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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.

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