As I’ve mentioned on this blog here and there, I’ve spent the past year and a half playing through the Final Fantasy games that were released on the PlayStation. It started with VIII, then X, then a foray in X-2, then XII, then jumping ahead to XVI, before going back to VII, and then now I’m almost done with IX. I want to revisit XIII, but that’s the one that hasn’t been made available for a modern console, so I might have to hunt down a used copy of the game and dust off my PS3 to play it.
This year-long Final Fantasy binge only happened because of PlayStation Plus’ new feature where you have access to a huge library of games. Kinda like Netflix or your streaming service of choice. It was the impetus for me to finally play Star Wars Bounty Hunterand play The Phantom Menaceagain. It’s also why, a year and a half ago, I saw that Final Fantasy VIII was available and thought to myself “I remember loving this game, let’s see if it’s still great.” Then my partner got super into it and now we’re six games deep.
But I’ve a deadline to finish IX. Turns out, on May 21st, those Final Fantasy games are being taken off of the games available for subscribers. Oh, I’ll still be able to play them, I’ll just have to actually pay discrete money for the games. It’s a bummer to be sure. They’re great games, idiosyncratic in their own way, and having them included in a subscription removed a hurdle to me actually checking them out. But that’s the way it goes with streaming-esque libraries, things come and things go. If you want to play it forever, it’s probably best to not rely on a subscription-based library.
Except that doesn’t always work. A week ago, the publisher Ubisoft decided to make one of the games completely unplayable. Even if you bought it, there’s no way to play it anymore. Which, granted, is always a risk with online games (the entire original campaign of Destiny 2 is no longer available), but it’s never great to see a reminder that just because you bought a game doesn’t mean you own it. There’s little chance of most of these Final Fantasy games ever going away completely, but all the same, digital preservation is a precarious place to be.
All that said, if and when I do get a copy of Final Fantasy XIII, though, that disk means there’s no taking it away, so long as my PS3 still works.
Essays, Not Rants! 