Timeline of digital distribution superseding CD's and DVD's?

I wonder. I set up my account on Steam in late 2013, because that was the only way I could play a game I had bought in retail. I set up my GOG account in mid-2017, because I wanted to play Gwent. Before 2013, I was still using CD's and DVD's to install and play games.

However, it seems like I was kind of a late bloomer to have started digital (yes, I know discs also contain digital data, but that's beside the point) gaming in 2013. It seems like digital stores really started gaining traction in the late '00s, maybe?


So from what I have gathered, it seems like digital distribution started overtaking CD's and DVD's at around 2009-2012, it started dominating at around 2012-2016, and since 2016 we have moved to digital only nearly entirely? Am I correct?

What's the timeline?

Steam came out around 2004 but it was still tricking people into buying discs but forcing them on steam into the late 00s.

2008 - 2012 was probably the pivotal years.

Steam started in 2004 with Half Life 2. 3rd party games were added to Steam in 2005 with the first ones being Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia. It took quite a few years for Steam to gain traction though and discs continued to be popular throughout the mid to late 2000's with 2009-2010 being regarded as the "tail end" of disc distribution. Eg, Oblivion (2006), Bioshock 1 (2007), and Bioshock 2 (2010), were all widely distributed on disc, but Skyrim (2011) and Bioshock Infinite (2012) were Steam-only, as were many other 2011 onward games, eg, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Dishonored, etc. Likewise Mass Effect 1-2 (2008-2010) were available on disc with a simple offline disk check whilst Mass Effect 3 (2012) disc version was Origin only. So it started out gradual but 2009-2011 were the pivotal years for many games going Steam / Origin, etc, only with no disc option (and I use "disc version" here to mean the game actually comes on the disc without needing an account, not the BS retail releases of an empty box with a Steam code in it which are online-only in practise).

I take 2010 as the rough breakpoint and culminating in 2011 with Origin release.

The odds of buying a box where the game inside would not be bound to a DRM platform dropped drastically by then.