100% Agree with that. I used to like getting my games in physical media, but when they started to provide steam keys instead of actual installers, they became useless, except as coasters, so I moved to purchasing on drm-free digital stores.

Physical copies for console games and gog for PC games.

I think those are irrelevant to the question why someone would prefer a physical release over a digital DRM-free one, as in those examples the (legit) digital version is missing. You can't "prefer" something that is the only option.

Yeah it may be that in some (rare) cases the original physical release may be somehow preferable to the digital version (e.g. missing music, missing expansion packs or whatever), but the opposite is true quite often as well, ie. the digital release is the better version, e.g. because it is made to work with newer computers and OSes. I don't feel it can be used either as a generic argument for preferring always buying a physical version over a digital one, if possible.

Depends. Sometimes, the vanilla 1.0 version (or any other, non-latest version) might be preferable to the latest version, which is your only option with digital distribution.

I definitely prefer the option to choose the version I want instead of being forced.

Or you can procure a "no-cd patch", also known to people who don't own the game in question as a crack :)

That's exceptionally rare. And if you are downloading the versions as they come out, the only way you'd be stuck on a specific version is if you deleted your old copy. That said, you can generally pick the specific version you want from GOG and Steam in the client settings.

Well in that case, I can still think of reasons:-

1. Physical DOS games retain the original game files whilst GOG went through an unfortunate phase of deleting the .exe's if the game could be run in ScummVM. Whether people prefer ScummVM over DOSBox or not, it's always nice to have that choice.

2. Choice of version of game, eg, uncensored / uncut Loom EGA vs censored blood with music & cutscenes missing on the VGA version. GOG only offers the latter version. Quite a few games had multiple EGA vs VGA versions, eg, Space Quest 1, Leisure Suit Larry 1, etc.

3. Some old games have languages missing in the digital version but were released more regionally on disc.

4. Missing DLC. Eg, Operation Flashpoint : Cold War Crisis came with 2x DLC's (Red Hammer and Resistance). Due to "rights issues", the game was removed from sale and re-released as "ARMA Cold War Assault" - but even today that new "digital" version is missing Red Hammer DLC.

5. The ability to buy just the original without it being "bait & switched" out and gated as an "extra" (or removed from sale altogether) due to an unwanted remaster.

That's assuming everyone buys it on day one before an unwanted update, and also that everyone 'must' use a client to undo the damage...

Only on a certain level. In Galaxy, in most games, you can only choose the last 3-5 updates. Games that allow you to rollback and look at how v.1.0 looked like are very very rare.

On Steam though - While I do have Steam installed and have a few games there - I thought you were forced to use the ''latest & greatest version'' whether you wanted to or not. For a great amount of time you could disable auto-updates, but now it seems you have to update a game before you can actually play it via Steam... would be interesting if, despite all this, you could still actually rollback, lol.

This is something that digitally distributed games have as a negative:
In the What did just update thread there are many games that have/had an update a week, sometimes several a week! And sometimes they brake compatibility.

While, in theory, being able to ''update'' your game on the fly is a good thing - in practice it also means that many games are rushed ''we'll patch it later''.

Physical games mean - they should work out of the box and you could apply any patches you want yourself.
They also do not require a lauchner/client.
(Apologies if this was already brought up -- have not read the thread entirely; just wanted to answer EverNight)

The best solution that I have seen, when it comes to patches, came from, as usual - the community.

In Warcraft3, LadyRisa, created a Version Switcher tool that allowed you to view replays made on an older version & play older, incompatible savegames.

And like I said, similarly the digital version has similar advantages so your examples don't count as they are not inherently characteristics of a physical game, that a digital version can't have. In fact, such things (having multiple versions of the same game etc.) are far easier to achieve with digital versions, than physical versions.

I am still waiting for examples of a physical versions being superior to digital versions, for the mere virtue of being physical and not digital. At least I don't see the advantage with physical games taking much more physical space (duh!), not being usable if you don't have e.g. an optical drive (kind of a hardware lock-in, you couldn't e.g. run a physical game with a virtual machine using an virtualized CD-ROM drive, unless you turn the physical game into a digital one by creating an image of the game CD, in which case it isn't phydical anymore), the physical version eventually breaking down either by misuse or age, there being only a finite amount of physical games in circulation etc.

I see nothing but drawbacks with physical media, compared to the very same game as a DRM-free digital version. After all, if someone hadn't turned physical games into digital ones, we wouldn't have gog.com.

I think you're mixing up your (Physical disc vs digital) and (DRM vs DRM-Free) separate arguments here since many physical games are DRM-Free. Diablo 2? Disc check removed in patch 1.12. Prey (2006)? Disc check removed in patch 1.4. Many "GOTY" re-relases like Age of Empires 1-2 Collectors? DRM-Free. Anything that has a DRM-Free source port? They're all just as DRM-Free as "digital" games, so it's a myth that all disc games have copy protection (which is how your above question reads when you persistently say "physical vs DRM-Free").

You asked in post 93 "why someone would prefer a physical release over a digital DRM-free one" ('release' taken to mean "sold by the store as such" not just a self-rip of a disc), and I just gave valid examples. Saying "OK, let's now also pretend everything is the same" is ignoring the fact that many releases simply aren't, ie, the reason why I haven't throw away my Operation Flashpoint GOTY CD-ROM is precisely because the "digital equivalent", eg, the ARMA GOG installer is missing half the DLC content. Saying "well you could rip it and then pretend that's your digital version" is true (but not what 'disc release vs digital release' question is about) but how are you going to (legally) rip them if you don't have the disc? I'm not promoting piracy here, so there's your answer right there - you need the disc in order to rip a disc-only game to be a "digital" one in the first place. And once you have the disc, it still retains value, ie, you can resell it (often for the same / more than what you paid for it) or keep it as an extra backup (especially for rare games) in case you need to re-rip it in future or for the many physical extras, eg, physical maps they came with.

Same with "lets ignore all the games that aren't available digitally and ask why people still buy disc games" - the answer is obviously "it's precisely because of the many thousands of games that aren't available digitally that's the reason many of us do still own an optical drive..." I have hundreds of games from the obvious (NOLF) to rare / obscure shareware games that GOG & Steam have never heard of, and that 'rights' situation isn't going to change anytime soon for most of them.

It should be, yet nobody does that/provides that service. So it still is a distinct advantage of physical. As someone said earlier, unless you buy day 1 and backup all the versions/updates, you are stuck with the latest version, 99% of the time. The data on physical is also immutable, no matter when you choose to install the game.

This non-argument always gets repeated by proponents of digital. In the same vein, you are gated by having to pay for internet to be able to download digital. Optical drives also suddenly didn't disappear from the face of the earth and can be gotten extraordinarily cheap at that, internal or external.

As for lifespan, pressed discs can last decades at least, with proper storage. Already have multiple that are 25-30 years old and still working. And unless the game in question has DRM, you can just make an image of the disc.