Yes and no. Yes because not many bother with them these days. You can still find some, but not the regular anymore. And no because I have a huge library of physical games stockpiled so the days of physical games didn't nearly end for me yet.

The feeling is of course great. Don't feel anything special about the noise the drive makes, but the mandatory smelling of manuals and the general "newness" of the inside of a freshly unpacked box or just looking at all the boxes lined up on shelves is definitely a nice feeling.

The custom installers are what I actually miss the most from the old days. Anyone remember Westwood game installers? Or others that would play music, show artwork during install etc. All that is lost these days. Everything just downloads and GOG installers are homogenous.

The physical market will not completely die, but will soon be limited to only Collector's Editions/Special Editions etc. Expanding my physical library has been getting harder over the years, but I am still adding stuff (mostly old with a few new) every year. My last batch of boxed games I bought just last month:

Star Assault
Dungeons: The Dark Lord
Death Track: Resurrection
E.L.I.T.E.
nail'd
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within with a czech dub (was curious about that one)
Trials Fusion
Trials Evolution
Great War Nations: The Spartans
Two Worlds (non Epic edition, which bugged some quests and changed a few things)
Planescape Torment
Red Faction - Complete Collection (requires Steam)
Ultra Street Fighter IV (requires Steam)
Injustice: Gods Among Us (requires Steam)
Death Rally (requires Steam)
Micro Machines: World Series (requires Steam)

Command and Conquer: The Ultimate Collection - contains only a download code but I don't care because I own all other C&C games on discs already (DRM-free). The reason I got it was because I never officially owned RA3: Uprising. I only ever played that one pirated and wanted to finally officially own it and this was the only way. I will still keep using my DRM-free pirated version so only really bought it out of formality. Oh and I also didn't own C&C 4, but nobody cares about that.

In general yes. However, digital distribution has been better for DRM free. In a way.

It seemed like there was a moment of DRM free among physical games (Unreal Collection, Stronghold Collection, Ubisoft re-prints of Microsoft games, Drakensang collection, AoE III Complete) being almost a trend but it was neither consistent nor something the bigger companies did for their big new releases. I do like physical media for movies and shows still and prefer it for games* but unfortunately a lot of those games from 2006-2012 (past this point and physical PC games do not matter) had SecuRom or Star Force or some other corporate sponsored malware which makes it difficult to justify putting my physical copies on a PC I currently use. The games that were developed in that time frame are still among my favorites and to be perfectly frank I prefer the trends and general ways games were designed in those days to the current time. Also, I love boxes and if I own something in a physical format then it cannot be altered (easily) by an outside entity. I remember some DRM-free games on GamersGate were DRM-free until they were quietly DRMed with basically no warning (that may be me misremembering but the principle remains that there is really no way to ensure a company does not alter things on the backend).

*: So, for a little while I had shaky internet and I was locked out of all of my games on my PS4 that were digital only. This was not true on my Xbox One where it did not seem to care. That said, I hear Series X Xboxes do care in the same way the PS4 cares about an online connection to verify you own the game installed on your box.

... Ping pong... actual pingpong...

Maybe you're too young to know that game.
And there was SO MUCH ROOM on CD's they started making everything FMV games for a while as well...

Regarldess LGR has a video on DRM :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjEbpMgiL7U (Why does the url break? Ugg...)

No, I don't miss physical copies in that way.

I hated the spinning noise and the slowness. Fortunately it was easy to bypass by creating image and writing it on a hard drive.

What I miss is the ability to own my games and handle them the way I wanted. Having no need for constant internet connection and the sort. Yes Gog helps but think how many games haven't made it here. Just sad.

Partly yes, the physical boxes, manuals and goodies back in the 1990s were pretty charming.
But on the other hand, all that stuff takes up space, buying and downloading games from the net is more convenient. And if you've just got a jewel case with a cd instead of a nice box with goodies (as was the trend already in the early 2000s), there isn't really that much of a difference imo (at least for games available on Gog, obviously the DRM is a big minus for many other games like Age of empires 2, which you could play without internet connection back in the days of physical copies)..

