Poll: Are physical copies of PC games dead?

[J Tyran]

I would say dying rather than dead, I love digital distribution and streaming and have steadily boxed up almost all my physical media. However I do still buy some retail copies of PC games, sometimes you can get them cheaper than the usual digital distribution platforms. Games are sometimes £5 or so cheaper on Amazon(uk) than on Steam and have free delivery for example, then you get the best of both worlds when they require Origin/Steam/uPlay[footnote]When it comes to movies Ultraviolet is great for this, you buy a BD for a good price and then you get a digital copy as well[/footnote]. The game was cheaper but once installed and linked to the relevant DD service you no longer need the disk, games annoy me because of the amount of shelf space they need.

With console games you still need to keep the disk around after installation, now I can understand some people like having a disk so they can resell it or have display them in a collection. Its only personal preference but for me its annoying needing many square meters of shelf space, in the space of two standard slipcases I can store several hundred digital games. Internet wise I am lucky, I live in one of the areas where Virgin Media use the fibre networks ComTel and Telewest installed in the 90s. They expanded and upgraded them, they offer unlimited data caps and high speeds. This obviously affects my purchasing habits, if I had to put up with some of the limitations other people have to put up with I would certainly buy more physical media.

Local game stores near me no longer really sell PC games, Game and Gamestation only stock the biggest PC titles like the latest CoD, WoW or Starcraft expansion. Supermarkets have taken huge chunks of the market share of console and games from the game specific retailers, its nice to be able to buy games and hardware when you shop and get all the relevant cashback and loyalty and credit card deals. Getting vouchers that give discounts on fuel and all the other offers add up, the problem is they almost never stock PC games. This means that for one of the largest outlets for gaming (supermarkets) the PC might as well not exist.

With such a limited set of options a lot of PC gamers in the UK are left with either digital distribution or buying retail copies from online stores, this means that retail PC games in the UK are getting strangled.

So TL;DR dying but not dead, at least here.

 

[AlbinoBunny]

At some point it will be.

Right now it definitely isn't. There's a large group of people who either prefer physical media or find it vastly more convenient than downloading on their connection.

Honestly I think for a good long while even if PC games don't get sold physically on the highstreet you'll still be able to buy them off of amazon. Just because the internet speed hurdle can be such an issue.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The point of buying physical over digital is so that you can:

- Sell it on
- Play it many years from now after the servers have been taken down

Most physical PC games fail both of those. You can't resell because the disc is worthless once registered to your Steam/Origin/Blizzard account. You can't play it after the servers are killed off because they are dependent on the servers for activation.

This is beyond false. Most physical PC games use, at most, a CD-key that is /not/ linked to an online account for DRM, and some still leave things at a disc check -- I should know, I buy used copies all the time. A minority of high profile games do the self destructing code thing. It's hardly all.

OT: Not dead, but not what it once was, either. I bought a couple of games at Staples the other day[footnote]Amnesia: The Dark Descent and The Force Unleashed 2, if anyone cares. The latter of which was all of $4 because it's a jewel case copy and they seem to be getting rid of all of their jewel case games in favor of DVD case copies[/footnote], and you can find a section at pretty much any big box or electronics store -- Best Buy and Target have the biggest selection, from what I've seen. It's just that digital distribution tends to have a larger selection and more frequent sales, although not necessarily better sales. Sometimes the base price for a hard copy is cheaper than the sale price on Steam. I picked up the Mount and Blade collection (Only game I've ever bought in a hard copy that actually did have one of those self destructing codes, for Steam in this case) at Target for $10 around Christmas, and that was full price. The Steam sale was going on at the time, and they wanted something closer to $15 for it. On sale.

 

[laggyteabag]

They are certainly dying, but they are not dead. I still have physical copies for a lot of games, and the reasons behind owning them are that they are sometimes cheaper, and my internet is super slow and as games are getting bigger, it is becoming more and more impractical for me to download games. However, whilst physical games come with disks, they often require an activation code onto a service such as Steam/ Origin/ uPlay which makes the whole "physical copy" thing kind of redundant now.

