps and the vast majority of people would avoid something like that.