I mean for PC games they were more before my time, but for consoles they are still a thing (sometimes ruined by needing internet)

I always thought that GoG should release big box pc games just like Limited Run and other stores.

But sadly, it is not going to happen. They're putting all their efforts into a broken client that no one asked for.

No

I do and i don't. Very mixed feelings.

Boxes, manuals and other stuff was nice but when it comes to the games themselves things get much more complicated.

If it's about computer games - there was one thing that always plagued those - DRM. And early forms were *worse* than current stuff except always online (like that dumb thing that Bobbyvision Blizzard did to Crash 4 - if you'll have as much as small hiccup due to high bandwidth usage you get kicked to menu and lose progress). Back in the day you had to dig through manuals, decode things and do all kinds of super annoying nonsense to just play the game.

To make matters worse they were adding checks in the middle of the game. That's how i ended studying assembly, hex editing and all that jazz or just sailing high seas BBS.

Then CD-ROM times came and things were nice at first - put the CD in drive, install or even run the game directly - that's it. Except the usual DOS era stuff where you had to configure hardware-related stuff.

For a few years things things were good. Then first 16x-32x drives made it very unpleasant to play with a disc in the drive and sometimes CDs were breaking. Then back to square one but worse - extremely unstable DRM that had a lot of hardware/software incompatibilities like breaking with OS updates, causing OS to crash or even damaging drive firemwares. Or in simple terms - when pirate versions were superior versions.

Steam changed things - DRM wasn't draconian by any means and it no one can deny the convenience of installing stuff with one click, libary and social features. And then there's GOG - you can buy games without DRM.

Now things that i miss - yeah, some fancy installers with music etc. Physical goodies like thick manuals, sometimes books, maps etc. But again. For computer games boxes came in all shapes and sizes - it was often impossible to fit on the shelf.

For consoles things are very different. Before PS3/X360 it was golden era. Insert cartridge or disc and play. As simple as that. And most consoles got boxes that will fit on any average shelf, including huge Neo Geo cartridges.

Online era brought the worst from PC etc - half-baked games that require several gigabytes of patches before they will be playable, "physical" editions with missing game or requiring you to download DLCs (completely defeating the purpose of a physical release).

But again digital isn't always bad. Even DLCs. Just compare price of complete Street Fighter V with 3 editions of SFIII or a lot of versions of Guilty Gear XX which were essentially expansion packs for price of a full game. You had to pay full price for 2 new characters/arenas and essentially balance/mechanics patch.

If you miss it so bad, there's ways around still having a "physical" copy.
Buy games on gog and use the offline backup installers and for games not on gog
Get the DRMless version of the game, and hoard all your games on some big
HDDs or Blu rays, and if you want to go a step further use printable Blu rays, and also archive drivers and visual cc stuff
And windows isos that are compatible with your games so you can play everything offline

I go out of my way to buy physical copies of games.
Shame Limited Run Games and the like don't print anywhere near enough and then scalpers make you pay alot for them later.

I miss the days when people wouldnt repeat the same thread every few weeks / months etc.

at least these are not physical to end up in the ocean killing dolphins
anybody who calls themselves eco-friendly should not buy physical games for pc
yep thats what i do and it works fine , easy to carry , works without net , doesnt take up much space and doesnt pollute the environment

I don't care about the decline on physical media, beacause I can just make my own
Physical media with my Blu ray burners or just put stuff on my hard drives
What I do care about is drm that prevents me from physically owning something
Or making my own physical media. Gog dosnt sell physical copies of games
But they don't prevent you from archiving and making your own physical copies
Also make sure to archive isos and drivers for your GPUs and Microsoft visual studio stuff
So you don't need any internet or if a windows update breaks a game you can run
An old version in a vm or use dual boot.