Posted August 24, 2018
- Most computer users don't have optical drives any more.
- Publishers & devs choose not to make physical copies available because doing so means less profits for them (they have to print the discs, then give a cut to the retail store middlemen), etc.
- In the last few years before physical PC games stopped being sold, most of them were useless garbage anyway because the physical copies still were tied to the cancer that is Steam DRM, which made their technical existence as a physical copy an irrelevant moot point.
- In the years before that Steam infestation, instead of big beautiful boxes featuring glorious artwork, all physical boxes started to become tiny & underwhelming & not shelf-worthy.
- Ditto for devs/publishers skimping on manuals, which also used to be big & beautiful and full of lore and extraneous fluff that is not just about playing about the game. Instead they devolved either to having no manual at all, or a useless one that is only a few pages long.
I'd love for DRM-free physical games to be a thing, but that's simply never going to happen in reality. History went a different way, and it can't be reversed.
1. You can put a game copy on flash drive, SD card and so on.
2. So? It's the choice. If people will be willing to pay for boxes (and they will if the contents would be worth it) devs can do that.
3. Obviously games can be sold without DRM - GOG is the prime example.
4. But there are still "collectors editions" and similar things even today.
5. I's basically #4 again.
Bottom line. It is still possible (and even reasonable) for some devs/publishers to make physical copies and sell them. Sure, those amount will be quite limited and their price will be high. Basically it will be "collectors edition" with full game on some drive inside. But it is still viable choice.
