[DaiPlusPlus]

With limited exceptions, “physical games” for PCs today are just an alternative delivery mechanism vs. using one’s own Internet connection: you still end-up going through Steam, Epic’s store, or whatever - which means mandatory online activation - which means physical media is no guarantee of irrevocable use.

Methinks we need something like a Criterion Collection but for games… which I suppose would be GOG.com - but if they carried triple-A games from day 1, instead of having to wait a decade first.

[jolmg]

Is that also the case with physical games for consoles? You can't take your disc and play at your friend's house anymore without reactivating and linking your account on their console?

[Dagonfly]

Generally, you can just give the disk to someone else. The physical disk contains the license key for the game.

The issue is that all modern games need to be installed on the internal SSD. So you're not playing of the disk, you're just copying the files from it. And many games require a day-1 patch to work properly. Some even require a constant online connection.

doesitplay.org is a useful database for that information.