Once, video games came with lots of physical goodies, such as guides, maps and manuals.
Those days are mostly gone, but gamers have, up to now, usually been able to rely on one thing they could literally get their hands on – a disc.
But when pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 went live on Thursday, developer Rockstar said customers who opted for the physical edition would get a box that just contained a code for a digital download instead.
It’s not the first time a physical edition has launched this way.
But if the makers of one of the biggest franchises in entertainment history has decided to follow suit, does that mean the disc is dead? And what does that say about game ownership in the digital age?
Unacceptable – or inevitable?
“My initial reaction was one of confusion and shock,” Ben, a UK-based 24-year-old gamer who covers GTA news on social media under the handle ‘videotech’, told me following the announcement.
In an interview with Variety in February, Strauss Zelnick, the chief executive of Take-Two, Rockstar’s parent company, had said a digital-only launch was “not the plan”.
Ben said this led many to hope the physical disc would be available at launch too – and for more than sentimental reasons.
“An important benefit of owning a disc is that you can lend the game to a friend or sell it later,” he said.
Online retailers selling the physical edition have stated that, as with other digital game codes, the one being offered for GTA 6 is single-use and will become invalid after it is redeemed.
Digital sales now account for the vast majority of game revenue, and online stores such as Steam for PC and the PlayStation Store have been around for many years.
The addition of consoles without physical disc drives is only helping further this trend, said Mat Piscatella, senior director and video game industry advisor at market research firm Circana.
“More than half of all Xbox Series consoles in the US don’t have a physical drive, while over a quarter of PS5’s are the same,” he posted.
For some gamers, the news they wouldn’t be able to play GTA 6 on a disc therefore felt like less of an upset.
“I’m pretty much all digital these days, I download most of my games directly onto my console,” Alogirlx, a gaming content creator from Canada, told the BBC’s What in the World podcast.
“Whether there’s a physical disc or not it doesn’t really change anything for me,” she said.
With physical game sales at an all-time low, the issue may well be less about the disc itself than what its absence may represent.
For some, it appears to be another step away from buying a physical product, and instead towards buying a licence or access to software controlled by the publisher and platform holder.
Ross Scott is the founder of the growing consumer rights movement Stop Killing Games.
The group is campaigning for publishers to leave online games playable if they end up switching off their servers.
He told me the issue raised by Rockstar’s code-in-a-box is less about the missing disc itself – after all, an online game on a disc can still become unplayable if its servers are shut down.
Instead, he said, it was about a lack of trust that publishers will preserve access to games consumers have already paid for.
“The problem is the industry has a very poor reputation of disabling games once they end support, so the trust from customers for many large publishers just isn’t there,” he said.
“I don’t think the lack of a disc is the problem in itself, but rather it can be a symptom of a larger, very consumer-hostile practice.”
Why might Rockstar have done this?
The BBC has reached out to Rockstar for more details on its decision, but it is yet to comment.
Chris Scullion, deputy editor of Video Games Chronicle, pointed to previous data leaks suffered by the studio as a possible explanation for why it may want to ensure its content cannot be easily ripped from a disc and shared before release.
He added that the game, which has already been delayed twice, may also be “so close to the wire” in development that players could still get an out-of-date version if they picked up a disc rather than the digital edition.
“A cynic would also say it’s simply a way to make more money on each physical copy sold,” he said.
Rockstar is not the only company moving away from the traditional physical format, however.
Nintendo has also shifted further towards digital distribution in recent years with the introduction of Game-Key Cards – physical cartridges that act as a key to download a game, rather than containing the game itself.
What have physical retailers said?
The GTA franchise is one of the biggest and most profitable entertainment properties in history.
GTA V has sold nearly 230 million copies, and the launch of its successor is expected to be such a major economic event that Bank of America has weighed in on its price.
Despite this, Rockstar’s announcement has prompted some independent retailers to refuse to stock the code-in-a-box version.
VGP, an online retailer with a physical store in Toronto, said while it had “tremendous respect” for Rockstar, it was “committed to preserving the value of physical game ownership”, so would not be offering the product.
Lootbox Gaming, an independent retailer in Delaware, also declined to stock it, telling me the decision “speaks volumes about the future for AAA (big-budget) releases on physical media”.
Meanwhile, PNP Games, an online retailer with three stores in Winnipeg, has launched a petition, calling on Take-Two to release a physical disc version.
Piscatella suggested the code “may provide a better opportunity for retailers, particularly those that don’t sell used games”, given the number of PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles without disc drives.
