My thoughts on physical games

Why I believe the fight should be focused on ownership rather than physical vs digital.

Tags: gamingPosted on: 2026-09-16

In July, Sony announced that they would be phasing out physical games. Starting in 2028, they would only offer digital games for sale on PlayStation consoles. This move began an impressive backlash against the company by gamers everywhere.

The main argument against digital games is fairly simple. While buying games digitally is a much more convenient process, it robs the user of several important things. First, you don't get the physical box, disk and other goodies typically found in a physical game. I still remember (and own) several PC big box games from the 1990s, where the box would not only come with the floppy or CD-ROM disks containing the game, but also with thick manuals, promo material, sometimes a map and more. But perhaps more importantly, the move to digital also robs the user of true ownership.

When you buy a physical disk, you own that disk. You can put it in your PC or console and install the game whenever you want. If you want to keep playing it a year or decade later, you can. No one can reach in and take it away. And this isn't just a theoretical fear. Just days after announcing the end of physical games, Sony announced they would be removing hundreds of movies and TV shows that people paid for. They can do this because these were digital purchases. But is it as simple as saying digital is bad while physical is good?

True ownership

Steam is widely seen in a positive light amongst PC gamers. They offer deep discounts and provide a DRM that isn't as intrusive as some alternatives. But it would be easy to forget that Valve, the maker of Steam, is actually responsible for making both digital purchases and the ubiquity of DRM into the norm. When Half-Life 2 was released in 2004, Valve made Steam a mandatory installation. Even though the vast majority of us bought the game on physical disks, we could not use it without installing this digital platform. More crucially, even to this day, if you own Half-Life 2 on physical media, you cannot play it without activating it through Steam and connect at least once a month to the Valve servers.

What good is a physical game if you can't play it without online activation? What if the disk doesn't even exist, and your physical game box only contains a download code? Does that provide any sort of ownership or digital preservation? And while Steam's DRM is less intrusive, it's still a digital lock. It still means that any game which relies on Steam's libraries to work (and these days, it's almost every PC game out there) then you legally cannot bypass those locks, and will never own your games, regardless whether they came in a box or not.

Yet, there are alternatives. The most popular one that I routinely use is GoG, which offers DRM-free games. While you can use their Galaxy client, they also offer full archives of the games you purchase. This includes a lot of big names like the Fallout series, Deus Ex, Dragon Age, etc. While they are digital games, you can save them on a disk, and install them completely offline, owning them forever. There are also smaller, niche publishers, who employ the same model of offering DRM-free game downloads, like Manga Gamer, for example.

I would argue that between a physical copy of Half-Life 2 and a digital copy of Fallout 3 bought from GoG, the latter is immensely more preserving of user rights. Despite being digital, it doesn't remove any of our rights, and doesn't allow the publisher to change their mind and modify or remove our purchases, just because it's no longer profitable to run their activation servers.

Vote with your wallet

There's been a lot said on social media following Sony's decision, but at the end of the day, the company itself said that this is a business decision. It's what they believe will make them more money. And the only way to prove them wrong is to vote with your wallet. For years now, when I feel like buying a new game, I go to GoG first, before ever looking at Steam. That's because I know if I buy the game on GoG, I will get something that respects my rights, and I want to support this business model. If you default to Steam, like so many PC gamers do, then you're telling companies that you're among the vast, vast majority who will complain on Twitter from time to time, but when it comes down to it, you're fine with giving away some rights for convenience.

This is true for anything else in a capitalist society. If you support physical music, movies, games, whatever else, you need to show it with your wallet. I know I do, and I hope more people start thinking this way as well.