Not to mention pre-order bonuses. Why the hell would anyone per-order a digital game, where there's no chance it'll sell out and they won't be able to get a copy? Dumb-ass pre-order bonuses, I guess! People buy them! What the hell, gamers?
I did that for Borderlands 2 because I liked the first part so much I was willing to gamble on the second one being good. I was not disappointed. Of course I'm aware it's a gamble, which is why I tend not to do it, but sometimes it just might be worth it. Oh, and because the first game's German release was censored I imported from the UK so pre-ordering cut down on the waiting time.
And, of course, streaming and "let's plays." Why are people sitting around watching OTHER PEOPLE play games that they themselves could be playing? But they do!
As has been pointed out, not owning the console is one thing. I'm not going to buy a 3DS for a single game. Or perhaps you no longer have the game and want to take a look at it for nostalgia's sake. Some games may also be interesting from a story perspective but uninteresting gameplay-wise - I might end up watching an LP for Mass Effect 2 and 3 but I'm certainly not going to install the second part again, much less buy the third one. Some Let's Plays are value-added like IlliterateChild's Glitchy Walkthroughs where bugs in the game are exploited for comedic effect.
Sure, playing the game is usually better. But there are games you can't or won't play but are still interested in experiencing to some degree or someone did something with their playthrough that you can't easily replicate. That's where the value in Let's Plays lies.
Did Guistra get the contracts?
Duh.
Yeah, the architecture changes screwed the entire modding world. Maybe someday they'll finally have a proper mod API and proper support.
Perhaps someone should write a mod that redundantly reimplements Minecraft on top of Minecraft with as few calls into actual Minecraft code as possible. Still dependent enough to require the actual game but with such little contact area that it's almost completely isolated from changes to the game itself.
Yeah, it'd basically be a fork that attempts to solve the rights issues by requiring the main game. You'd lose anything Mojang adds to the game later (unless it's ported over) but the API could be designed to be long-term stable...
"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_