[mrmattyboy]

Some backstory - I like gaming quite a bit - but more of a personal archivalist. I have basically all games I've ever played on physical media and try to keep someway to play them offline - just jailbroke my 360 to be able to play games from HDD incase the DVD drive broke. Anyway...

I saw the no DVD and was initially devastated. I'm in two minds - I saw one post that basically said "it won't contain a DVD at launch".. if I read between the lines, though I'm not sure I see the value incentive for Rockstar, but...

If they hypothetically launched with physical boxes with digital download codes, okay... This would definitely be in the name of re-sellers (as they've stated). But this is the same as piracy, which has always been, not that "we need to stop people from pirating our games for eternity" but "we need to stop people pirates our game for X months after launch", which makes sense (the piracy party).

So, I'm wondering, if they actually begin releasing physical disks (offline, re-sellable, usable in 20 years), say, 6-12 months after releasing the game.. would that work? I mean, for me, assuming it's the equal block-buster to the franchise I adore (in a varying sense), then I might not mind too much to pick up a copy after 6-12 months (I don't care about bleeding edge).. but... would this work? If we assume the first 12M of buyers can't resell, would the people who buy the game after 12M actually bring a great number to the second hand market.. perhaps not?

I really have the idea of having games that I love in physical form that I know it can't be taken away.. similar to reading a book that you end up reading and know you want to come back to anytime in the future.. and this would _suck_ if I couldn't get a copy (and I assume all PC versions would be full of online-only DRM stuff anyway).

Ergh, I dunno

[Retr0id]

The highest capacity blurays available are 128GB and there's a good chance the game is larger than that, so it'd need to be a multi-disc installer.

I used to think physical media was great, but optical discs do have a finite shelf life. DRM-free is the important part, so you can make your own backups (like you're doing with your 360).

[Arainach]

Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.

And to answer your question, most consumers don't care. The convenience of being able to buy with a few clicks and download immediately without going to a store or waiting for the mail is far more beneficial to most people than being able to locally archive or replay in 20 years.

[Maxatar]

PS5 and XBox support Blu-ray discs with capacities up to 100 GB. Both GTA V and GTA IV used multiple discs (there was an installation disc and a play disc). Heck the PC version of GTA V required 7 DVDs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/18hkrvj/you_c...

[ethbr1]

The bigger difficulty comes from the increasing complexity of games (feature wise) and their release state.

It's effectively impossible to release a "gold version" game to the quality standards of ~1990 physical media, in 2026.

The surface area for potential gameplay bugs is too large: it'd take another decade of QA polish.

So even if you have physical media for the release day version of a game, what can you do with that? Play a buggy version?

To GP's point about post-release physical editions, it makes more sense to sell something later that rolls up the most critical post-release patches and content.

[tencentshill]

If the game they release on a physical disk is unplayably buggy, do they owe you a refund? Even if online updates make it perfect? They can't require that you play it online unless its not even available physically.

[mrmattyboy]

> Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.

This is a totally fair point and literally something I haven't even considered.

> most consumers don't care

I know.. I know.. I mostly commented because the linked article _does_ speak about it and that it implied people weren't happy (mostly for re-sell not for archival purposes). But, yes, I get that

[mrmattyboy]

I guess my point is.. if they were really to wait for X months and then start to release physical media (again, I can't see the financial incentive for them to do it), but it would really put a big split between: 1) people that buy that the game and simply want to re-sell it and 2) people that want to buy the game to "last forever" (like myself). Because most of the people in 1) are _likely_ to be the people wanting to buy at launch, play it and move on, the second are _probably_ more willing to wait (or even (probably) wait and buy a second copy later).

[dmos62]

Pirating should solve your problems pretty directly. That's basically what it is: restoring copyability of a piece of media.