Nintendo can already brick your cartridge over the internet and make it require game updates (via system firmware updates). They have already done this with Super Mario Wonder on Switch 2 - the game will not run without an update download. You can’t revert firmware versions on a DRM box like the Switch, and new cartridges (even ones with “the full game” on them) will require and include firmware updates. Playing the console online or purchasing any digital-only content (or downloading free patches) also requires the latest firmware, and there are whitelist mechanisms in place for Nintendo to outright say “you cannot run v1.0 of game X on system version 16.7.2U”. The v1. 0 being on a cartridge has no bearing on this functionality.

The only way to “play video games without relying on the internet or a company’s server” legally while being 100% sure that the company can’t do what they did to Mario Wonder is to buy and maintain multiple outdated firmware consoles that are isolated completely from the Internet. That’s obviously infeasible, so the only way to “play video games without relying on the internet or a company’s server” is the complete defeat or removal of DRM. On Nintendo platforms, that means piracy, full stop. On PC, there are a ton of games that are DRM-free digitally distributed products - those are the endgame here, not chips or discs. After all, with no DRM, you can put your copy of Slay the Spire on as many flash drives or DVDs as you want!

One thing I’d like to see from an app like this is “force the video into an arbitrary file size limit” with a list of priorities to do so defined by the user. Say I’ve got a video I want to send over Discord (10mb limit) but I’m not intending for the vid to be fullscreened by the recipient so scaling it down to like 480x480 would be fine.