Long post--sorry. The fixation around physical media is a red herring. People who obtained physical copies of Crimson Desert early weren't able to play it because the PS5 locked them out of playing it. You can look this up, multiple articles about the topic. Clearly physical media didn't save you then, and it won't save you when a licensing agreement expires and a game will no longer run on your software until you download an update that might remove features/content. A good example of this is ironically Mixtape. Because the game has a large amount of licensed music, it's plausible that one of those contracts will expire and a patch will be pushed that removes a song from the game. If you don't download that patch, you will no longer be able to access or play the game. Physical media isn't the holy grail, consumer rights and protections is. Why aren't we using Apple lighting cables and we are using USB-C instead? It's not because of Apple, it's because of the EU. While PC players have more work-arounds for this issue, console players are at the mercy of updates they have no choice but to accept. Physical media won't save you from that. The convenience of digital downloads should not be viewed as a forfeiture of consumer protections. The reason why record labels still sell vinyls is because people still buy vinyls. While there are I'm sure some people who still purchase video games physically, I would guess that number is decreasing every year. If physical copies were popular, Gamestop would still have video games in it instead of Funko pops and tshirts. I know this is the unpopular take to have. but you can't expect companies to keep making physical editions of games if not enough people are buying them. My point with all of this is that a lot of peoples' concern and frustration comes from the lack of control they have over the media they "own". Physical media does not solve this problem when it's at the mercy of the software running the consoles/game launchers. If you want to solve the problem, you should be supporting initiatives like Stop Killing Games @StopKilingGames.

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