Oh, looks like I haven't made the point for why I think optical is better---yet.

First of all, PCs without optical drives might as well be the outliers of today's PC. Unless it's a tablet device, there is absolutely NO excuse to leave the optical drive out. Lots of good DVDs (and blu-rays in the future) would be nice if playable on a PC. If you're willing to forget about the drive, might as well forget about it being a PC in the first place.

Okay. With that out of the way, the main reason to consider a physical copy is more than probably the unrivaled ability of not spending download time, and not wasting HDD space either. So if you want to free up space, and you're looking at that Witcher 3 copy that's taking up a lot of space? You can uninstall it, and not put up through the suffering of download times, and the accompanying side effect of slowing down the internet speed for your whole household.

Plus you get a box. If the developers are generous, they'll leave a manual in. If they are even more generous, they'll drop even more goodies inside the box.

Plus, if the physical copy is DRM-free or offline DRM'd (meaning the DRM is related to the disc, but not to the internet and accounts), you can just trade your copy or send it to a friend when you're done playing it. You cannot do that on a digital copy. They're tied to your account.

Note that all of this applies to a true physical copy. Meaning that said physical copy includes the entire game on disc, without any online activations. If the CD has a part of the game, and/or requires Steam or whatnot, it's much better to deal with the straight digital copy than deal with something that doesn't even know if it's physical or digital.


As so, I'd recommend the boxed Tropico 4 (unless DRM'd with an online activation, check the requirements), then go for the GOG version.

Digital for the win.

Digital vs physial...

Here are my thoughts (couldn't read all the posts, only page 1 and 2).

Physical used to be better when it had goodies, like manuals, stories, booklets, etc. But these days, the physical media is not worth it, unless you know it has goodies, otherwise, you can always downoad the installer, copy it to a CD/DVD and there you have your physical media.

Now, if you are a collector, then you might want the physcial because of the box, otherwise, go for digial.

Regarding backups and stuff, the same applies, you can either backup your digital media so you don't have to download it, however, the only way to have the latest update is to download it again, so, in a way, it is no different than having the physical media since you also have to run updates on it.

This pretty much covers my opinion about this as well... I remember those afternoons after getting a new game reading the manual, maps and whatnot that came along with the CD/s.

I agree, there is no point in getting a box this days, unless you are a collector. The best one are games that have only steam installer and eventualy some files that are outdated and you have to download it anyway...
Still, I missing this rich versions, I have standard edition of Baldur's Gate 1 with 200 pages guide included, map and other goodies... and the last time I bought physical game I got a flyer with "Buy season pass" thing...

But somehow, outside of sales/promos, box versions are often cheaper than digital...

I sincerely hope you meant a flyer, since being flayed is not a good thing ;) Wouldn't put it past some publishers to employ flayers though...

Haha, yea... I just got angry when I realized that it was the only thing in the box (apart from dvd with outdated files :P) and that's how it ended... :P