 

[Movitz]

I hope not. There is something very gratifying having a bookcase full of games ^^

Also I'm kinda paranoid when it comes to things stored digitally on computers and such. It's just a hack and major crash-fuck up-thingey away from disappering from you forever.

CD:s are forever <3

 

[Someone Depressing]

Morrisons, my local conglamorate, monopoly and greengrocers, sells physical copies of slightly older games, PC or console, for pretty cheap. Also, newer games, for full price.

I'd say no, not at all. Whle I get most of my games on Steam, one cannot just ignore the benefits of using a disk.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Nope, no more than CDs or vinyl is dead. A lot of people prefer physical products. There will always be a market for physical products. Thus, there will always be physical products, maybe not as much as in the past, but they are still plentiful. Hell, just the other week I got myself physical copies of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and the first Dark Souls on PC, and the store I went to (EB Games, here in Aus) had a rather decent selection there. Plus, there is always import and stores like eBay, where you can always get physical copies of things.

It ain't dead, not by a long shot.

 

[Flutterguy]

Seeing as disc drives will soon be non-standard hardware for prefab computers I say yes.

 

[Googenstien]

I wish they would never go away. I have a game 'library' and since digi-games started being the norm I havent been able to add to it.

 

[MercurySteam]

Bought Titanfall through retail last week and I'll be getting Watch_Dogs on disc so not as far as I can tell, no.

 

[TwiZtah]

I haven't used my optical drive in like two years now, in fact, I even yanked it out last time I did maintenance on my PC.

 

[Idlemessiah]

Pretty much dead. I only see a handful in my local game shops and even then most of the PC games section is taken up by gift cards for Steam, PS+, Live, WoW and Runescape. Even Runescape gets more shelf space than physical PC games.

I went to a market the other day and found a guy with THOUSANDS of games spanning Megadrive to PS4 and Xbone yet he had less than 100 PC titles, and they were in a box underneath a crate of PS2 games.

EDIT: CATCHA: one stop shop. Indeed he was. I even found an original PS2 copy of Okami which I've been after for like a year now.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

The only physical copies I'm buying are usually Collector Editions.

In my case this applies only to Blizzard games (all of them except World of Warcraft vanilla I have CE edition for). I prefer digital over physical, but sometimes I like having the box itself.

 

[Evil Smurf]

It's interesting, I mostly buy digital games for my 3DSXL, and the only physical game I've bought for PC is Sid Meier's Alpha Centuri, even though I only play the GOG version of it.

 

[Mothhive]

I find physical copies completely pointless for PC gaming. Only time I've bought physical in the last few years was The Stick of Truth as retail was about £15 cheaper than Steam for some reason. Didn't even use the DVD in the box, just typed the CD Key into Steam as it was easier.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I tend to prefer owning physical copies of something, even games on PC and console since I feel like I actually own them, with the advent of Steam and Steam codes being placed on PC games I tend to feel that having them attached to their "service" technically invalidates me actually owning them since getting banned technically revokes your gaming services with them which means you cannot play the games you'd bought with your money (Same with Origin) along with the internet always online playing the central role into the service (well aware of offline but that's not winning this hands down).

With physical Steam codeless copies, I feel as if I own the product and can do what I wish with it and can install it where I like or sell it if I've not used the key.

Basically I prefer physical much more than digital, including Steam where I don't feel I own a single game on there and the same could be said for Uplay and Origin.

(Also well aware of GoG and GmG but that's besides the point)

 

[RicoADF]

My local stores have PC sections as large as either console, heck the EB Games has a wall of physical PC games the size of PS3, 360 and PS4 put together.

 

[Kilroy17]

I think it's nice sometimes to have a copy one can hold. Especially when games had physical manuals in them. It's a bit nostalgia driven I guess haha.

 

[Jusey1]

You can't play it after the servers are killed off because they are dependent on the servers for activation.

Reason why I prefer the oldschool method where servers are made by THE PLAYERS... So that why, as long as there are people still playing... There will always be servers for the games!

Still got over 600 servers for the original 2001 Halo on the PC! XD



As for on-topic... Physical is still running good and people, like myself, still need it. (I'm on dial-up after all).