Although I will not deny the advantages of digital games, I still feel that the problem of region locks is much bigger than it is being described in the article. Good look trying to buy the uncensored version of any game via Steam from Germany, it will not work unless you use certain means to make your IP appear foreign. Which is possible, and from what I hear quite easily so. But it is most likely breaking some rules that come with a Steam account and it could lead to a possible ban of said account. This is probably unlikely, and for PSN/SEN it is essentially even easier to create additional foreign accounts as they don't track IPs as far as I know. But it could still lead to bans.
And bans are what frighten me most when it comes to the all-digital future. Sure, there are services like GOG, but the majority of all digital games or account-bound games that I own at the moment are either bound to Steam, PSN/SEN, Uplay, Bnet, etc.. Which means that if my account gets banned, I lose access to all of my games from that account in an instant. This is substantially less likely with physical copies, which could only all get destroyed if the apartment I live in would catch fire, but even then I would at least get insurance money.
The risk of bans might seem trivial to most, but the way that for instance Steam enforces local censorship of games makes it almost in-avoidable to step into gray areas to download games. Especially since Steam doesn't seem to have a clear policy on the matter. Sometimes all you need to do is register a key from a foreign version of a game and everything is fine. This is really no guarantee however, as often these keys cannot be activated with a German IP, or are automatically patched to a censored version. As for digital games, well they at least inform you if it is censored (most of the time at least), but as long as your IP is German, you cannot get a different version.
Now this might seem like Steam is simply trying to be in line with the law as much as possible, but the problem here is that importing and playing foreign games is perfectly legal. Even banned games (within certain restrictions, they can basically only be imported for private use). And somehow I am pretty sure that it will only become more difficult and/or dangerous to get digital stuff by altering one's IP down the line, if EA's struggle with India is any indicator.
I do not entirely agree with the space problem either. In a scenario of changing jobs all across the globe -> okay, in this case, yes digital helps. Maybe it is because I live in a somewhat smaller city and the living space/price ratio is not as dramatic here, but I have a hard time imagining storage space for games to be all that problematic unless you literally own thousands. My father owns what must be hundreds if not actually thousands of books and there is still always space for one more. Somehow I can't imagine this becoming so big a problem, but who knows.
Maybe I will simply start to use piles of games as furniture for the lack of space in the future, because being the luddite that I am, I will probably try to buy as much stuff physically as I can for as long as I can.
